Gadget Sucker

I've always been a sucker for kitchen gadgets. And since people know that, they keep giving them to me. Except they're not things I would buy. Take that magic garlic peeler. "You just put the garlic in the flexible rubber tube, give it a couple of rolls with you palm, and voilà!" Yes, that was fun, for about three sessions. Then you found out how the little bits of skin start sticking to the inside, so the next clove won't peel, so you have to wash it . . .

And then there was the magic garlic crusher. At first, it looks so completely different from everything else, you think it might actually work. So you go through the motions. And you definitely end up with crushed garlic, which you're picking out of the crevices with a little spoon for about fifteen minutes.

And then they gave me the pasta pot, the one with the lid that doubled as a strainer, the one that barely held enough water for half a packet of pasta . . . and the "no-sharp-edge can opener," that worked if you had a black belt in contortion.

But now there is one that takes the prize, one that even to me looks so patently ludicrous that I'm confounded on how it ever got on TV. It's the Pasta Express, of course. It claims all you have to do is put boiling water in a "thermal tube," add the pasta, screw on the top, and you'll get perfect pasta in 9 minutes. Whatever happened to a pot full of hot water on a stove? You have to boil the water first anyway! This says it all.

However, I must confess I've been much, much luckier with the high-end gadgets I've bought. There was the Foodsaver, which cost me a pretty penny. I bought it when it was just an annoying infomercial years ago, but now chefs are buzzing about cooking "sous vide," where you heat food in vacuum bags. My Foodsaver has proved its worth time and time over; buying and freezing for a year that shitload of filets at Price Club that still tasted great when I ate them or freezing a batch of my curry to take to California, getting past all those nasty sniffer hounds. Definitely worth the $300-odd I paid for it.

And then there's this holy-mother-of-god gadget called the Cooper Cooler which claims to cool a room-temperature bottle of wine to 6 degrees C/43F in six minutes, and a can of beer in one minute. I'll be dipped in shit if it didn't do just that. I gave one to my brother at Christmas and all the people at the party were lining up, warm beers and sodas in hand just to watch it make its magic. They'd literally freak when you gave the can back to them.

I don't have one yet, but six months of the year I don't need one—there's my balcony.

But our old friend John Sculley—yes, the former CEO of Apple computer—has to be endorsing the biggest kitchen con gadget of all time: The Wine Clip.

I think I'll get one. It might work . . .