Blenders and Purées

Armed with a powerful blender, you can make a lot of the components that separate fine-dining restaurants from Schmapplebee’s or SchmeeGIFriday’s. A good blender basically gives you the option of making anything into a sauce, soup, or spread. Though they cost about $400, they’re totally worth it; I put one on our wedding registry. (But then those goobers at Bar Tartine ruined it. The motor on theirs had burned out because someone overloaded it with pistachios and hubris. We left our blender with them in the earliest days of MSF as collateral for using their kitchen. And within a week, some punk blended the plunger. Karen is still pretty peeved about it. Who do you think is writing this parenthetical section?)