I like to use hand tools in the kitchen. I like to beat egg whites by hand and cream cakes with a wooden spoon and grind flax seed with a mortar and pestle. When you work ingredients with your hands, you get to know them better – how they feel, smell and sound, how warm or cold they are. You also get a small sense of what cooking felt like through most of human history. It wasn’t about pressing a button on a processor or a blender, or flicking a lever on a mixer; it required human energy, stamina and muscle. Which brings me to the food mill, or as my mother calls it, a “mouli” (from the French company that made them, now called Moulinex).

I grew up using a very basic food mill from the hardware store to make applesauce. Let’s pause for a digression, since it is applesauce-making season: Cut the apples in quarters and put them – peels, cores, seeds and all – in a pot with a bit of apple cider and a cinnamon stick or two. Cover and simmer until the apples are soft, stirring once or twice so the apples at the bottom don’t burn. Pass the softened apple mixture through a food mill, which will strain out everything but the fruit and turn the latter into sauce. Flavor to taste with lemon juice and brown sugar. (If you like chunky applesauce, this is not the right method for you.)

Once I was grown up, I treated myself to a slighter fancier but still hand-operated model. My current food mill (which I expect to be my forever food mill, in today’s parlance) has several interchangeable discs that allow me to make what I am pureeing finer or chunkier, and even for someone as mechanically inept as I am, switching the discs is painless. To use it, you turn the mill with a comfortable crank; its three feet keep it securely fastened to your bowl, and they fold up for neat storage.

I still use my food mill to make applesauce. I also use it to make especially satiny soups (try it with cauliflower soup), tomato sauce, pumpkin puree and fruit curd. I’m told it’s quite handy for making baby food, which was apparently its original purpose in France. The texture of items that pass through my food mill is elegant – far nicer than when I use my immersion blender or food processor (maybe I ought to unload those appliances and live the minimalist life I dream about). And it’s much easier to wash, too.

If kitchen tools have a season, the food mill has a good claim to autumn in New England.


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