On the Menu | Looking for life-changing kitchen tools, I have grate expectations
Kitchen tools that really work spark joy, and there’s one man in Tokyo dedicating his life to helping us find them
After a decade of resisting, I finally bought a Microplane grater – it was on sale because a kitchenware shop was shutting down, and I can never give up a good deal.
For the uninitiated, the Microplane is a cleverly designed grater beloved by chefs and discerning home cooks the world over.
You might have spotted it on screen, in the kitchens of MasterChef as contestants frantically shave Parmesan over their dishes in the final seconds of plating, or perhaps you’ve seen it used tableside at a fine dining restaurant for zesting lemons or grating truffle.
Invented in the late 1990s by American engineer Richard Grace of Grace Manufacturing, the Microplane wasn’t even originally used for the mundane task of grating cheese – it was designed to be mounted on a hacksaw frame and used in woodworking.
Grace had told The New York Times that he was initially “disappointed” to see his “serious woodworking tools” used in the kitchen, but by 2011, the company’s culinary tools accounted for 65 per cent of its income.
Why? Because it’s a genius of a tool, made through photo-etching technology to create ultra-sharp edges capable of turning a rough block of Parmigiano-Reggiano into the lightest, fluffiest cloud of finely grated cheese that falls onto your pasta like a blizzard of tasty snowflakes.