3 Little Gifts Guaranteed To Please Any Cook

Three little gifts for the people in your life who can’t stay away from the kitchen.

CHEAP & PERFECT | Having the right cooking equipment makes food prep and clean up easier. Here are must-have kitchen products that infinitely out perform their insignificant price. Any one of them would make a perfect “little” gift.

For Lee Valley’s microplane-turned-zester/grater pictured here, fame in the food world came about in 1994 when a Lee Valley woodworker’s wife discovered that that her husband’s new wood rasp would zest oranges. This discovery rapidly led to expanded uses such as zesting lemons, grating nuts and ginger, reducing a clove of garlic to near liquid in seconds, and cutting hard cheese into gossamer-thin shavings rather than grating it into small chunks.

 Find the microplaner/zester at Williams-Sonoma (soft grip handle version, $14.99; or at Lee Valley (the original version, $14.95)

You can find more expensive interpretations of the iconic Swissmar peeler, but unless you’re an absolute label slave, why waste the money? At just $4.95 (at Dirty Apron Delicatessen), the Swissmar is pretty much state-of-the-art as vegetable peelers go. The blade is scalpel sharp ,and that means, as the literature says, it takes less effort to peel stuff and you get a very thin peel with every stroke. The Swissmar peels hard fruits and vegetables and shaves hard cheeses and chocolate. The company also makes a serrated model for peeling softer fruits.

Find the Swissmar peeler online at Food52 (in Vancouver, check at   Dirty Apron Delicatessen) 

Made of a slightly softer version of the 100 percent cotton flour and feed sacks Depres- sion-era women used to make clothing, dishtowels, pillowcases and curtains, contemporary flour sack towels are the most absorbent dishtowels you can buy. One website we looked at described the fabric as being so thirsty that any dishes that came into contact with it pretty much dried themselves. Because they’re lint-free, flour sack towels will leave all your glasses with whisky bar shine. They are also great for all kinds of other kitchen activities like straining sauces, proofing bread and mopping up spills. —eds

Find the set of four pictured here at P.O.S.H. Chicago, $12 (in Vancouver, find a nice set of four flour sack towels at the Gourmet Warehouse, $6.99)

Photos, top to bottom: iStock, Lee Valley & Veratis, Swissmar, P.O.S.H. Chicago