Gas or electric?

When we redid our kitchen a few years back, one thing I asked for was that our electric range would be replaced with a gas one. The reason: turn it on and the heat is immediate, turn it off and the heat stops. For those of us who like to cook having this type of response means a great deal.

Of course, I did not really plan on one thing. We have a ceramic glass surface around the burners, just as we did before, but for some reason this new one turns out to be much harder to clean. Streaking seems almost inevitable as though anything that could leave a film will resist all efforts at elimination.

This has had one impact on my cooking: I now try to cook with covered pans as much as possible so that nothing splatters, and even then I remove the cover only when I take the pan away from the range so that nothing drips off it. What this means is that I am going to be steaming whatever I cook much more than might have been the case if I did not cover it. I'm not yet expert enough to know what overall effect this has had on what I prepare, but from what I read in various cookbooks covering a pan is not always a good thing.

This leads me to think about other limitations there are in our kitchen cooking. Years ago I thought doing the blackened whatever that has become part of Louisiana cooking would be great. That was before the smoke alarm would go off. I've learned that if I want my blackened catfish I'm going to have to go in the backyard and set my cast-iron fry pan over a barbecue.

When I watch a cooking show or get to look at some of the marvelous kitchens in a good restaurant I see lots of flames. I also see enormous vents that suck up all the smoke, not these tiny things in an ordinary range hood. I watch things sizzle and spatter and the results are marvelous. But don't try this at home, I've learned. Not unless you're ready to spend a few hours with Barkeepers Friend or one or another of those commercial items whose warnings indicate they will quickly consume your bare skin and, if ingested, turn your internal organs to sludge.

This may be the reason I find a kitchen range, like a kitchen oven, being reduced to fewer and fewer tasks. Boiling water is okay, but for anything else better to pop it in the microwave. Here is the package, just pierce the film and wait a few minutes.

It's as though today's home kitchens are meant to stay immaculate, but, as would be the case with a prospective nun, the only way such purity is maintained is to be entirely untouched by male hands.