Sizes and sets

We make tools in sizes you can actually fit into your kitchen. A colander, for instance, should hold the whole pot of pasta without crowding it. Cook a pound of spaghetti at a time and you will want the volume of our larger bowl. Boil a single portion now and then and the smaller one leaves room in the cupboard. Look at the pot you reach for most often. That is the number to match.

Our moka pots are sized by small espresso cups, not by American mugs. The 3-cup model makes enough for one person who drinks a short, strong coffee. A 9-cup pot fills two or three demitasse cups, and it will not brew a single mug the way a drip machine does. With mixing bowls, ignore the nest and check the footprint of the widest bowl on your counter. The largest piece in a set of five needs a spot to sit while you work.

A drying mat should leave a strip of clear counter beside your sink. If your drainer already crowds the soap bottle, go down a size. And steak knives: a set of four seats a small table. Six covers a family dinner. Eight is for company, and a knife block that holds all of them takes up a permanent run of counter. Pick your real table, not a holiday one.

A moka cup is roughly two ounces of espresso. A three-cup pot makes one mug of strong coffee, a six-cup makes two, a nine-cup feeds a table. Colander quarts measure the bowl to the rim, so a five-quart colander drains a pound of pasta with room to shake it and a three-quart drains a head of broccoli. Mixing bowl sets nest inside each other and take the footprint of the largest bowl.

Drying mats come in two sizes. The smaller one sits beside a single sink, the larger takes the space between sink and wall on a standard counter. Steak knives come in sets of four, six and eight, and the per-knife price falls as the set grows.