In a small kitchen, you don’t need a lot of equipment to cook great food. Still, you do need some pots, pans, utensils, and dishes–obviously. In the BGSK book, you’ll find a bare bones list of necessary equipment, but I’ve long wanted to bring you a similar resource on the web.
So we’re going one by one, stocking up our virtual pantries and maybe our real ones too.
My mandoline comes in handy for two reasons: one, it slices vegetables beautifully evenly and thinly; and two, it cuts them so easily I barely need to use my knife. This comes in especially handy when I’m making salads on exhausted nights (more on my new favorite mandoline salad soon). The mandoline also completely enables my obsession with okonomiyaki, which I posted about just last week. I use Kyocera Double-Edged Slicer 
which has a ceramic blade that doesn’t get dull and a handy plastic guard that prevents you from fearing that blade.
There are adjustable mandolines
so that you can cut slices of varying thicknesses, but in three years of owning this simple one, I’ve been happy with the one size. The tool itself is really skinny, which makes for easy storage.
I love making shaved parmesan on my mandoline, and it’s fantastic for cutting lots of onions thinly when you want to caramelize them for red onion jam or onion soup.
Here’s a glimpse of what you could be making if you had a mandoline (from top to bottom):
