Specialty items

[offcntr]

I have a customer who, I believe, is Chinese (her husband is certainly Russian, but that's another story), who commissions the most specialized stuff. It started with a replacement for the broken crock to an electric steamer. Since then, she's gotten... creative.

The most recent commissions were add-on crocks for an egg steamer (so she could steam eggs and rice at the same time) and a fit-in steamer for the carafe of a hot pot.

Matching the dimensions of existing forms with pottery is tricky; the clay shrinks as it dries, so getting the calculations right is crucial. Sometimes it works--the egg steamer add-on fit perfectly.

Sometimes it doesn't.

As you can see, the steamer is just millimeters too wide to slide into the carafe. I think it might have just fit, except for the bit of pink plastic at the top of the handle. So my first January project is to try again, and make it smaller.

Meanwhile, do you know what the steamer fits perfectly? My smallest Revere-ware saucepan. Slides in perfect, leaving an inch of space for the boiling water. Used it last night to steam broccoli to go with ground-turkey sliders and sweet-potato fries. It's just big enough for one head of florets.

Guess I'm keeping it.

Comments

[sara]

I've thought of asking you do do me a coffee pour over filter because the one I have now is almost but not quite right. But I suspect getting the bottom properly wedge shaped would be a real pain.

[offcntr]

Boy, I don't even think I'd know how to do that! Neither Denise nor I drink coffee. I suspect the shape, number of holes in the bottom, maybe even texture of the inner surface (to allow capillary action) would all be important?

[sara]

Yeah, after using a couple of different ones I have thoughts but I suspect it's one of those things where getting something absolutely perfect wouldn't make sense unless you were going to put it into commercial production.