A Kitchen Worthy of a Chef

Is your food starting to taste a bit gritty? If your paint is chipping off and landing in your boiling pots, the marble countertop has seen better days and the cabinets keep swinging open and banging you on the head it might be time to give your kitchen a little fixer upper.

Your kitchen space needs the same amount of attention and care as the rest of your home. In other words, it should be more than a place where you cook your meals and eat. Let’s see what you can do to wow anyone who comes in for a midnight snack –

Liven it Up with Crown Molding
Sometimes, little touches of creativity are all it takes to turn a run-of-the mill kitchen into a masterpiece of interior design. For instance, you can replace chipped wall paint with an impressive layer of crown molding. The molding is typically added to add a formal touch to living spaces but there is no reason why it can’t work in the kitchen. Crown moldings are designed to gracefully flare out to a finished top edge thereby making the area look unique.

A lot of manufacturers offer crown molding that resemble the finishes of cabinet lines. In the end to all comes down to personal taste. For example, four or five inches of crown molding will be a perfect touch if your kitchen includes dark cherry colored cabinets or a sophisticated theme.

Shelving
If your kitchen has some space to spare like an empty wall you might want to consider installing some shelving. You can put some favorite knick knacks on display or shelve any cookbooks that might have been cluttering the kitchen table.

Countertops
When it comes to replacing a broken countertop, going with one that will last longer might be a better option than a countertop that looks pleasing but cracks easy. In cases such as these, installing a stainless steel countertop is a good idea.  Why go for the stainless steel variety? Stainless steel countertops are non porous and metallic. This means that it they are antibacterial and do not need to be sealed.  Stainless steel countertops are a great way to add a modern and unique flair to your kitchen.

Butcher Block
This particular countertop adds a warm and timeless element to any kitchen space, and can be a very practical addition to your kitchen. By installing a butcher block countertop, you’re giving your kitchen a nod to simpler times when cooking was an all-day activity not handed out to microwaves and food processors.  If you’re a chef, be it professional or aspiring, butcher block countertops are a great platform to show off your skills.

It seems that every home in a neighborhood resembles the one next to it. Your home association may not let you make many changes to your exterior, but you can add a lot of individuality to your home by investing in your kitchen space. Now that you know what you should do to make your kitchen space something that will inspire delicious and tantalizing culinary delights out of you it is time to get cracking and incorporate your own style in it. Bon appétit!

About the Author

Jake Kaufman writes on behalf of America’s Floor Source, a flooring and installation specialist headquartered in Columbus, Ohio.  America’s Floor Source is committed to providing the highest quality carpet and flooring products, top-notch customer service, and customer satisfaction.

A brave new recipe

One of my nieces has some health problems and as a result of that lives a gluten-free existence. She's home from college this weekend and since I love to bake and I love her, I decided to make something decadent that she could actually eat.

I'd never attempted a gluten-free baking before so I did some research. I wanted to bake something that had actual flavor and texture and since she loves chocolate, I settled on brownies with a ganache frosting. Again, because I like to bake and I'm pretty good at it, I hybridized a bunch of recipes I found and came up with a gluten-free brownie that had not only my niece, but everybody else clamoring for more.

I can handle myself in a kitchen, but a food stylist I'm not. Here's a photo of my finished recipe never the less:

Here's what I whipped up:

Gluten-free brownies
2/3 cup almond flour

1/3 cup rice flour
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
6 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 cup crushed walnuts
1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips

Ganache
9 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees with a rack in the lower third of the oven. Line an 8x8-inch metal baking pan across the bottom and up two opposite sides with baking parchment.

Take almond flour, mix it with the rice flour and set aside.

Place the chocolate, butter and salt in the top of a large double boiler over barely simmering water. Stir frequently until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth. Remove the bowl and let cool for 5 minutes.

Stir in the sugar and vanilla. Stir in the eggs one at a time. Add the almond and rice flour mixture and stir until moistened, and then mix briskly about 40 strokes. Stir in the walnuts and chocolate chips.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and spread it evenly. Bake for around 30 minutes or until the brownies are slightly puffed all over and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out moist but clean. Cool the pan on a rack. Run a knife along the unlined sides of the pan to detach the brownies. Lift the edges of the parchment paper to remove the brownies. Cut into squares or leave them intact if you want to frost them.

I'm sure they'd be perfectly fine without any frosting, but I wanted to give them an extra kick. For reasons I'll never understand, a lot of people think ganache is difficult to make but really, it's a snap.

Take a cup of heavy cream and bring it to a gentle boil. Remove from the heat before it has a chance to froth up. Add nine ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips and whisk until the chocolate's completely melted and you've achieved a uniform consistency. That usually takes two to three minutes. You now have a ganache. In its current form, it will be a very thick liquid and when it sets it'll have the consistency of fudge.

To turn the ganache into a frosting, whip it until it gets the consistency of frosting. That will take about ten minutes with a mixer or about a half an hour if you're using a hand whisk.

Frost the brownies then set them in the fridge to let the ganache firm up a bit before you cut them into squares.

These things are by no means low calorie, low fat or low anything else. But they're very good and they're gluten-free.

Time for a rant

In the United States, we spell "color" as "color" and "favorite" as "favorite." Few things work my nerves as much as my fellow citizens affecting British spellings. Unless you were born north of the 49th parallel or on the other side of the Atlantic, write the way Americans write. Affecting British spellings makes you look like a pompous ass, not the erudite thing you imagine yourself to be.

As if to prove my point

This e-mail just arrived:

For starters, what color grout to use on your back splash is not a huge dilemma. Deciding to take a loved one off of life support is. Let's try to work on getting some perspective.

For seconders, your dilemma would be solved best by the designer you're working with or the sales person you're working with where you bought that tile.Posting photos on Houzz and asking me for advice on grout colors I can't see is how you end up in real trouble.

If you're working with a designer or a reputable salesperson, he or she will ask your installer to do two mock ups. Each will use your back splash tile. One will have your tile with Pewter Waterfall gout and the other will have Silver grout. Once you see how those two different grout colors affect the color of your tile in your own home your decision will make itself. Do not buy tile from someone who won't do a mock up for you.

You're welcome.

Houzz.com you're killing me

I haven't written for Houzz.com for a year and a half, yet every day I wade through no fewer than five e-mails from Houzz members. To a one, those emails are asking questions that can be answered by clicking on the "more info" link next to a photo I posted, or they're asking unanswerable questions such as "what color is that?" or "what's the name of that granite?"

Again, judging precise color based on an internet photo is impossible, especially if it's in a product photo. Product photos tend to be heavily Photoshopped and actual colors get lost in the mix. Never mind that you're viewing everything on an uncalibrated monitor.


What prompted this post was an e-mail I received a half an hour ago. Here's the question and the photo:

Clicking on the "more info" link would have told this person that what's in that photo is a cork floor from US Floors in Atlanta. Those floors aren't sold retail and are only available from a showroom at around $8 a square foot. I get it that most people don't buy things like new floors every day and that the general population doesn't have the product knowledge that people like I do. But still, think and be respectful. Houzz's links are clearly identifiable and they're there for a reason.

Aside from that, the colors and patterns you see on the internet aren't real and the only way to select a color for anything is by looking at a sample in real life.

This vignette is from a showroom where I once worked. The cabinetry colors are Oyster Vintage over Maple and Harvest Bronze on Knotty Alder from Medallion Cabintry. The wall color is Sherwin-Williams 7037. The back splash is two colors of mother of pearl. The hardware on the cabinets is from Schaub and the finish is oil-rubbed bronze. The faucet is from Rohl and the counter is Tusk from Avonite. I know this because I designed this display.

However, this vignette was shot by a professional photographer who flooded the whole showroom with artificial light. In your home, colors such as Oyster Vintage, Harvest Bronze and Sherwin-Williams 7037 will look nothing like they do in this photo. Asking for their names is irrelevant  Ask instead for a white-ish paint color, a rich brown color and a strong neutral for the walls, because trust me, the colors shown here look very little like this in real life.

Similarly, natural stone patterns don't have formal names. What's Labrador in your market is Uba Tuba in someone else's. Not only that, those patterns change, often radically, over time. A stone labeled Crema Bordeaux today looks nothing like the same stone from the same quarry in Brazil five years ago.

I get a lot of e-mail from people who describe a room and then tell me about their dilemmas about how to furnish or paint said room. While I appreciate that strangers see me as an authority, I won't answer a question like that out of principle. My training as a designer taught me early that I need to see and be in a room before I can figure out what to do with it.

A designer sees things from a dispassionate, removed perspective and it's a designer's job to a) plan a space, and b) save you money in doing so. If you have a difficult room or if you've hit the wall, hire a designer.

Good design advice is never free in the same way that legal, medical, real estate or tax planning advice is never free. Designers make a living from their expert opinion, the same as any other professional. It's as true in real life as it's true online.

Houzz.com has done amazing things in providing the public with a library of inspirational photos. They've done a great job of designer outreach too. But there's a disconnect in there somewhere. The people who write for that site aren't there to offer free advice. They're there to increase their presence on the internet and they do it for very little money. Please respect that. What you see on the internet isn't real and there's no substitute for a design professional. Hire an independent designer.