Between Cheap And Chic

My wish list for appliances that look good and last

WHEN IT CAME time to replace our 20-year-old food processor recently, my wife and I were reluctant to invest in a new one. This was partly because the old one had sentimental value and partly because I'm cheap, cheap, cheap. It was given to my wife as a wedding-shower gift. But mostly, I liked the way my old one looked.

Even though the work bowl was scratched from years of abuse, and the once-white base had faded into a yellowish ivory color, the new ones just didn't have the right shape. The old one had a comfortable boxy look, like a Volvo from the 1980s; the new ones were too busy-looking. I liked the way the old one operated, too; various added safety features on the new ones made me feel like I would need to enroll in a class in how to run the thing.

But the old one was getting dangerous. The internal on-off switch was broken so that whenever the machine was plugged in, the motor was running and the rapidly spinning blade was cutting everything to bits. I was perfecting a technique of pulsing the motor on and off by rapidly pulling and reinserting the plug when I realized that things had gone too far. The danger was compounded because the insulation on the power cord was melted away in one spot and wires were exposed.

Then, one happy day at Costco, I saw a new Custom 14 (DFP-14BCN) Cuisinart with a chic brushed-stainless-steel base, formed precisely after the lines of our original model. It had a retro look, even more authentic-looking than the old one. I suppose I would have been sold just by the look of the thing, but an asking price almost a hundred dollars below the suggested retail price of $320 made it completely irresistible.

When I brought it home and plugged it in, and retired the venerable original to a corner of the basement — it's bound to be good for something some day — I realized that the new food processor had a lot of company. We used to make (burn) toast in the oven, whip cream and egg whites by hand, and, until I found a used Oster beehive blender with its shiny chrome cylindrical pyramid pedestal at a garage sale, the food processor was our only appliance.

Retro is always chic to some degree, I guess. But some kitchen tools and countertop appliances are just plain timeless, and some are so well designed that from the moment they are introduced, they look and feel like something that's been around forever.

Professional chefs and home cooks alike have long appreciated the classic KitchenAid upright mixer. It looks like the practical workhorse that it is. According to the company's Web site (www.kitchenaid.com), the original KitchenAid mixer was modeled after a commercial bread-dough mixer developed by inventor Herbert Johnson, an engineer at Hobart manufacturing company in 1908. In 1919, the first home version was manufactured in Troy, Ohio, and its fundamental design has remained virtually unchanged ever since.

Since the 1950s, KitchenAid mixers have been available in colors other than the standard white, and the latest model, the Nickel Pearl Pro 600, would look awfully nice beside my new brushed-stainless-steel Cuisinart food processor. Chances are, though, I'll never get it because I already have a KitchenAid mixer. (We bartered for ours years ago with a friend who wanted our futon bed.) And these stalwarts tend to last at least one lifetime. If you can't find one by bartering, you'll have to pay about $350 at Sur la Table to get a 6-quart Professional model like mine. A 5-quart Artisan goes for about $270.

In addition to the stand mixer, blender and food processor, we own a new but vintage-looking chrome Cuisinart Classic Style Electronic, which is the latest in a long line of toasters. Because I was too cheap to buy a good one, I got stuck with a series of bum toasters that failed to pop up and cost us their combined purchase prices in burned toast. I am perfectly happy with my toaster now, but if it ever fails me, I am going to upgrade to a DeLonghi Retro Toaster. It retails for about $90, and if you think of it in terms of an investment in design, it's a bargain. The thing is just cool looking, and I understand that it makes good toast as well.

I like my Cuisinart Ice-20 ice-cream maker, too. The 1 ½-quart freezer bowl lives in the freezer, where it's always ready to whip up a (small) batch of homemade ice-cream or frozen yogurt. I got it on sale at Sur la Table for well under $50. But if money were no object, I would spring for the automatic "Ice 30 BC," which holds 2 quarts. It's square instead of round, housed in stainless steel and even cooler looking than the red hot Ice-20.

We also own a Champion juicer, a professional-grade Belgian waffle maker and a rice maker that can cook 10 cups of perfect rice without batting an eye.

I think we've gone about as far as we can go. But lately I have been thinking that a new blender would be nice. During a cooking class I taught not long ago at Sur la Table, I got to use a fire-engine-red KitchenAid immersion blender, and I almost took it home with me. But there was the sleek R.P.M. blender from L'Equip to consider. According to the manufacturer, it features 900 watts of "impressive power," an "indestructible" brushed-metal base and a built-in stir stick. My cherished old Oster is looking a little tired . . .

And Christmas is just around the corner.

Greg Atkinson is a contributing editor for Food Arts magazine and a culinary consultant. He can be reached at greg@northwestessentials.com. Barry Wong is a Seattle-based freelance photographer. He can be reached at barrywongphoto@earthlink.net.