Brunnhilde likes to help me cook. When we travel we do a lot of home cooking on the road, so for her a sets of well appointed kitchen cookwares and service only make a lot of sense. When I first acquired a camper my initial tendency was to only put not so good cookware and service in there.
As I gained more experience in cooking in very confined space and with very limited resources - heat, water, air, space, working surfaces, limited storage space, only the most basic of cookwares, I realized it is so wrong - to put only the crappy cookware and service in the camper. It should be the other way around, when you are confronted with the most difficult cooking situation you want the best to make your job easier. That was my revelation. I started carefully curate what I equip the kitchenette of Isolde's kitchen. Camping life was never the same ever since.
While weight of the total payload is of utmost importance, when it comes to cooking and dinning experience we make only small concessions. We refuse to use cheap or plastic services. We have good quality cooking utensils. Each item in the kitchen is carefully chosen - we prefer to think of them as a carefully curated set. The compromises generally comes to making concession with the space limitation. Most of the pieces are chosen with their smaller scale to be commensurate to the very compact kitchen. Only the most versatile cookwares were chosen. Even then some are removed after some time when we realize better pieces can take their place. Generally the replacements are more versatile and efficient, albeit don't necessarily more costly.
It all comes down to priorities. For example, we carry a small Chinese clay pot. We don't, however, carry a small Spanish paella pan because it takes up too much space.
Christmas has been good. I treated myself and Brunnhilde to a few pieces well chosen material goods. For Brunnhilde, I thought a couple of modest cookware would be most fitting. I wanted for her quality over quantity, and simplicity over complexity. I thought hard what are the simple things that would make real difference. I came up with two - a very good pepper grinder, and an accurate kitchen thermometer.
two new cookwares Brunnhilde would appreciate and enjoy
I chose the chubby 5-inch one because it just fits nicely into Brunnhilde's roll-up top cabinet. Being so short it takes a bit of getting used to because there is little space to grip with two hands.
5-inch next to the 10.75-inch big sister
Only a few years ago, Peugeot introduced the biggest enhancement to its mills. The U'Select function on the base of the grinder. With this system you no longer need to adjust the fineness of the grind with the little brass thumb nut on the top (which never stays put for a grind setting). All the Peugeot manual mills are still made in France, and most if not all, are still made from birch.
the bottom showing the u'select mechanism and the high quality grinding burrs
Before the new Peugeot mill, Brunnhilde has a Perfex (also from France) cast aluminum mill. It costed a princely sum when I bought it 20 years ago and is gorgeous and the most compact. The grinding burrs however, are not that good. It has some redeeming attributes due to the unique designs.
the old Perfex pepper mill in Brunnhilde's kitchen cabinet
The second present is a Thermapen kitchen thermometer. I bought a green one for the home kitchen and a red one for Brunnhilde's kitchen. The Thermapen is based on thermocouple technology and is the best kitchen thermometer money can buy. The truth is, when cooking on the road, I seldom feel the need to use a thermometer. It is just something I want to splurge for the material girl since Brunnhilde has just about everything. I thought it is nice to have a very sensitive, accurate, and reliable thermometer handy to know the ambient temperature inside and outside when on the road.
