 by Janet Crawshaw Issue 27 (Sept-Nov 04) [Copyright © 2004, The Valley Table] When Pamela and Kim Resch were searching for a place to build a new home, they chose a lot in the Town of New Windsor. Sure, it had town water and sewer, and two wooded acres adjoining a reservoir. But equally important, it had natural gas, de rigeur for high-level cooking. And though they had lived through kitchen renovations before, this would be the first time the couple could design a kitchen from scratch. "We kept a list over a couple of years," Pamela, chef/owner of Pamela's Traveling Feast in Newburgh, remembers. "I cut pictures out of magazines. When I would work at the shop I would try to really pay attention to what I like about the shop that I didn't have at home--like the high BTUs on the stove and a convection oven. We drew pictures--diagram after diagram after diagram." Kim, a real estate appraiser, sees hundreds of kitchens each year and also had a pretty good idea of what he liked and didn't like. Together, the couple decided they wanted a kitchen that was as functional as Pam's commercial kitchen at work, but looked homey. They wanted a kitchen that would accommodate all the stuff of a family with two teenagers and two near-teens, and still look tidy. A design to suit their family emerged with the aid of computerized drawings and months of meetings with Rowley Kitchens. It would be a large, U-shaped kitchen, open to a family/living room, with a large island at the center. The island provides seating for quick meals, a small rinsing sink, storage (pullout cabinets hold recyclables, garbage and dog food), and a butcher block prep area with a two-drawer refrigerator unit strategically placed below. "We wanted it to be really functional," Pamela emphasizes. "We have this big family--four kids--and we entertain all the time. Kim's family is large and my family is large. We do a lot of the holidays here. I tried to bring in softer touches to make it homey so everyone can be in here at once and it can be total chaos but still pretty tidy." Plus, she adds, "We wanted something that, if down the road we decided to sell, wouldn't be faddy. We went with a classic traditional design." The countertops are granite, chosen for its sleek look and practicality (hot pots and pans right out of the oven won't damage it). Pamela and Kim went to the granite factory in New Jersey to pick out the actual pieces used. "The butcher block I love," Pamela says. "They wanted to charge us extra to 'distress' it--they bang on it with chains and charge $800 extra to make it look like you've used it. We said, are you crazy? We can do that all by ourselves." The kitchen plan called for plenty of cabinets to help keep things out of sight; most are equipped with pull-out drawers for easy access. The top shelves of the tallest cabinets are bare for now ("A lot of the top shelves I can't reach," Pamela admits.) Pots are stored in a large corner cabinet with an over-sized lazy Susan unit. A kid-height open cabinet houses a small microwave ("for popcorn and re-heating"), with two warming drawers below. "The kids are all in sports, so the schedules are always different," Kim says. "You can make a meal, make four or five plates, put them in there, and they take them out as they come home. We use it all the time." As a professional caterer, Pamela of course is used to working with high-performance equipment. With that in mind, all the appliances at home are "professional grade" made for residential use. "When I started out I was adamant--I didn't want SubZero, I didn't want a Viking," Pamela says. "I wanted my Traulsen from work, a two-door Traulsen. I wanted the clear door--that was a huge fight between us." (Kim voted against the clear doors, claiming it would always look a mess. "He won that one," Pamela adds.) They settled on a stainless steel, side-by-side Viking. The 60-inch, 6-burner Viking range is the largest domestic unit Viking makes. (The black finish helps tone down the commercial aura of the monster stove.) The equally imposing Viking hood is powered by a big, high-performance fan wisely placed outside the house. The powerful fan is almost inaudible inside, though "Our neighbors always know what we're cooking," Kim kids. Special care was taken to finish the vent with stove-pipe black paint so it resembles an old-fashioned chimney. "We were going to put a salamander (top broiler) in but I didn't want it to look like a commercial kitchen. I was so trying to stay away from having it look like work, even though I wanted the function of my work kitchen," Pamela says. A desk/workstation flanks the transition from kitchen to living room. A computer there is used to keep Pamela's recipes, a cabinet wall is for sorting bills and posting notes ("What's new in the Resch Family"), while an overhead wine rack is used for sorting everyone’s mail. A built-in wine cooler below stores the whites; the reds are in a rack in the dining room. Centered between the kitchen and living room is a hand-built dining table (made in the Adirondacks from reclaimed barn board), where most dinners are eaten--usually in shifts during the week, but always together on Sundays. The door to the formal dining room is just off the side of the kitchen. Central island, refrigerated and warming drawers, Viking and SubZero appliances, whisper quiet Miele dishwasher, built-in butcher block prep area, granite countertops, computerized recipe files, and enough room to dance to Santana while cooking. Is this the perfect kitchen or what? "I do miss the pot rack I used to have," Pamela sighs, "but I didn't want to take away from the look of this." | 
