Okay! So I'll Use The Dishwasher

Being Slowly Dragged Into The Modern Age Of Dishwashing

Many years ago, I wrote a lengthy piece here (like anything I write is less than lengthy) on the proper way to wash dishes. I called it “How To Wash Dishes.” Catchy title, huh? Then a few years later I revisited the topic of hand washing dishes in an article called “How To Hand Wash Dishes Revisited.” Both pieces focused on the primary way I always used to get dishes clean: two hands and lots of hot, soapy water. I only mentioned automatic dishwashing machines in passing. And while I stand firmly by the information I imparted in those original articles on hand dish washing, I'm here today to give the automatic dishwasher its due.

My wife doesn't understand my ambivalence toward dishwashers. That's because she always had one. Dishwashers were not a part of my upbringing. I never had a dishwasher in any of the houses in which I was raised. Never even saw one. My first experience with a dishwasher came when I started working in restaurants. I was well into adulthood before I rented an apartment that was equipped with a dishwasher and, following my mother's example, I never touched it.

See, mom was one of those people who believed that dishwashers were wasteful and expensive. In her senior years she lived in an apartment equipped with a dishwasher: she used it to store her Tupperware. For nearly thirty years that dishwasher held dishes but it never washed the first one.

A wealthy socialite named Josephine Garis Cochrane invented the modern dishwasher in 1886. It seems her clumsy servants kept chipping her fine china when they washed it. She tried washing the dishes herself for awhile but hated the chore, so she was motivated to design a motorized rack and water jet system that she constructed with the aid of mechanic George Butters in a shed behind her Chicago home. She debuted her invention at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, for which she won the prize for “best mechanical construction, durability and adaptation to its line of work.” The company she founded, Cochran's Crescent Washing Machine Company, became part of KitchenAid after her death in 1913.

When I was a kid, dishwashers were still pretty much considered toys for rich folks. By the time adulthood and the 1970s rolled around, they had become far more commonplace and today more than seventy-five percent of American homes have a dishwasher. Of course, as I said, my mom had one, but because she didn't really understand it, she never used it.

Mom believed, as many people of the time did and as some still do, that dishwashers were wasteful and expensive to use because they repeatedly filled and refilled with hot water. Not so.

Dishwashers don't actually “fill up.” Only a small basin at the bottom of the unit fills with water. The water in that basin is heated by electric elements to a temperature of around 150 degrees Fahrenheit. A pump pumps the heated water into rotating spray arms which force the water out and on to your dirty dishes. Food particles and other gunk are either deposited in a filter or chopped up and disintegrated much like a garbage disposal. More sophisticated modern machines have “soil sensors” that help them determine just how dirty your dishes are and adjust their operation accordingly. After the dirty water is drained, the basin refills, reheats, and sprays rinse water over your clean dishes. Then, if you've chosen the “dry” setting on your machine, the heating element activates and dries your washed and rinsed dishes.

So, far from being “wasteful,” dishwashers are actually more efficient and thrifty than hand washing. This is especially so because of a current trend toward hand washing dishes under running water rather than the “old-fashioned” method of filling up a sink or sinks. A running tap uses about a gallon and a half of water per minute. An average sink can take between four and five gallons to fill. So you've got two sinks that you fill with eight to ten gallons of water maybe twice a day. Or you're running water out of the tap for five or ten minutes twice a day and using five to ten gallons of water each time. Most people load the dishwasher up and use it once a day, and modern dishwashers generally use less than four gallons per load.

As far as energy consumption goes, yep, a dishwasher uses electricity and hand washing doesn't. Unless you count the energy required to heat the water in your water heater. But if you only use it once a day or once every other day, it's a negligible expenditure.

And dishes get cleaner and more reliably sanitized in a dishwasher simply because of the higher temperatures involved. There's no way, rubber gloves or not, that you can hand wash dishes in 150 degree water.

All that said, there are some limits to using a dishwasher. For instance, I cringed the other day as I watched my son, a man with twenty years of professional food service experience behind him, throw a bunch of non-stick pans in the dishwasher. Not ever a really good idea. Aluminum, cast iron, copper, non-stick, none of it belongs in the harsh environment of a dishwasher. Even stainless steel, which is technically “dishwasher safe” really isn't. The heat, the humidity, and things just banging around in there in general are never good for the finish on pots and pans. And dishwashers are hell on handles, especially wooden ones. I always hand washed pots and pans in my restaurants and I hand wash 'em at home, too.

Same goes for knives. Never put a sharp knife in the dishwasher. For one thing, because of the aforementioned agitation, it won't stay sharp for long. And the same conditions that ruin the handles of pots and pans do no good whatsoever for knife handles. Always wash knives by hand.

Unless specifically marked “dishwasher safe,” plastics and acrylics should not go in the dishwasher, lest they not come out in the same shape or condition they were when they went in.

Have you got a nice, expensive insulated travel mug or cup? Wash it by hand. The high temperature in the dishwasher can damage the vessel's vacuum seal. And if you have pewter, brass, or copper drinkware, keep it out of the dishwasher, too. The dishwasher pits and discolors such metals.

Wood cutting boards, wooden spoons, things with wooden handles, etc. are all dishwasher no-nos. No quicker way to warp and crack woodware than the hot, hot water in a dishwasher.

And, with apologies to Mrs. Cochrane, don't put your fancy dishes in the dishwasher. Most modern porcelain and china is dishwasher safe, but antique dishware, especially hand-painted or gilt edged stuff, is likely to be damaged.

A lot of the potential for damage depends upon how you load the dishwasher. Too many people just throw stuff in there, shut the door and push the button. And then they fuss when something comes out broken or damaged. Or when it doesn't come out clean.

Remember, your spray arms are squirting water at a minimum of 20 psi. That's gonna make things wiggle and jiggle in those racks. And those arms spray in a set pattern. If you load carelessly, you could wind up with damaged and/or dirty dishes.

The spray arms spray out in a circular motion, so load your dishes in a manner that will face them inward toward the center of the machine. Unless, of course, you want the bottoms cleaner than the tops.

The heating element is in the bottom of the machine, so put plastics and delicate items on the top rack. Glasses go on the top rack, too, to avoid both the heat and the excessive agitation.

And place your flatware in such a way as to not allow it to “nest.” If two spoons nest together in the basket, one of them is going to come out less clean than the other one. That's why there are multiple compartments in the basket. Spread things out, preferably heads up. If you've got a lot of flatware, try alternating pieces heads up and heads down to keep them from nesting together. Better still, though, is to not overload the dishwasher.

And finally, you don't have to wash your dishes before you put them in the dishwasher. Thanks to my OCD mother, this is one I'm often guilty of. Now, you need to scrape off the big chunks of food, okay? This is a dishwasher not a disposal. But modern machines and detergents actually work better when the dishes are dirtier, especially the models with “soil sensors.”

Caveat: if you don't run your dishwasher every day – say you load it up over time and run it after two or three days – the dishes you put in there will need to be a little cleaner going in because if everything dries on the surface of the dishes for several days, it'll be harder for the machine to take it off.

So, after decades of being elbow-deep in dishwater, I'm finally being slowly dragged into the twentieth century world of using the dishwasher. (I know it's the twenty-first century. Don't rush me!) My dishwasher-loving wife is thrilled that I will now load dinner dishes into the dishwasher rather than insisting they be done by hand. I still wash cookware and bakeware by hand as well as all the stuff I mentioned that shouldn't go in the dishwasher. And I'm still just as likely to wash up the breakfast dishes by hand as opposed to loading them in the machine and letting them sit all day. But, hey, baby steps, you know? At least I'm not using my dishwasher to store Tupperware.

Is It Marinara Or Is It Tomato Sauce?

It's More Than “Toe-MAY- toe” or “Toe-MAH-toe”

Tomato season is in full swing and I've got buckets of the delicious little ovoids waiting around to be turned into sauce. But what kind of sauce am I going to make? Will it be marinara or tomato sauce? And what's the difference, anyway?

It's really pretty simple: With a bright, fresh taste, marinara is quicker and easier to make, while tomato sauce possesses a deeper, richer flavor and there is a good deal more involved in its preparation.

Let's start with the variety of tomato that makes the best sauce. You can make tomato sauces out of just about any kind of tomato, but the best “saucing” tomatoes are Romas. A variety of plum tomato, Romas have thicker fruit walls, fewer seeds, and a denser, drier, firmer texture. You can slice them up and eat them raw in a salad or on a sandwich, but they are at their very best when cooked down into a sauce.

The fad in recent years has been to call any Roma tomato a “San Marzano” tomato. You see them labeled that way in cans at the store and I even bought some “San Marzano” seedling plants at the local nursery once. And it's mostly just marketing junk. There is only one true San Marzano tomato and it is grown in the rich volcanic soil near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. Anything else is a San Marzano-style or San Marzano type. The kind you can grow in your backyard that bear the “San Marzano” name are just offshoots of the common Roma tomato that have a thinner skin and a pointier shape than the real thing. And the ones in the can used to be called “Italian-style tomatoes” until San Marzano became the marketing buzzword of choice. Oh, you can buy authentic San Marzanos in cans. Look for the “D.O.P.” seal that certifies the product has been produced in its protected designated area of origin. Anything else is a San Marzano style or type. They grow them in California and I can grow them in my garden. Are they going to taste the same as the real ones? Nope.

So, if I wanted to transform my bumper crop of Romas into tomato sauce, there a a couple of ways I could go. I could embrace my French-ness and do a sauce tomate, one of Escoffier's “mother sauces.” This one is a beast that starts with a roux and incorporates vegetables, herbs, beef or veal stock, and pork fat along with the tomatoes. And it's going to take two or three hours to make. And the result is thick, rich, and flavorful. And it's okay on spaghetti but it's lousy on pizza. Too overpoweringly “tomato-y.”

Same for tomato sauce. Traditional tomato sauce is almost like a stew in that it uses a ton of ingredients and it takes a long time to cook. And it's labor-intensive. Why do you think Italian nonne work on it for entire Sunday afternoons? You start out with a soffrito of carrots, celery, and onions – all of which you have to mince up first. You cook that up in some olive oil and then you start adding in the garlic and the oregano and the basil and the salt and pepper, and, of course, the tomatoes, which you leave whole and then crush them up by hand as you add them to the sauce. Simmer it for three hours or more until you can almost stand a spoon up in it and you've got a sauce that is thick, deeply sweet, and very rich. You can throw some pepperoncino in there to make it into an arrabiata sauce or you can add in some vodka for a – you guessed it – vodka sauce. There are lots of things you can do with a good basic tomato sauce – if you have the time and energy to make it.

My Roma bounty is going to become marinara. Four ingredients, twenty minutes or so, and it's ready to lend its bright, fresh flavor to everything from pasta dishes to pizza to a dipping sauce for mozzarella sticks. It's a flavor profile that enhances a dish with a light hint of tomato rather than overwhelming it with heavy richness.

Lots of colorful theories abound regarding the origin of marinara. All of them have something to do with the sea – mare, in Italian. Some say it was cooks aboard Neapolitan ships who came up with the sauce. Others offer that it was the wives of returning Neapolitan sailors who originally cooked it up. In any case, it's been around since shortly after Spanish explorers introduced American tomatoes to European palates in the sixteenth century. In fact, Italians were among the first to grow and consume the strange new fruit that many Europeans considered poisonous until well into the nineteenth century.

And, while we're at it, STOP MISPRONOUNCING IT!! It makes my ears bleed every time I go into a so-called “Italian” restaurant and hear people ordering “mare-uh-NARE-uh.”AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH! That horrible flat “a” sound is like nails on a blackboard to me. And to any Italian speaker. Italian is a lyrical language of fluid beauty. “Mare-uh-NARE-uh” is about as fluid as a clogged toilet. The thing is, Italians are impeccably polite when it comes to people massacring their native language. Most of them won't correct you for even the most egregious mispronunciations. Fortunately, my Italian heritage is tempered by a good dose of French, and those folks will rip you a new one in a heartbeat for linguistic crimes and misdemeanors. So listen up, morphological miscreants, the word is pronounced “mah-ree-NAH-rah.” And if you can roll the “r”s a little, so much the better. English is in the global minority when it comes to having long vowel sounds. The rest of the world – Italy included – does quite well without them, thank you, relying instead on the broad "a," pronounced like the "a" in "father" or "water." So it's “mah-ree-NAH-rah” not “mare-uh-NARE-uh.” Please!

Okay. Off the soapbox and back to the recipe book.

All you've got to do for a great marinara is to heat up a little olive oil and cook some minced garlic in it for about a minute – burned garlic is a very bad thing – before adding in crushed tomatoes and some fresh basil. Stir it up and season to taste with salt and maybe a tiny bit of crushed red pepper flake, then simmer it for fifteen or twenty minutes, stirring occasionally, and ecco! You've got a bright, sweet, fresh, delicious sauce all ready for your pizza or pasta dish. It's going to be a little thinner than traditional tomato sauce, but it's supposed to be. Who needs Ragu or Prego or whatever else comes in a jar, right?

Two ingredients to mention: sugar and butter. Some people have had their tastebuds ruined by excessive amounts of sugar. If you crave that sugary-sweet taste you get in some store-bought products, then add a pinch of sugar to your sauce, especially if you're making marinara. Tomato sauce has carrots in the base soffrito and they add a lot of natural sweetness. But tomatoes are already pretty sweet, so don't overdo it. And adding a small knob or pat of butter can smooth out the flavor and texture of a sauce and give it a nice glossy finish. Nice but not necessary.

Oh, and did I mention that uniquely Italian-American creation called “gravy?” You're right. I didn't. Because “gravy” doesn't exist in Italian culture. It's wholly a creation of Italian immigrants who wanted to better “fit in” to their new American homes. They saw that Americans poured meat-based gravy over their food, so these newly-minted Italian-Americans called their hearty tomato and tomato-based sauces “gravy” so they'd look and sound more American. Simple as that. Don't believe me? Go to Italy and ask for gravy on your pasta. They'll seat you in the crazy corner with the folks who ask for spaghetti and meatballs and fettuccine Alfredo.

Okay, as mentioned, I've got a gardenful of nice, fresh Roma tomatoes. And I'll be making sauce for the rest of the summer. But what will I do in, say, January? Same thing the other pros do; I'll go buy some canned tomatoes. Only a rabid purist or a complete idiot will tell you that canned tomatoes are inferior to fresh ones for making sauce. As a cook and occasional restaurateur, I can promise you that the tomatoes in the sauce you're eating at your favorite red-sauce place came out of a Number 10 can from a rack of Number 10 cans in the pantry and not from some farmers market or fairy tale garden out in back of the restaurant. Nope. Nothing whatsoever wrong with using canned tomatoes for marinara or tomato sauce. Just watch the quality. If you can score authentic D.O.P. San Marzanos, go for it. Otherwise, good tomatoes from brands like Cento are just fine. As with everything, you get what you pay for.

Now, go out there and grab some tomatoes – canned or fresh – and get saucy!