I was going to take the rather unexpected step of writing in praise of paper pepper packets -- I've traditionally been morally opposed to pre-ground pepper, but during a recent lunch at my desk without a grinder available, I discovered that the stuff isn't so bad, it's better than nothing, the packaging typically has a somewhat retro charm (and it's recyclable!) -- and the alliteration is cute -- but I came up with something better.
Do you know what a ramjet is? It's a high-speed jet engine that, in contrast to a normal jet engine, contains neither a compressor nor a turbine. It's therefore simpler: The geometry of the thing is sufficient to sustain the processes that make it go.
Last holiday season, my mother stuffed a little pepper grinder into my stocking. I was initially attracted by the aesthetics of it: all stainless steel and industrial-looking. I discovered that it's really no more than a piston. A plug, which you pump with your thumb, moves thru a hole at the bottom of a larger cylinder. Where the plug and cylinder rub against each other, the plug is textured like the surface of an iron file. A chamber higher up in the cylinder holds the peppercorns. They get drawn into the gap between the plug and the cylinder, are crushed et voilà. A spring returns the plug to its resting position when you release it with your thumb.
The mechanism is thus much simpler than a traditional grinder but it's elegant and it works. It wouldn't do for a lot of grinding, and those with BlackBerry thumb should stay away, but it's a nifty little gadget nonetheless. Although I haven't tested this hypothesis yet, I suspect it would be less likely to gum up with softer peppercorns (for example, green or red) than traditional grinders, a problem I've had in the past.
And it's just the right size to find a place on my desk at work. Paper pepper packets, we were like two ships passing in the night.
