I Love My Frying Pan!

It’s a star in my kitchen

I love my frying pan!

It’s nothing special: a well-balanced, good-heat-holding Farberware.

I have no clue what I paid for it a decade or so ago, but I know I’ve sure gotten a lot of use from it since. Doing everything from frying sunnyside up to two versions of scrambled eggs — I used to mix the egg in a bowl with milk or cream, but my wife, at best a ‘don’t wanna be’ cook, showed me how she scrambled a simple egg (or two) on some olive oil in the pan. I like her style — but with butter as the fat, and cooked a bit beyond the ‘moist’ style she prefers.

I’ve long used this pan for high-heat cooking steaks and medium-heat preparing garlic to become part of a grand food festival featuring fresh tomatoes, basil and oregano, all to eventually be married with al dente spaghetti (or ziti, or rigatoni) for a hard-to-beat ready-in-20 minutes meal.

I love using it for fried green (or recently green) tomatoes, too. They may not be as good as those at the Whistle Stop Café, but they go down a treat in this household. (I use, depending on my mood, heavy cream or an well-beaten egg, as dip one, and fine-ground Virginia cornmeal as dip two.)

I’ve also been known to sauté greens in it, and, famously to my wife, to do clever things with shrimp in it. (This past week, twice, I sautéd them in butter with a heavy volume of jar-sourced minced garlic. The first time was my idea. The second, her request.) (She’s loved other ways I’ve pan-pared shrimp, too.)

An unpaid Commercial

(Those shrimp were mere days out of the water, thanks to Marsh Roots Seafood, originated last year by a clever North Carolinian who saw and seized an opportunity to offer, weekly, fresh seafood to customers in Central Virginia. Thanks, Oliver!)

Unfortunately, the pan is acquiring some nicks as it comes in contact with other kitchen items in the drying rack. I try to be careful… but you know how that goes.

Still, I am confident it’s got a few more good years in it — longing, in its panly way, for more novel food/spice combos as I experimentally expand my cooking repertoire.