The New York Times
Wed., December 16, 1998
Test Kitchen

Test Kitchen
Amanda Hesser

A Gift for the Cook, Or the Carpenter

It started out merely as a carpenter's tool, a rasp, an efficient device meant to file wood. Who could have guessed that it was an epiphany away from greatness in another arena: the kitchen.

The big moment came in 1994, when Lorraine Lee, a homemaker in Ottawa, Canada, was making an Armenian orange cake. Out of frustration with her old grater, she picked up a new rasp her husband, Leonard, had brought home from their hardware store, Lee Valley Tools. She slid the orange across its blades and was amazed--lacy shards of zest fell from its surface like snowflakes. The Lees marveled at the rasp, ate the cake, then promptly changed the product description in their catalogue.

Sales soared from a dozen or two rasps a month to about 10,000 a year, and a serious buzz began in the cooking world. Suzen O'Rourke, the owner of Cooking by the Book, a culinary school in Manhattan, discovered the rasp about three years ago.

"I went wild," Ms. O'Rourke said. So wild that she tracked down the maker--Grace Manufacturing in Russellville, Ark.--and got an exclusive agreement to sell the rasp as a kitchen tool in the United States. Three models--the zester, a cheese grater and a spice grater--are the only kitchen products she sells, and they've turned out to be popular stocking stuffers.

"You know," she said, drawing her voice low, "Martha Stewart is giving them away as her personal gift this Christmas." She has ordered several hundred, Ms. O'Rourke said. The box grater has long been the square wheel of the kitchen. Cooks have grated their fingers, crumbled blocks of cheese and rubbed perfectly good oranges raw on its surface. And yet, as if suppressed by kitchenware manufacturers, they continue to use the rusty, dull graters.

But the rasp--commercially dubbed the Microplane--scrapes zest off citrus fruit and grates cheese with just a gentle sweep down its surface.

The difference is in how it is made. Most zesters simply have holes punched into a flat or curved piece of stainless steel or tin. The Microplane's edges are formed by a process called photo-etching: the holes are dissolved with ferric chloride, so they are like hundreds of tiny razors. Grace Manufacturing, which also makes medical devices, adapted the technique from one they were using on computer parts.

Grace has recently developed new models with larger grating areas and ergonomic handles, but they are not yet for sale. "I must admit," Mr. Lee of Lee Valley Tools said, "we still stay with the original--partly because the new model just came out, and partly because you don't tinker with something that works really well."

Microplanes may be ordered from Lee Valley Tools, Ottawa, Canada, (800) 871-8158. The zester (No.27w02.07) is $8.95; the cheese grater (27w04.10) is $10.75, and the spice grater (27w04.03) is $8.75. Shipping and handling not included. At Cooking by the Book, 11 Worth Street (West Broadway), (212) 966-9799, the zester is $13.50, the cheese grater is $16.50 and the spice grater is $13.50.


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