Just say no to the ubiquitous peppermill
Here’s another of my culinary idiosyncrasies: I am against the invasion of the obligatory peppermill, with all its attendant drama. Why must everything except dessert be covered with extra pepper, offered in a reverential ceremony that makes a person who refuses the ritualistic grinding of the piquant black flecks feel almost rude in doing so?
Hey, they’re trying to “distinguish” themselves from the competition, trying to get you to think they are a cut above, a “classy joint” at no real added cost to themselves.
Adding a sommelier–and attendant large and well chosen wine cellar– now that is a costly addition that might actually be an indicator that the place is a “classy joint,” or is at least actually making some real effort to become one.
Just because you don’t like pepper doesn’t mean it isn’t any good.
My wife happens to believe that pepper DOES belong on everything. But she won’t use the pepper mill I gave her.
Every grinning pepper mill carrying garcon provides you a chance to take your finger right of that old repress button and launch into a tirade well deserved. And it’s a guarantee all around. Conservatives will applaud the challenging of a snobbish practice; Liberals always applaud self-expression, don’t they?
A very convenient guideline: The bigger the pepper mill, the more ordinary and flavorless the food.
I love fresh ground pepper, particularly on salad, tomato sauce and fried.
The ceremony is a pain in the ass.
A good restaurant should simply place a pepper mill on the table.
Stale ground pepper in a shaker is useless.
I love fresh ground pepper, particularly on salad, tomato sauce and fried.
Should say:
I love fresh ground pepper, particularly on salad, tomato sauce and fried eggs.
Why must everything except dessert be covered with extra pepper, offered in a reverential ceremony that makes a person who refuses the ritualistic grinding of the piquant black flecks feel almost rude in doing so?
I add chili peppers to nearly everything, be they dried [chipotle, ancho, paasilla], commercial sauce [Sriracha!], or homemade salsa. I have little perspective on the pepper mill.
I’ve noticed that old people and small children dislike anything with flavor.
Casca: Well, I guess I’m atypical then (assuming that you’re designating me as an “old person”).
As a child I loved strong flavors, especially foreign food (especially Mideastern food, the few times I got my hands on it). And I still do. I find putting black pepper on everything is a way to mask flavor, rather than enhance it, with a dull sameness. I love using herbs and spices on food.
Great minds think alike. I’ve always hated the ceremony, it’s like the restaurant thinks you aren’t skilled enough to operate a pepper mill.
Was it Mark Twain, “Everyone complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it”? When I got around to owning a restaurant one of the first things I did was put 4 or 5 inch Peugeot mills on all the tables–one less thing for the waiters to bother with and the custys didn’t have to deal with a waiter’s elbows flailing about–and the condescension of having their properly placed by a professional pepper grinder.
My next joint had pepper AND salt mills. Guess how often you need to refill mills compared to shakers.
So quit complaining and open a restaurant. (Actually, don’t. It’s a lot of work.)
The elitists have always sought to control the pepper mill. Give the pepper mill back to the people!
The bigger the pepper mill the higher the price!!!
And then, of course, there’s this SNL classic.
I assume you’re talking about restaurants. I recently bought a pepper mill. I saw the headline and thought, “Oh no, what have I done wrong now?”
I bought a Zassenhaus mill from Amazon. The type I liked came in five sizes. See the photos at the Zassenhaus site. At first I got the second smallest size, but found that it didn’t fit on the shelf where I wanted to keep it. I returned it and got the smallest size. They all have the same grinding mechanism; the larger ones just hold more peppercorns. The smallest size is perfectly adequate for home use. Restaurants, of course, will want the larger ones.
I like having it and using it, but I don’t think it’s changed how much pepper I use. Well, maybe a little.
I like the pepper and am usually willing to put up with the ceremony.
OTH, I don’t want to know my waiter’s name or anything else about him/her. Just serve it hot and fast.
Come to think of it, I don’t believe I’ve ever been to a restaurant where they used pepper mills.
No matter; I’ve got my own now! 🙂
Keep this black pepper mill on the table and use as often as Obama offers bland and ambiguous fare.
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/02/12/open-thread-rep-allen-west-at-cpac/
The restaurant setting and faux ceremony aside, I find most p-mills don’t perform consistently. That includes Peugeots (if a car, one would be insane to drive). I frequently have irritatedly had to re-set the little thingy that regulates the coarseness or fineness of the grind.
So I use a small shaker and keep my fresh-ground pepper stash from Penzey’s in the freezer.
My first attempt to cook dried beans from scratch was a smashing success. Maybe it was beginner’s luck, but I’ll definitely be making this recipe again.
Yes, pepper was involved. Red bell, black, and cayenne.
Seldom want fresh ground peper on anything I order in a restaurant. As pointed out by many, it’s an affectation.
I have recently taken a liking to baked chicken with fresh pepper applied prior to baking. Interesting what it does for chicken.
Tom:
If you can’t get a peugeot mill to grind consistently then you are doing something wrong. It’s you, not the mill.
FYI: in the kitchen they will grind it in a coffee mill but that is only due to the bulk need.
They work. Get your palm off the screw thing on the top.
I like my Zassenhaus mill. Maybe it’s the German engineering. 🙂
I’ve had a Zassenhaus coffee mill for over 15 years. I do have to tighten the adjustment screw before grinding, but I’ve gotten used to it.
The coffee mill has a steel grinding mechanism, but the newer pepper mill is ceramic, which is supposed to last longer.
I always refuse the peppering as well, but then I usually eat the salad sans dressing – so I’m a bit wierd I suppose.
Love fresh ground pepper. Hate the ceremony of the grinding of the pepper.
The only thing worse then the “drama” that comes with the peppermill (the same for the “freshly grated cheese too) is the fact that so many foods today are called artisanal.”
I never used to use neither salt nor pepper at all when young. As I’ve gotten older, I use both a lot more.
I’m one of those who believe that a chef is correct to be insulted when someone just dumps salt or pepper onto anything untasted. You can expect a uniform “taste” at anyplace that has a “cook” — and have the right to claim, there, that your palate simply always prefers things saltier or “pepperier” than the average person… but a chef works to at least a theoretically higher standard, and you should respect his talent to the point where you taste it beforehand as to its “needing” more spice.
OTOH, your complaint, Neo, appears to me as pretty much a tempest in a peppermill.
> That includes Peugeots (if a car, one would be insane to drive).
Well, they ARE French… or is that mindless repetition?
Remember the old joke about nationalities —
Heaven and Hell are just like Earth, but in both places, you get assigned your job duties as a result of your nationality.
In Heaven, the French are the Cooks, the Germans are the Engineers and the English are the Policemen.
In Hell, the English are the Cooks, the French are the Engineers, and the Germans are the Policemen.
=============
I’ve heard a much longer version with 5-8 European nationalities, told by George Carlin, but that one is the best, I think…
I’m in the camp that still thinks salt and pepper shakers were an advancement. And i don’t want to sift flour or grind coffee either.
I have a Perfex that must be 40 years old and still works perfectly. It’s aluminum, and has a handle and a little clap that lets you refill without dismantling. It’s for the kitchen because it is certainly not attractive enough for ceremonial use. I am a real afficionado of cooking equipment etc, but I’m also sensible enough to know that a Pyrex measuring cup needs no designer upgrades and I certainly don’t parade such stuff to show how cool I am.
I wonder if they came up with the pepper ceremony to replace the wine-approval ceremony, because the wine-sniffing, swirling and approving was too intimidating for too many customers? There must be rituals, I suppose, and it’s much easier to “just say no” to pepper.
Salad and tomato soup. I’m good with that.
What happened to the idea that one tastes their food before seasoning? Isn’t that why their called seasonings and why one seasons to taste?
This seems somewhat like the server asking whether you want steak sauce, et al on your steak. My comment is “I would hope not.”
Smock Puppet:
Heaven is where the the cooks are French, the police are English, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian, and it’s all organized by the Swiss.
Hell is where the cooks are English, the police are German, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and it’s all organized by the Italians.
————————————————————–
Black pepper is one of those condiments that I go through phases on. Sometimes, I can’t get enough of it. Other times, keep it away. Hence, leaving a pepper mill on the table sounds like a good idea to me.
I like freshly ground pepper. I dislike the restaurant ceremony where the waiter hovers over my freshly-delivered entree and asks me if I want pepper. The question is always asked before I have tasted my entree. The waiter then grinds the pepper and it get the waiter’s elbows in my face. What happens if they put too much pepper on my entree?
Usually I agree with you, Neo on almost everything. But here I must disagree slightly.
Pepper IS a flavor. What’s steak au poivre without the poivre?
But I will say “Ground pepper good….ceremony bad”
Another variant on the nationalities in Heaven and Hell:
Heaven is having an English butler, a French chef, and an Italian driver.
Hell is having an English chef, a French driver, and an Italian butler.
—————————————————————
Living as I do in a place where the local cuisine is quite spicy, if not downright hot (Indonesia), it’s not that often I need to add flavor to a dish, and black pepper is too mild to make much of a difference in those cases. Sambal, on the other hand, does. (Sambal is a hot red pepper sauce that Indonesians put on almost anything, and it can be very hot indeed). Western fare, though, is often prepared too blandly, probably because many Indonesians aren’t that familiar with Western cooking. This makes the pepper mill an important part of the table setting. Fortunately, the “pepper mill drama” isn’t all that widespread here.
I have a friend who is rather a cut up. When the waiter arrives for the pepper ceremony and asks if he wants any, he casually responds in the affirmative. Once the waiter get about half a rotation in he throws up his hands in horror exclaiming, “That’s enough, whoa, whoa”. Confusion ensues.
I wonder if they came up with the pepper ceremony to replace the wine-approval ceremony, because the wine-sniffing, swirling and approving was too intimidating for too many customers?
I’ve begun eschewing this pretentious custom. First, most wines are just fine. Second, most people – including me – couldn’t distinguish most wines from brake fluid.
I’ve only known one person who could profitably make use of the custom, the the wine Fellow of my college. Once at a formal dinner she took one sip, sent the bottle back and had another, putatively identical, brought out. When I politely expressed my customary skepticism, she had extra glasses brought so I could taste the two one after another.
Damned if she wasn’t right. Sipping one-two, I could tell the difference, which was considerable; the first one was on the turn, and noticeably more acidic.
Boy, was I impressed…
Alas Neo, you are mistaken. I thought you too young to have had your tastebuds sufficiently developed. That rarely happens before forty.
Casca: you are very sweet.
Occam’s Beard;
Calvin Trillin has a piece–the New Yorker I believe–in which he discusses people’s ability to simply distinguish between white and red, never mind vintages, etc.
Bandmeeting, I once attended a chi-chi wine tasting in SF, which turned out to be kind of like the Super Bowl of pretention. Before the blind tasting the assembled faithful were gushing about the “divine Bordeaux” they’d recently had, etc.
I felt increasingly out of place, and must have looked like a dog getting a bath, until after the blind tasting when they removed the wine bottles from their brown paper bags. (Nice touch, that.) Turned out that these sophisticated oenophiles had all passed over various “divine Bordeaux” to plump for a bottle of Thunderbird or some such paint remover (perhaps because it went together so naturally with the brown paper bag).
I laughed out loud. Needless to say, I was never invited back.
Alas, wrong again… tart, very tart, or so I’ve been told.
Casca: or perhaps this?
I always say “No, thanks”, when “I’m Justin; I’ll be serving you tonight” brings the phallic peppermill my way. “And your freshly ground Parmesan, too!”
texexec: of course pepper is a flavor; I certainly wouldn’t dispute that. And in dishes where it is meant to be one of the dominant flavors, such as steak au poivre, it is fine. But there’s ordinarily no need to add extra pepper even to that dish, and there’s certainly no need to add it to most dishes where pepper is not meant to be the dominant flavor and it will have an unbalancing effect on the other more subtle flavors.
I also never add salt without tasting. The adding of anything without tasting is a very very odd activity.
Waltj, Sambal Oelek and Sambal Badjak are in my frig right now. Really dresses up those scrambled eggs and pushes my spaghetti sauce to a higher level.
Occam’s Beard:
Was that YOU in the famous James Thurber cartoon in which a guy is holding up a wine glass and saying “It’s a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you’ll be amused by its presumption.” ??
Neo:
You’re right. And (sigh), my wife NEVER tastes ANYTHING as she is cooking it. Grrrrrr…
Occam’s Beard:
Love the story. The only wine tasting experience tale I have is that when I worked in Argentina, we had wine at every meal. It was a jug wine, but quite good, rather dry and fruity. I preferred it to the red, so I had the white with beef. Quelle horreur !When I got back to the States, my reaction to the wine in the US was that it was too sweet.
There have been similar results when the cognoscenti have blind-tasted various water samples. New York City tap water tended to win out over Perrier et al.
My problem with wine is i can’t seem to not drink it at a beer’s pace.
My problem with wine is i can’t seem to not drink it at a beer’s pace.
OK. But you mentioned a problem?
clearly we frequent different restaurants. I wonder if this is a regional thing? Personally I like to spice food up,at times, with salsa- steak, eggs, beans, etc….
When my husband and I took our three young children (all picky eaters) to Rome, there was a kid-pleasing dish that we often ordered in restaurants: casio e pepe. The name was easy for us to remember and it was on virtually every menu. It’s simple and delicious, just noodles with pecorino cheese and freshly ground black pepper:
http://www.romefile.com/foodanddrink/cacioepepe.php
The Romans add the pepper in the kitchen…no “ritualistic grinding of the piquant black flecks” at the table for them! Because we speak no Italian we would confidently order “cacio e pepe” then gesture wildly at the waiter in an attempt to communicate that the kids preferred mainly noodles and cheese…the less ground pepper the better.
Sometimes the waiter got the message and sometimes not so much. I was always happy to eat the result, even if my kids didn’t 🙂
Susanamantha–
“the phallic peppermill my way”
Legend has it that the biggest pepper mill in a restaurant was referred to as the “Rubirosa” in homage to the famous Dominican playboy from the 50’s that–once again–legend has it was bestowed with a surfeit of manly tackle.
Oh, yes the pretension of the pepper grinder. When all you really need is to keep your ground pepper in a closed shaker instead of open to the elements. A grinder to present different size grinds for different foods is useful but never how restaurants present it.
And how about the idiots with their sea salt pretensions. Sure sea salt is great on food which will deliver the large crystals to the tongue especially if not swimming in other flavors that will mask the trace minerals, like fresh french bread. But every blooming idiot chef on TV seems to think you must use sea salt when dissolving the crystals in some liquid. Really, just how stupid do they think we are? I had a recipe that called for sea salt in the making of pickled green tomatoes. In a jar of vinegar, with medium hot pepper, garlic and other spices, such as dill and coriander.
I love flavor.
I love food.
I love spice.
And you made me think about it. Black pepper is only a neccessity when the dish isn’t good enough.
jon baker
clearly we frequent different restaurants. I wonder if this is a regional thing? Personally I like to spice food up,at times, with salsa- steak, eggs, beans, etc…
Regional thing: I think so.
Speaking of salt, I have a small jar of “popcorn salt”. It’s ordinary salt ground to a fine powder, and is ideal for sprinkling on homemade popcorn. I bought it years ago (I don’t eat a lot of popcorn) and it’s almost empty. Lately I’ve been looking in the supermarkets I go to and haven’t seen it. Am I going to have to buy a salt mill and grind my own?
ETA: Never mind. I may have to buy it online, though.
Sambal Oelek and Sambal Badjak are in my frig right now. Really dresses up those scrambled eggs and pushes my spaghetti sauce to a higher level.
Enak sekali dong! (Delicious!) FYI, my reading of the two names indicates that the first is “pulverized” sambal and the second is, basically, “pirate style”. Hmm, maybe of Bugis origin from Makassar in South Sulawesi, the home of the original “boogie man”? Piracy used to be one of the main industries out that way, and still is on occasion. Both are spelled pre-1971 style, with “ulek” and “bajak” the updated spellings.
Never thought of trying sambal in spaghetti sauce. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
Had I known the conversation would drift to wine, I’d have stuck around. A red that’s too sweet… you’re drinking the cheap stuff. Spend a few bucks and get something soft and dry.
What I always find interesting is how Hi I’m Your Waiter gets so gobsmacked when a diner refuses the Freshly Ground Black Pepper. I’ve had Hi I’m Your Waiters actually start turning the top of the Freshly Ground Black Pepper Grinder before the signal gets from ears to brain to hands that it’s not wanted. Apparently most diners are sufficiently intimidated by the manly firmness of the Freshly Ground Black Pepper Grinder that they don’t stray off the script.
> Second, most people – including me – couldn’t distinguish most wines from brake fluid.
LOL, hyperbole, much?
Most people, including you, COULD tell pretty much ANY wine from brake fluid.
If not, be very, very careful about eating/drinking anything at your mechanic’s.
Differentiating Chateau Marmot ’57 from Shat-o “Le Feet” ’04, that, I might give you.
> Had I known the conversation would drift to wine, I’d have stuck around. A red that’s too sweet… you’re drinking the cheap stuff. Spend a few bucks and get something soft and dry.
Eww. Give me a wine that tastes like it came from grapes, not from a horse any day. Never understood the appeal of wanting something that tasted like you just licked a wood barrel, myself.
:^D
“My problem with wine is i can’t seem to not drink it at a beer’s pace.”
OK. But you mentioned a problem?
Occam’s Beard
Yes. The people stepping on my hands part.:)
> Speaking of salt, I have a small jar of “popcorn salt”. It’s ordinary salt ground to a fine powder, and is ideal for sprinkling on homemade popcorn. I bought it years ago (I don’t eat a lot of popcorn) and it’s almost empty. Lately I’ve been looking in the supermarkets I go to and haven’t seen it. Am I going to have to buy a salt mill and grind my own?
Heh. Like you, I don’t eat a whole lot of popcorn, but did have a friend with a grinder many many years ago — pushing thirty, now that I think of it — I had him grind me a large salt-shaker full (the size of a small one of those pepper mills, maybe 7″ or 8″ tall) — the stuff came out like confectioner’s sugar, it’s so fine.
I still use the thing to salt popcorn, it’s only about half used.
I wonder if some idiot “chef” would blanche in horror at my “finely aged salt”, or gush over the idea…
Hmmm. A new avenue for people to be pretentious over. Have to think about that one. “Finely aged salt”, anyone?
A new avenue for people to be pretentious over. Have to think about that one. “Finely aged salt”, anyone?
Well, since salt has historically been used as a preservative and was probably in the ground for thousands of years before it was mined, it should age just fine. But you’re right, somebody might try to make “finely aged salt” a marketing ploy for people with more money than brains.
I’m with you on the subject of pepper mills, cheese graters, Justin etc. But I’m putty in the hands of the cute little girl who can write her name upside down and backwards in two colors of crayon on your butcher paper table cloth.