The fact that kitchens run on science as well as art appeals to me. So I enjoyed Kenneth Chang’s New York Times story, “At the Stove, a Dash of Science, a Pinch of Folklore“, which (again) features biochemist and food scientist Shirley Corriher.

The title of the piece reminded me (again) that I intend to read a book that has a memorable title: Stand Facing the Stove, by Anne Mendelson. It tells the story of the women who changed the world by writing and publishing Joy of Cooking, a tale that goes somewhat beyond joy into other emotions, according to snippets I have read. Still - since I may have cooked more meals with Joy than with any other recipe guide, I’m intrigued.

I had stoves in mind because of the amazing offerings at Lehman’s online. From dutiful wood-burning cookstoves like The Artisan Wood-Burning Cookstove, $6295 in either black or cream, plus shipping, to gilded wonders like The Enterprise Monarch, $7,995 with the reservoir - and you do want that reservoir, plus 9% for freight costs — all the way to a solar cooker: Deluxe Sun Oven ($249). I don’t know about the shipping, but sunpower sounds good, no?

Photo credit: Masta4560 — Thank you!

It’s January, and we are eating local fruit — Reed Valley Orchard’s apples and applesauce. The crisp acid-sweet taste brightens and lightens any plate of food I cook. Slow-cooked beans, egg-y frittatas, beef brisket, country ham.

Or, to be honest, applesauce in a bowl all by itself brightens ME. If Savoring Kentucky were an opera, applesauce would be a motif, so often do I return to touting it.

This is our first year to own a real freezer, and I made several batches of applesauce from Reed’s fine apples during the summer and fall harvest season. Winter ease pays back the work of freezing applesauce. Instead of wash/cut/cook/process/package/clean up, the steps are fewer, simpler: Open bag, put in bowl (optional), thaw slightly, enjoy (delicious with the crystals still crunching in each bite.)

Adding to the apple motif, this year I bought extra Gold Rush apples and a few Granny Smiths, to store in my refrigerator’s produce drawer, as directed by Trudie and Dana Reed, for eating out of hand. Two months into the experiment, the apples are wonderful. I wish I were eating one right now! The Gold Rush keep their firmness and their extraordinary sweet-tart intensity. I have used the Granny Smiths primarily for cooking, though they have stayed firm and juicy as well.

This week I roasted two Grannies using a method long-time Chez Panisse chef David Tanis suggests in his recent cookbook, A Platter of Figs. Don’t you think any food preceded by the adjective “roast” or “roasted” automatically gets 10 extra appeal points? These roasted apples tasted fine, mainly because the apples themselves taste so fine. Project Foodie has posted the recipe here. I am happy about having last summer’s apples this winter, but freshly roasted (aka “baked”) apples and newly made applesauce will taste delicious if you can locate some flavorful Granny Smiths at a nearby store.

Cleanup/clean-out energy arrived with the New Year, so I had to accept a thing I cannot change: My much-loved, constantly used, nearly worn-out favorite potholders need replacing. Hole-y, thinning potholders can add the cook’s fingers to a meal’s sizzling objects, and that takes the fun out of a functional object. I have not yet pitched my three favorite low-tech, high-performance tools, because I am having trouble locating exact replacements.

This trio, and their many predecessors, came from a gift shop at Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill. Shakertown, a place of peace and beauty, usually attracts me to visit a couple of times each year, and while there, I buy potholders and brooms, if our household needs them. During my most recent visit, the gift shops had no pot holders. Now no potholders appear in the offerings at the online craft store, though other traditional Shaker Village items look quite appealing on the site.

Why do I like them, the quilt-piece potholders? Counting the ways:

1. They are beautiful without being hokey.
2. They feel perfect in my hand, flexing plenty while also protecting adequately.
3. Their cotton fabric feels good and works well in my kitchen.
4. They wash well.
5. They age well - at least to my love-struck eyes.

I looked online, hoping I could find the wise designers and makers of these lovely, handy kitchen helpers. No luck, though I did see lots of quilted pot holders that were not as elegant or appealing. I am not in despair, because friends are in search of people who might accept a commission to make several new potholders in quilt patterns, using my three as a guide. Of course, if you know the source of these beautiful kitchen objects, please let me know.

I like the potholder designers’ use of quilt designs in a functional object. I am still trying to make up my mind about the quilt pieces on Kentucky barns.

Useful Kentucky barns are their own art form. Sometimes I think the barns themselves are so lovely they overpower the attached quilt piece, even though it is always sizable. The more I see, though, the more I like the barn-quilt combo.

If you need some reading to get your 2009 underway, here’s “Advocates for Change in Food Policy Look to Obama with Hope,” an interesting piece Kim Severson wrote for the New York Times a week ago. Several notable food policy activists are among the 145 commenters. Some comments are almost as long as the original article.

Here in deep mid-winter, with crises competing with each other for attention and management, a lot of people share a longing for new national food and agricultural policies. A lot of that longing — and hope — is directed toward our new president-to-be. Interesting that where food policy is concerned, many change advocates suggest that laws and regulations matter, but the Obama family’s food choices also can make a huge difference.

Problem: The knob on my long-term kitchen buddy, an electric teapot, disintegrated, making it hard to reload when hot. Temporary solution: An engineer son invented a handy and quite elegant lifter, courtesy of a repurposed coat hanger. Nice, no? He said it was temporary, though, and I agreed, though I liked the elegant freeform Möbius-ness of it.

I had imagined a solution from the Chevy Chase Hardware . . . maybe there are stainless steel bolts and nuts that would fare okay with steam and boiling water . . . maybe I can find something that will give me a handle to grab with a potholder if the metal is hot . . . maybe it will turn out to be industrial-cute. . . .

Without planning to be there, and without bringing the bare naked teapot lid with me, Sunday afternoon I visited the Chevy Chase Hardware. My heart lifted as I walked among the numbered, lettered, sectioned and labeled pull-out trays that organize the more than 20,000 items this locally owned business sells. Services too:  “lawn mower repair, screen & window repair, lamp repair, key duplicating, glass & plexiglass cutting, and more” according to Local First Lexington, (more power to them too, while we’re on that subject.)

For readers who have not had a hardware experience outside a Big Box store in recent memory, I want to underscore that I was not alone with the trays, letters and numbers. In fact, the Chevy Chase Hardware store guy who helped me was young, quick, smart, patient, knowledgeable, and encouraging. Within a minute it turned out that I would not need to invent a new knob for the teapot out of construction materials typically used for other purposes.

Not at all. Instead, one of the small chests of pull-out drawers held actual knobs! Replacement knobs for bare spots where a handy knob had worn out or burned off or otherwise gone to Knob Heaven.

I felt three things at once: foolish, happy, and a bit sad. Foolish for not having imagined that a wondrous place like the Chevy Chase Hardware would have the exact piece I needed. Happy at being in a hardware store, with a good guide, and with solutions everywhere. Sad because I didn’t have any more hardware needs right then that I could solve so firmly and - I haven’t mentioned this yet - for $2.19.

As we located each needed item, my cheerful guide listed them on a tiny brown bag:
> 1@29¢ [The stainless steel nut]
>1@1.58 [The knob]
>1@20¢ [The stainless steel washer]

$2.07, plus Kentucky’s six percent sales tax equals $2.19.

I do love hardware stores because they are full of tools. Good hardware stores are also full of optimism. What is stuck can be unstuck. What is dry can be watered. What is dark can receive light. What is shaky and decrepit can be made sturdy and useful.

It seems almost spiritual — the hardware store helps humans part waters, make the crooked straight and the rough places plain. It’s also definitively American, a store dedicated to our finest can-do traditions.

One more thing occurred to me during this visit. Going to the Chevy Chase Hardware Store is an energizer and cheer-up strategy safer than stimulants and cheaper than therapy. On that last point, I have the tiny brown bag with its item list to prove it.

Many Kentuckians know about potato pancakes made from leftover mashed potatoes that receive quite a few additions before going on to glory in a hot skillet. When I married into a Jewish family, I learned about another wonderful type of potato pancake, made with raw grated potatoes, called by their Yiddish name, latkes, and often cooked as part of the eight day celebration of Hanukkah.

Our family had its much-appreciated annual latke feast last night. As usual with complex food that we like to enjoy together, the preparation as well as the eating involves a lot of collaboration.

This year two key players pulled off the work without much help from the rest of us — and without pulling out the old, much- adapted recipe from our old Joy of Cooking. This year’s latke inventors at our house were (1) a somewhat experienced latke coach and (2) a strong, capable, experienced chef and fry-cook, aka “Son,” the same son, one of three, who began helping cook simple parts of family meals when he was seven or eight — or a couple of years earlier, if you count cookie-making.

Listening and watching, I’d say the 2008 family recipe for feeding five people (as part of a larger meal, but amply, amply) went something like this:

1. Coarsely grate two pounds (or a bit more) of mature russet potatoes. (We used Russets from Elmwood Stock Farm, bought about four weeks ago and just starting to show their age.) (We also used the large grating disc on our old food processor.)
2. Put the grated potatoes in a sturdy cotton dishtowel and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze all that juice out. This crucial step is often underdone, and that leaves too much moisture in the latkes, making them gooey instead of crisp.
3. Add 2 eggs, about half a grated onion, and about 1/2 cup flour, plus salt and pepper (probably about 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper).
4. In cast iron skillets or other frying pans, heat enough good sauté oil to fill the bottom of the pan and just a bit more - so, a bit of a pool, but verrrry shallow. Son chose mostly grapeseed oil for its high smoke point and excellent browning, with a bit of extra virgin olive oil for  flavor. He used a 1/2 cup measuring cup to scoop dips of the latke batter into the hot oil.
5. From here on - it’s experience that counts. Success depends on adjusting the burners to the right temperature to cook the latkes through in the middle while browning the shreds that stick out all around and make the excellent crunch.
6. Serve with plenty of sour cream and sweet-tart homemade applesauce.

Enjoy the latkes, and enjoy each other.

Many, many online recipes for latkes look delicious. Here are a couple that seemed authoritative:

Kosher Blog’s Potato Latke Master Recipe

All Recipes Potato Latkes