I ran across this on the Epicurious Blog written by Tanya Steelon 06/15/09  It was good enough to borrow and republish.  We could all learn from this recipe which was targeted at graduating chefs.

Recipe for Success
This recipe is adaptable by any qualified graduating student from the Culinary Institute of America.

Serves Millions

Ingredients:

• 1 cup thorough understanding of culinary techniques and theories
• 1 cup real experience in the kitchen practicing and doing
• 1 cup showing up every day to work, no matter how late you stayed out last night
• 1 cup humility and understanding as there is no job too small for you to do
• 1 cup being as fit physically and mentally as you can be
• 1 cup taking chances and swinging for the fences
• 1 cup good humor and not taking yourself too seriously
• 1 cup demanding not only more of each other, but of yourself

Preparation: In a large stainless mixing bowl add ingredients together with malice toward none, with charity for all. Let marinate for your entire life.

Serve with a Finger Lakes Riesling.

Many of your own existing recipes can be prepared in your Romertopf / Schlemmertopf clay bakers, with perhaps an adaption or two.

Fat free and vegetarian dishes also work very well in a clay baker. Most roasted vegetable dishes are fat free and or very low in fat and are great choices for a zesty and healthy meal. Here is a vegetable recipe idea which your family is sure to become attached to:

Autumn Vegetable Tian

• 5 medium fresh tomatoes, cored, sliced about ¼ inch thick
• 2 large sweet peppers, can be green, red, yellow or any combination
  Cut the peppers in half and remove core, stem, ribs, and seeds.
  Now cut these into julienne strips.
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper (or less if you prefer)
• 4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• ¼ cup fresh basil leaves, chopped
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 large eggplant or 3-4 small ones, sliced about ¼ inch thick
• 3-4 small zucchini or summer squash, sliced about ¼ inch thick
• 3 medium onions, peeled, sliced about ¼ inch thick

Use a baker which is approximately the size of a 9 x 13 pan and begin by soaking your clay baker (Romertopf lid and bottom / Schlemmertopf - top only) in water for 10 to 15 minutes.

Lay one layer of sliced onions to cover the bottom of the pan. On top of the onions, lay out the julienned peppers, sprinkle the sliced garlic and the red pepper.

Now begin layering the remaining vegetables: Down the long side of the pan, place one row of sliced tomatoes, taking care to overlap each slice by about two-thirds which each successive slice.

Next to the row of tomatoes, place a layer of eggplant, again overlapping the slices by about two-thirds, and also overlapping the tomato slices in the same way. Repeat this overlapping row arrangement, row by colorful row, using up the zucchini and /or summer squash.

Sprinkle chopped basil on top and drizzle with a little extra virgin olive oil.

Cover the tian and bake at 450 degrees for about 45 minutes. The time will vary, and may take longer depending upon the amount and thickness of the vegetable slices. Your vegetable tian will be bursting with flavor and will be an exotic presentation of colors at the table.

Use your creativity to experiment with mushrooms or other vegetables to develop your own personal favorite medley. You will be certain that this is a dish your family and friends will yearn for!

ROASTED PORK LOIN

• 1 Pork loin roast, about two pounds
• 2-3 cloves garlic, mashed
• 3 Tablespoons brown or Dijon style mustard
• salt
• coarsely ground black pepper

Soak the clay baker as described above.

Mix the mustard and mashed garlic in a small bowl, until thoroughly blended. Cover all sides of the roast with this mixture, using a brush or your hands. Cover the roast with coarsely grated black pepper and salt, to your taste.

place the roast in the baker Cover the roast with the top and bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes. Check the internal temperature with a meat thermometer. It should be 150 t 60 degrees depending on how well done you like your roast. Remove the roast and let it stand 10 to 15 minutes before slicing.

This roast is excellent with buttered mashed potatoes and a vegetable of your choice. If you do onot want to prepare the separately, you can place the potatoes and carrots in the roast pan with the pork. If you put the roast on top of the vegetables, the juices will run into them adding flavor and nutrients. Be sure to add a little extra cooking time for the addition of the vegetables.

Using these recipes as a guide, you should be able to adapt most any of your recipe for clay bakers.

Note that moisture and nutrients are trapped and continuously circulated around the ingredients. This allows you to use less oil or fat and less additional stock or other fluids. Cooking times and temperatures for the clay baker use will be 10 to 15% longer and hotter than your regular recipe. This is to allow the bakers to start in a cold oven.

The enclosed cooking provide by the clay bakers yields healthier and tasier meals. Your family and friends will rave over your preparations.

If you are in the market for clay baker cookware, look no further than Your Smart Kitchen. Here you will find a large selection of clay bakers made by Romertopf / Schlemmertopf, which are made with the traditional Germany process where clay baker cooking has been used for centuries. And if you wondering what a “schlemmer” is, it comes, quite appropriately, from the German word for “feast!” So now you are ready to dig in and start cooking.

• First, consider how your will use your clay baker. Are you looking for versatility? Do you want to purchase a clay baker which can be used for many different meals and purposes? If this is the case, you may want to consider the Romertopf Clay Baker 6-8 pound capacity. This vessel is roughly the size of a traditional 9 x 13 pan, so it will accommodate many of your casserole and dessert recipes. It can also contain a roast or cut-up chicken with accompanying vegetables. Smaller pots are available, designed to prepare meals for two to four people. If your requirements are for a larger crowd, or a larger meal, consider the various sizes available, all the way up to a turkey roaster!

• Second; are you primarily a bread or pastry baker? You may want to take a closer look at the various sizes and shapes of Romertopf bread bakers available. They produce beautifully browned loaves on the outside, soft and delicious inside. Many experienced bread bakers will note that the crust is the most important aspect of a good loaf of bread. The unique moisture-infusing properties of the clay baker create the perfectly crispy crust, just begging for melted butter or jam. Homemade bread beckons us back to the palate-fresh memories of our childhood, and you can recreate them with your clay baker and your favorite bread recipe.

• Third; are you an imaginative cook, interested in cooking your favorite foods in a new and healthful way? Then be sure to check out some of the unique clay baker cookware at Your Smart Kitchen. Of special note are the fish baker and the chicken bakers. The fish baker is longer than the traditional Romertopf baker so that an entire fish or fillet can be laid in it lengthwise. It is designed to retain the moisture and the delicate flavor of the fish. The chicken bakers are designed to cook the chicken in a vertical position, so it cooks evenly and crispy. There is space at the bottom of the baker to place vegetables, which are flavored by the delicious juices that flow from the chicken. Also, be sure to browse through other special items such as the garlic baker, corn baker or the apple and banana baker .

These clay bakers will expand your cooking repertoire with tempting dishes that will draw your family and guests to the table. You can conveniently prepare tantalizing one-dish meals which are nutritious, flavorful, and will permeate your kitchen with the wonderful aromas of home cooking. This gives the term “convenience food” a whole new meaning! Comfort food is only about an hour from the table when you begin using clay baker cookware to prepare your meals.

What are the most precious metals that nearly every one imagines? I know you will most likely say that gold and platinum are the metals that have the most real value. However there is one other that, if I am not mistaken, that is possibly more important as it is more likely that we would use it every day. You probably would agree that copper is the one valuable metal that we encounter or use in our daily lives.

Copper! The other precious metal! A boon from ancient ages is now being used extensively in our homes.

The most visible use of course is cookware and some of best kitchenware products come to us from European producers as they are extensively used in European cuisines. Mauviel is the top supplier of copper cookware for Your Smart Kitchen providing products that are high quality and long lasting.

This metal has high conductivity compared to most other metals. That's the reason some of the best chefs in the world rely on copper cookware. Heat control is essential for delicate sauces, intricate sugar deserts and other specialties. Copper heats up quickly, cools off just as fast and provides constant temperatures for cooking at lower heat. Features that good chefs demand.

If you don't have this cookware in your home kitchen then you should consider it now. But finding the right place to buy copper cookware is also important. There are many suppliers who put mediocre, thinner gage products in the market hoping their good looks will be sufficient. Mauviel cookware is the best choice for quality copper cookware as they only make solid 2.0 mm and 2.5 mm gage products. If you are considering copper for home projects, now is a good time as prices are as low as they have been for some time.

Mauviel cookware provides a huge and wide variety of cookware for your kitchen. We provide you sauce pot, splayed sauté pan, frying pan, sauce pan, vegetable pan, round pan, crepe pan, oval pan, sauce pot with lid, roundeaux pot with lid, oval stew pot with lid, dome lid, bowl, sauce pan with lid along with utensils and accessories at an very reasonable price. These discount copper pieces are basically made for you and it will fit your budget for specialty cookware.

Your Smart Kitchen is the right destination where you can get a wide variety of quality Mauviel professional cookware with the latest features including stainless steel linings, bronze and brass handles for the pots and cast iron handles for frying pans and others. Peek into the kitchen of most famous five star hotels and restaurant and you will be astounded to find that all of them use copper for cooking special dishes and desserts. Perhaps that's why their sauces and special treats are so tasty.

Cleaning and maintaining this cookware is also easy needing only a quick wash with warm soapy water. More difficult stuff only requires an overnight soaking. After cleaning and washing, just keep in a clean and dry atmosphere or show it off by displaying it in kitchen and dining room. Copper cookware looks stylish due to its exceptional shine.

Your Smart Kitchen The online location for quality cookware, bakeware, cutlery, appliances and related kitchenware. Quality products at reasonable prices with customer satisfaction guaranteed.
Specializing in Paderno, Mauviel, Chasseur, Romertopf, Kaiser, DeLonghi

Terry Retter

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It is usually said that old is gold. This applies very aptly when we talk about cast iron cookware. However, new is every bit as good and for the modern kitchen may even be better.

My grandmother used to have some of key pieces on cookware in her kitchen that she was quite proud of – a good sized Dutch oven and a couple of . There may have been more but these are the ones I remember. There used to be a big stock pot as well that was always simmering on the stove but this got swapped out for a cast aluminum stock pot one summer.

The others I remember because we would frequently come to visit and within minutes, there was either a roast braising in the Dutch oven or chickens being prepared for frying with one of the skillets.

I did not think about it much then but the reason I remember those pots was because the food that came from them was so good. Come to find out now that it was probably good for me as well.

Those pots were around for years. And after my grandmother left us, those pots were in my mom’s kitchen as well. Somehow they did not leave the some impression there. Humm . . .

Also, those pots did not make it to my kitchen. But we do have a cast iron Dutch oven that we use often for chili, soups, and stews.

However, there has been a change in cast iron cookware. The traditional cast iron was flexible enough to go from kitchen to camp fire but I don’t do much camping any more. So the addition of enameled cast iron cookware is a beneficial change:

• No seasoning or reconditioning required
• Wide array of colors to choose from in addition to black
• Easier cleaning as the enameled surface is ultra smooth

But at the same time, the features of cast iron are still present:

• Even heat distribution when the pot has reached temperature
• Great heat retention
• Great for braising and browning meat
• Great for stews, chili, soups and other deep dish recipes

So the enameled cast iron cookware provides that features of the old reliable and traditional cookware while at the same time evolving into the modern kitchen with a wide range of sizes, different color choices, ease of use and flexibility. Something every chef and cook wants in their kitchen.

At Your Smart Kitchen, we provide Chasseur enameled cookware from Paderno. Quality French cookware that is the equal of any products produced and available at reasonable prices in the US.

Quality, versatility and reasonable prices – what more could a chef request other than the souse chef to cut and prepare all of the ingredients?

My wife started using fresh herbs in cooking decades ago and I joined in many years ago as well. Being in California, cooking with out them was unheard of. We started being cautious and moved on to a wider and wider selection over the years. The easy ones are the also the more common herbs - parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (from a song of the same name) and maybe a bit of oregano.

At first,it was simple to rub down a whole chicken with some olive oil, stuff some fresh rosemary inside and put it on the grill. It would only take an hour or so to cook and it always came out pretty good, tasty and perfectly cooked, yummy and so good for you.

The smell of the roasting chicken mixed with the herbs would fill the yard (and the house if not careful) and would draw the entire neighborhood with the delicious aromas. The scent was so compelling that anyone walking by would sniff the air and smile or just walk into our back yard.

With those first early successes with grilled chicken and the praise received from friends we started looking for more ways to introduce a wider array of herbs savory goodness into the cooking.

We started looking for fresh herbs most every where we went but were frequently disappointed. The herb section at the local markets mostly had at that time a modest selection of mostly wilted, brown “somethings”, nothing had the fresh smell or color I was looking for and the other alternative was bottled and who knew how long those had been around.

Of course in California we could find much better selections at the farmers markets. The herbs were green and fresh but the offerings were slim. Only the most hardy and most popular were readily available.

We needed more. We sowered local book stores for cook books, herb directories and even magazines looking for items about using fresh herbs. There was a copy of Mother Earth News (found it next to the Whole Earth Catalog), a periodical dedicated to all things “hippy”, being a Californian of the '60s it resonated with me. We also found the Sunset, Western Garden Book which documents most every herb known.

Inside these sources were ideas and suggestions about growing and using fresh herbs. It described how I could take a small sunny spot in my tiny yard and turn it into a flourishing herb garden or using pots grow a wide selection of herbs in really small spaces. It was simple and easy. Following the directions, we soon had an abundance of fresh herbs growing in our yard. and could snip way to our hearts content adding herbs to dishes which adds flavor interest.

My wife and I often experimented with different varieties and amounts. I found that the taste and aroma of a dish is changed with each addition or subtraction.

Today we still have a herb garden although we are not in California any longer. The weather in Northern Nevada does not yield the lush and sometimes overgrown herbs we were used to. But while hardy versions can stay in the ground in the snow, many require restarting in pots each Spring. This does allow us to widen the variety even further as now herbs are much more popular at the garden stores.

I still snip to my heart’s content usually at my wife's direction and we still freely experiment. I suggest you do the same. Venture out of your box of commonly used herbs and try something new or even better grow your own as there is nothing that can truly substitute for freshly grown herbs used right from the plant.

If you have only recently heard of waterless cooking it is time to learn more about it and why many people are choosing waterless cooking over the more conventional methods we have been using for some time.

1. High Grade Stainless Steel

Aluminum cookware is now mostly relegated to restaurant kitchens where the cookware is roughly handled and has a short life.  For home cooking, more and more studies are showing how aluminum may react to certain foods and cause chemical damage.  Aluminum is still one of the best heat conductor however so we are seeing aluminum being clad by stainless steel which provides the inert features of stainless combined with the heat distribution of aluminum (or sometimes copper).  Waterless cookware is made of high grade, surgical stainless steel which is the best of the best in the way of cookware materials.  Stainless is totally inert so there will be no transfer of metal taste to your foods.

2. High Heat Capacity

With the absence of water or oils to help cook your foods of choice the cookware itself must be a good heat conductor itself to help speed up the cooking process without these traditional agents. High quality waterless cookware is often composed of several layers in order to create the heat retention needed to cook without water. The middle layers of waterless cookware pot or pan are aluminum or copper. These are natural conductors that distribute heat evenly and quickly.

3. Flat Bottoms

The bottoms of waterless cookware pans are machined flat so there is more cooking space to work on.  The even heat distribution also minimizes the chance of burning what you are cooking. This type of bottom is far more efficient with gas stoves and will work well on induction surfaces.

4. Evenly Distributed Heat

The multi-level and layer construction of the waterless products today helps to evenly distribute the heat. This helps cook your food evenly and prevents hot spots very good for sauting.  This also spreads the heat up the sides which is good for sauces.   so your food does not get burned.

5. Specially Designed Lids

One secret to waterless cookware is the air tight lids. They have a firm seal on the pot to retain the steam and heat that is often lost during the cooking process. These lids lock in the natural moisture and allow you to cook your food within their own natural juices providing a more potent flavor.

6. Steam Valve Options

The majority of the top brands of waterless cookware products have steam valves on the lids of their pots and pans to help you know when to turn the heat down or turn off the heat completely.

Learn more about waterless cookware and order your waterless cookware sets soon to be displayed at Your Smart Kitchen.  Products from Fissler are noted leaders in waterless cookware and will be featured on the site soon.

This is the way to cook smoked ribs similar to the competition BBQ circuit but in your own back yard.

Prepping your grill

Just about everybody has a Weber kettle or similar charcoal grill in their back yard. You can cook some pretty good ribs on these.  The method for the very popular gas grills is a bit different but similar principals will apply.

Here’s how to set it up so that you are “offset smoking” and not grilling.  Start by making two piles of charcoal briquettes on opposite sides of the grill (well away from the center). Make sure your vents on the bottom of the grill are open and clear. Squirt the lighter fluid on the briquettes and light them.

Start soaking wood chips with the flavor you want at least an hour before you start. Be sure the charcoal is white throughout the two piles before starting the smoking.  This assures that all the lighter fluid has burnt up and will not give your meat that lighter fluid taste. If you are one of the people that dislikes using lighter fluid then the option of  using a charcoal chimney to get things started is OK too.   Just dump your “white” charcoal from the chimney on opposite sides of the grill when they are ready or use two smaller chimneys on either side so they can just be removed. Place as large a disposable aluminum pan that can fit between your charcoal piles and fill it with about an inch of warm water or beer.

Prepping your ribs

You can use spareribs or loin back ribs. For the big spareribs, cut the brisket end off the ribs at the joint. Then trim the skirt meat off. Don’t throw this away - you can cook it separately. You also want to pull the membrane off the back side of the ribs.  Spareribs trimmed in this way are called St Louis Cut ribs. Use your favorite dry rub on both sides of your smoked ribs at least four hours ahead or possibly overnight. The other option is to leave the meat mostly unseasoned and adding a little BBQ sauce when they are served.  Loin back or baby back ribs are a bit easier to prepare.  Again take off the membrane and prepare similarly to the the spareribs.

Start smoking

When you are ready to start smoking, place the grate on the grill and if possible leave holes over your charcoal piles so that you can add charcoal as needed to maintain a constant heat. Some newer models have hinged grates for this purpose.

Now, place the meat in the center of the grate - not over the the charcoal piles. If you can, use a rib rack on top of the grate. Weber makes a good rib rack and you can get one at most any store that sells Weber grills. Throw some of your soaked chips directly on the charcoal and close the lid (use more or less depending on their strength of flavor}. If done right, the smoke flavor should not be overpowering, but you should still taste that delicious smoke flavor on your barbeque ribs.

Open the vents on the lid all the way and insert an thermometer through one of the vent holes. This is important!  It’s important to measure the air temperature as close to the meat as possible. Smoke your ribs at 230 - 240 deg F.

If the grill temperature is too high (around 300 to 325 degrees) for the first 30 minutes, don’t worry about it too much. If it gets any hotter then crack the lid a little to let some heat escape. When the temperature gets too low (below 250 degrees), just open the lid and toss in a few new briquettes and/or soaked wood chips. Try to stay “ahead of the game” as far as heat is concerned because it’s easier to cool down a hot smoker than it is to get it back up to temperature if your fire gets too cool.  (Hint:  if the fire starts to cool off too much after adding new briquettes, use a hair blower through the vents to get air flowing faster.)

Cook the ribs for 3 hours. Don’t open the lid unless absolutely necessary - remember, “if you’re looking, you ain’t cooking”. While you are adding charcoal, you can also spray the ribs with apple juice or possibly beer to keep them moist. After 3 hours, take your ribs off and wrap tightly in foil and return to the grill for one more hour.

Ready for glazing

After the hour in the foil, take the bbq ribs out of the foil and place back on the grill. You’ll know the are getting done when the meat is pulling away from the bone - this is a sure sign that the ribs are getting done. Maybe gently tug on one of the bones to see if it is “loose”. Also, if you pick up one end of a slab with a pair of tongs and your slab bends down 90°, then that is another sign that the smoked ribs are getting done.

After removing from the foil, apply your favorite BBQ sauce that complements the flavor of the chips and glaze the ribs for another hour.  Apply glaze to both sides and flip after 15 minutes.  Reapply glaze after each 15 minutes. After one hour of glazing, move the ribs to a serving platter, cover with foil and let them rest for 15 to 20 minutes.  Then slice between each bone  and serve. You are now ready to sink your teeth into some of the best barbecue ribs you have ever tasted! Mouth watering, tender, and falling off the bone good!

Want something cool and delicious to serve the family, or when you have guests over? How about ice cream?

If you have a favorite ice cream dish, but don’t know how to make it, you can usually find online recipes along with an Ice Cream Maker.

The most popular internet searched ice cream flavors are:

• strawberry ice cream
• chocolate ice cream
• vanilla ice cream
• coconut ice cream
• coffee ice cream
• green tea ice cream
• peach ice cream
• pumpkin ice cream
• butter pecan ice cream

Many recipe sites and blogs have a wide ranging database of ice cream recipes. There is a blog that only caters to Japanese ice cream.  I am sure you can find sites that cater to most any specialty you can think of, as well as, many sites that cater to different styles of ice cream such as hard or soft serve ice cream or even sorbet.

Gathering Ice Cream Recipes

No matter what you look for, it should be pretty easy to gather a wide range of ice cream alternatives.

One place to start is with family. The older generation of aunts, uncles and grandparents may have made their own ice cream when they were younger. I know my father’s family did. They would have sort of an ice cream social on Sundays and invite some neighbors and friends.

Usually when you find a relative who lover ice cream, you will find that they carry many recipes around in memory or may have them tucked away in an old box.

Cooking shows on television are pretty good too. Nothing beats seeing a recipe being made step by step. You may garner an extra tip or two along with some do’s and dont’s that will help you avoid a mistake.  However, it really is hard to make a mistake making ice cream.  Besides you get to eat your mistakes so just jump in there and do it.

Lets say you are trying to find out how to make coconut ice cream.  As you pull out your ice cream maker, notice the instructions that come with it.  Often times a few basic recipes will be provided.  Check to see what recipes you have in your desert cook books as well. F or coconut ice cream, the only adjustment should be adding the coconut and some flavoring.

No recipe with your ice cream machine? Thousands of recipes that can easily be pulled up at cooking forums or blog sites.  Perhaps you want to make low fat ice cream or ice cream for a diabetic. Easy, all you do is make adjustments to the ingredients.

Once you know how to make ice cream, you then have dozens of things you can make such as an:

• ice cream cake
• ice cream cones
• ice cream sandwich
• ice cream sunday

So if you love ice cream, go for it. All you need is an ice cream machine and an ice cream recipe.

Since I started developing my online store for cookware and bakeware, I decided it might be time to start replacing some of our cookware. It might be a good idea to use some of the products we promote.

Since I have stainless steel, non-stick, cast iron and even a classic copper soup pot in my kitchen now, there should be plenty of room for some comparison among the array of products that are available to restock the kitchen.

Aluminum is a popular choice for a lot of cookware. Unfortunately it has gotten a bad rap because it is used for many less expensive products which do not always perform well. Aluminum does have good characteristic including good heat distribution and lighter weight but many products can have “’hot spots” or can warp with high temperature applications.

Carbon steel cookware is another less expensive alternative. However, the black or dull silver finish eliminates it from most home kitchen selections. You will find both aluminum and carbon steel products in restaurant kitchens due to their lower cost, durability, versatility and performance.

But for most home kitchens and for many professional chefs, stainless steel is the foundation and starting point for most cookware selections. Choices then center on the cladding material used – aluminum or copper and the number of cladding layers – 3, 5 or 7. Finish and style make up the remainder of variations to be considered.

Some of the most popular brands in the US are comprised of aluminum sandwiched between layers of stainless steel while other noted brands use copper. Choices of having the clad only as a plate on the bottom of the pan or having the heat conduction material wrapped up the sides to the edge of the pan are less obvious to many consumers but have a big impact o the performance of sauce pots and saute pans. Having the heat distributed up the sides of the pan is important for sauté pan used for reducing sauces and sautéing. The bottom plate design is good for the larger sauce and soup pots however.

Copper cookware is used for some special uses such as delicate sauces, candies and other applications where heat control is really important but we chose not to consider this for everyday use. But our soup pot and a Mauviel spayed copper sauté pan can be quite handy more frequently than expected.
So we decided to limit our comparison to stainless steel cookware alternatives.

The first step in the comparison adventure was to see what the stores had to say. As expected this was mostly a waste of time. Many of the sales associates in the stores were of little help. First, most are not trained in the uses of the cookware and have little knowledge of the different properties. Second, they were more interested in selling the items where they got the best commissions

So the next step was to do some research at home to try and narrow down the options. There are a multitude of sites and resources to help on this quest. In fact, there are too many. Getting the good sources of information without getting overwhelmed can be a problem. Here are some choices:

Consumers Reports
Epinions
Fantes
Cookware.Org

Some of the things to consider in the evaluation include: what do you want to do, how easy is it to clean and care for, does it look good, and life of the product. One of my observations was that a number of evaluators tended to consider only a limited number of brands or manufacturers which skews the results. There are a number of products from France and Italy that are not that well known in the US but are of very high quality and are frequently less expensive than the popular US brands.

This evaluation took a lot more effort that I thought it would when I started. So I have a better appreciation of what people have to go through before they select my products. It also became evident that there is no one right answer. Each cook has different preferences and should select the products thhy like.
Our choice is to add one or two stainless steel items from Paderno and Fissler (including one of their pressure cookers); a non-stick skillet from Swiss Diamond (how do beat coatings of diamonds); and a clay baker (a new experience for us). Then we will start looking at the new versatile kitchen appliances such as a deep fryer, rice cooker, or Panini grill.

I hope your search and selection is as much fun as ours was.