Lauren Noble

Kris Morningstar of Ray's and Stark Bar

​The opening line of A Tale of Two Cities might as well have been a Dickensinian prophecy for the 21st century at-home cook for whom there is no better and yet more confusing time. You can build a giant cupcake to be topped by home-made ice cream, all paired with your own soda or beer that you've brewed. This wide scope of available gadgetry and tools is just one aspect of a consumer reality creating anxiety in consumers, as psychologist Barry Schwartz warns in The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. So when Kris Morningstar of Ray's and Stark Bar shared that a cake tester works double -- sometimes triple -- time for him and his crew, it seemed practical to have him elaborate on his kitchen must-haves.

The Southern California native has been praised for his farm-to-table approach and creative nod to the omnivore diet in various stints at restaurants across town. If anyone can tap into resources for use past its prescribed purpose, it would be him. Case in point: Morningstar uses the aforementioned cake tester to measure the doneness of everything from fish to beets and sunchokes.

"All of our cooks have [a cake tester] either in their salt -- they have them poking out of their salt -- or in their chef coat jacket. At my house, it's in my little salt bin so that it's always easy to grab," Morningstar says.

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Firebox.com

Gamepad Chopping Board

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The original Nintendo controller -- so simple, so rectangular -- is a touchstone of nostalgia for many of us, a reminder of a time when two simple red buttons were all you needed to jump, shoot, and beat Bowser at Mario's own game. UK company Firebox takes us back to the time of Nintendo thumbs with its Gamepad Chopping Board ($23), designed like the ever classic controller.

It's not an exact duplicate, as the designers carefully and artfully considered what exactly you would be controlling: where the original Nintendo logo was placed, you have a cartoonish sliced carrot instead. And rather than the "Select" and "Start" printed on the controller, you have the slightly less motivating verbs "Slice" and "Dice."

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Guzzle & Nosh

Chef David LeFevre (left); the steak fries at M.B. Post (right)

​"How do you feel about the fries at In-N-Out?" asks chef David LeFevre. We wrinkle our nose and wonder how such a good fast-food burger can be accompanied by such awful, soggy, lumpen fries. Fortunately, we're in good company. LeFevre, the longtime Water Grill chef who recently decamped to Manhattan Beach to launch his own restaurant, hates In-N-Out's fries as much as we do.

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In this second installment of our pictorial how-to series (in the first, we made kimchi with chef EJ Jeong of Cham Korean Bistro in Pasadena), we visit chef Steven Mary of Pinot Bistro, who teaches us to make the studio City's restaurant's recipe for rillette.

Rillette isn't as scary as it sounds. In fact, it's a perfect dish when you have guests coming for brunch or lunch. You can prepare it a day in advance, take it out of the fridge half-an-hour before mealtime and serve it with some fruit compote, toasted bread, pickles and salad. The version at Pinot Bistro is an exemplar of the genre, offering textural complexity and layers of flavor that blend savory hits of pure pork with hints of dried fruit sweetness. In our next installment, Mary teaches us how to make a countryfied French foie gras terrine.

[Step-by-step photo gallery after the jump. Full recipe at the very end of the post.]

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​Saint Valentine's Day is coming up, a holiday meant to commemorate your love through the purchase of mass produced greeting cards, written by someone who probably hates her job. It is also a very big night in the restaurant business, with most restaurants in the country being forced to contrive a romantic, fixed price menu for two. But in reality, going out on February 14th (or even a few of the surrounding days) is an often terrible idea. In light of that, we present our Top 5 Reasons to Stay Home and Cook on Valentine's Day.

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Guzzle & Nosh

Bossam, a Korean dish traditionally served on kimchi-making day.

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Pickling is a hot trend these days, and plenty of cuisines have traditionally featured some form of pickled food, but few cultures revere pickling the way Koreans do.

There's a Korean saying, chef EJ Jeong tells us, that roughly translates to: you can live without your wife but not without kimchi. That's some serious cultural weight for pickled cabbage. Another saying: you have to kill Napa cabbage seven times to make proper kimchi.

On Saturday, November 20th, chef Jeong of Cham Korean Bistro (which makes one of Jonathan Gold's fave versions of dolsot bibimbap) will show people how to do just that, hosting a kimchi-making demo at the restaurant's R&D kitchen near Vernon. (Details at the end of the post.) We got a preview of her pickling technique -- and a taste of her kimchi.

Step-by-step guide with loads of pictures after the jump:

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Ben Calderwood

Wushof Classic 10-inch chefs and 3.5-inch paring knives

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Even the most prosumer home chef has found himself creeping surreptitiously down the aisles of the Macy's kitchen department, tempted by the siren song of the 23-piece cutlery set. There are boning knives, tomato/bagel knives, Granton-edged bread weapons, utility knives of indeterminate purpose, "sandwich" knives and steak knives and discount kitchen shears protruding from a hardwood block like quills on a porcupine. That block is a magnet for dust and food particles by the way--just about the worst place to store a blade after the basin of your sink. Don't be fooled. Most kitchen tasks can be accomplished by a single high-quality blade, augmented perhaps by one or two additional knives of your preference.

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