Building my dream kitchen
Dreams are the touchstones of our character. — Henry David Thoreau
For someone who owns a culinary school, one of the most frequent questions I get, aside from recipes, usually refer to kitchens — everything from countertops to ovens, and I make it a point to be as honest and sincere as possible because I realize that the person asking that question is probably about to make an investment that will cost her or make her a fortune.
I decided that since my kitchen has not been renovated since 1994, this year might be a good touchstone of good beginnings, and with that, I decided to build my dream kitchen.
As far as furnishing kitchens are concerned, I make it a point to use quality pieces that won’t need repairs anytime soon. Aside from great quality, they need to have great aesthetics as well. What good is a wonderful oven if it looks like an incinerator?
Experience is always a good reference point. That’s why when I decided to renovate my kitchen, I was predisposed to use the same brand as our current refrigerator that’s older than my youngest daughter. It still works to this day but it was just time to retire the old one. You might think it’s funny how I talk about appliances this way, but even my daughter remarked that there was a tinge of sentimentality that was going on with changing our reliable refrigerator, since it was the refrigerator she knew so well growing up.
Our new two-door refrigerator had big expectations to meet, with its impressive stainless-steel finish and generously spaced shelves matched with freezing drawers that neatly divided items in my freezer. It was a worthy investment that assured me that this one would last for decades, as well as make a good impression on everyone who would see it.
The heartbeat of my dream kitchen is the oven and the stove. I wanted the oven and stove to be made with materials as excellently engineered as my ref, designed with a stainless-steel finish that would give it a clean, sleek look. I also wanted to deal with only one supplier for future maintenance or repair issues. When the oven arrived, I was awed by the technology that went with this sturdy beast of an oven. It has a self-cleaning feature. I can forget the days of soap scrubbing and towel drying. Rather, with just the push of a button, its self-clean feature would activate and all the stains, grime, and dirt would beautifully turn into white ash that you could simply wipe away with a damp cloth, leaving the oven pristinely clean. For me, this was a practical choice through and through, along with its five cooking modes, and various oven-control features easily programmed through its glass touch controls. In fact, when I used the oven for the very first time, I was pleasantly surprised at how evenly baked my cake turned out. Complemented with a stainless-steel glass range hood that has halogen lights and stronger vent exhausts, I am sure that my daily kitchen experience will always be a pleasure.
Since a kitchen isn’t built on appliances alone, there was an army of elements I needed to put together to pull off my dream kitchen. An essential centerpiece of any kitchen would always be the countertop. On it, things are cut up, put down, kneaded and mixed up, so naturally it needed to be sturdy as well as sanitary. For so long, I used natural Italian marble as my countertop. Its strength served me well, but its porous surface made me meticulously spray it with sanitizing liquid so often just to make sure that all the ingredients in my food preparations stayed safe to eat. Imagine my relief when I found a countertop material that was not only sturdy to use but non-porous as well, which meant that it would be a breeze to maintain. I discovered a brand that is practically cutting-edge technology with a luxurious touch. After all, it is made of 93 percent quartz. It’s a tough stone, tougher than granite. That tells me I can liberally put my heavy stand-up mixer, chop up the surface with sharp and heavy knives, try to scald its color with hot and cold items and with a quick wipe, I’m all set to cook anything all over again. And since my kitchen has to be built for heavy-duty cooking, I think I made the smart choice in choosing the quartz product as my new countertop. Moreover, I love the color since it has a natural shade and tone I cannot find in natural stone. The fact that it’s built with environmentally friendly materials is just really icing on the cake.
What’s a useful kitchen if it’s not organized? With that in mind, I had to tap my network of some chefs, kitchen designers and foodie friends and started canvassing for a reliable supplier of good kitchen modular cabinet systems. The new kitchen cabinet has to address my demands in terms of functionality, longevity and design. The supplier I finally chose is the distributor of one of the leading European high-quality fitted kitchens. The product was truly inspiring. The storage space was more than enough to fit all my accessories. It is also built to make sure I didn’t need to dig halfway or somersault through a cabinet to find something. The supplier simply thought the process through of how I move around my kitchen, and made my kitchen storage move around me. With so many colors available, even my dear friend, Antonio Garcia, who is my guru in interior design, did not have an easy time choosing the color that would match the appliances and the countertop, and give my new kitchen the warmth and intimacy that I wanted it so much to project.
In selecting the components for my dream kitchen, I needed to be assured that my demands were not unreasonable or foolish. I was lucky to have eventually met the right people who not only shared my dreams but also gave me a lot of confidence that the actual choices I made were faithful to my dreams.
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