My Microkitchen

My Microkitchen

Earlier, I promised to natter on about the Microkitchen. And I’m feeling an urge to write, and I left the draft of my new cookbook I was working on at work. So, rather than waste this writing urge…

Please note this has nothing specifically to do with medieval cooking, other medieval arts and sciences, or whatever. This is an example of how far a minor obsession might take you.

So, file it under “guilty pleasure”. I enjoy(ed) watching Alton Brown’s Food Network TV show “Cutthroat Kitchen”. If you’re not familiar, it is/was a three round elimination game show format, with the contestants each cooking some version of the same dish each round. What makes it evil is that the contestants can use some portion of the prize money they might win to toss challenges at the other contestants. Someone might bid, oh, $3000 to make another contestant do all their cooking that round over a tiki-torch, or something. Or have all the bread they got during the shopping phase soaked in a water tank, when they have to make a sandwich. Basically, an exercise in creative thinking.

One day, one of the challenges was to use this kid-size toy kitchen to prepare their dish. Everything worked, more or less, but the pots, utensils, and pans were kid-sized versions. The stove was a mini-stove with three inch burners, and the oven was about the size of a toaster oven. Oh, and did I forget to mention? When you made your dish and gave it to be judged, you couldn’t say what horrible conditions you had to work under.

The guy who was using this toy kitchen made the best of an awkward situation, and I think he even won. But as I sat in my comfy chair, I rubbed my chin, and asked the fateful question: “Gee, I wonder how small I could build a kitchen so that I could cook a serving or two of….anything?”

Oops. I was committed nearly instantly. I wanted it to be as compact and self-contained as possible. I wanted to be able to cook with as many cooking techniques as possible. And while I didn’t care about the weight (this wasn’t for backpacking) it had to be portable. And small.

Being me, I had to justify this. “I could…take it to medieval events, the little one-day ones where I didn’t want to haul either my period pipkin pottery collection and firebox, or the very heavy box of kitchen stuff with propane stove and oven. I could make hot food…when and wherever!” “Hey, if I was staying at a hotel, I wouldn’t have to eat out all the time!” The project might have just died a quiet death if I hadn’t been looking a mess kits, and I saw a local military surplus store selling these neat Czech kits. Unlike the lightweight aluminum Boy Scout kits, or the classic US skillet+plate ovals, this was a two-piece rectangular box that split into a rectangular pot with fold-out handle, and a similarly sized and shaped bowl. A canteen was supposed to fit inside, but I looked at that interior space and thought of what else might fit in. I had a little chemical tablet stove that fit in, and held a dozen fuel pills. I added utensils, a little grill, aluminum foil, can opener and such. And it was cool.

But I kept researching mess kits, even reading up on Civil War and earlier gear. Eventually, I came to this conclusion. For those “into” mess kits, the gold standard was the Swedish Trangia mess kit, ideally the WW2 model which was made out of stainless steel instead of the later, much lighter, aluminum (cooking in aluminum is problematic…has very little ability to store heat, and it burns things unless you’re terribly careful).

The Swedish kit was well-planned out. To start with, it had a decently large (6 cup) pot that could be hung over a fire with bail and hook, or you could build a small fire inside the included windscreen (wind is the bane of all small cook fires), or you could use the small denatured alcohol burner that came with the kit. It also had, as the lid to the pot, a small 2 cup saucepan/skillet with a fold out handle (that could be extended by a convenient branch as needed). The alcohol burner burned hotter and cleaner than those fuel pills, it held 40 minutes of fuel, and you can get denatured alcohol anywhere. You could even control the heat somewhat with a sort of shutter lid for the stove.

I haunted eBay for a few weeks until I could get one of these setups at a decent price. Pretty awesome and as practical a design as everyone said. I started to collect bits and pieces of equipment to fit into the kit. 2 pair of steel chopsticks that unscrewed into shorter lengths made for shish-kebab skewers. I found small but usable tableware utensils. I had a steel plate and bowl made to fit the inside. One of those flexible cutting mats, cut down, made for a cutting board surface. I replaced the alcohol stove with a slightly smaller one, and added a spare fuel bottle. I put in knives to prep food with. I added stuff and took it out again when I found it either didn’t work, or I found something better. I found ways to use the kit to bake.

Okay, it’s not DONE, but what I have is pretty usable, and I’ve used it pretty effectively. This last March Crown, I cooked three medieval dishes, one after the other. Earlier, I’ve used it to do all my cooking at a weekend SCA event where I, for reasons, was simply camping out of the back of my truck.

The unit is still small…maybe 8 inches tall, 4 inches thick, and 6 inches wide. But I’ve taken to storing it in one of those olive drab ammo cases…gives me a convenient handle, plus there is extra space for a small nylon tarp, ground cloth, grocery bag, and larger spare fuel bottle. I’ve made other accessories for it, including a 21 spice mini spice kit, and similarly small pantry. In order to cook some things most effectively, you have to work out your procedures and order of them in advance, so I wrote a small cookbook which also serves as an idea for “what do I want to cook with the kit now?”

So, if you find you have an obsession, you might try giving in to it, and seeing what happens. And if you see me cooking with the kit, perched behind a small folding table, come and say hi!



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *