As promised, I will be writing up a few posts about some of the tools I find particularly useful in the kitchen. For this post, I’d like to talk about the various implements I rely on for grating and shredding. The two main tools I use for such a task are my microplane grater and my large box grater.
How many of you remember The Galloping Gourmet? Graham Kerr was the star of The Galloping Gourmet, a food TV series that ran from 1969 to 1971. Mr. Kerr is often remembered for his on-screen wine-swilling, and his cooking featured such wonderful ingredients as butter and cream.
The whole pineapples in the grocery store may look a little daunting, but they’re actually quite easy to cut up, and the taste of fresh pineapple is far superior to what you will find in a canned product. The method described below will yield pineapple cut into chunks (as opposed to rings).
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I generate a lot of kitchen scraps when I’m cooking, especially with as much fresh food as we consume now that I am able to cook more regularly. Generally speaking, these scraps either go in the trash or down the garbage disposal. For some time now, I’ve wanted to put these items to better use, and that’s why I spent part of yesterday making a simple compost bin.
Of the two of us, my husband Sean would certainly be the one to describe himself as a chocoholic. I enjoy the taste of chocolate, but it’s rarely something I actively seek out. He has agreed to help me compile a couple of Top 5 lists for chocolate bars that he loves. We’re starting today with chocolate bars that are flavored or have some sort of additive in addition to just the pure chocolate.
I have mentioned before that we don’t always take the time to cook dinner. However, to me that doesn’t mean we necessarily have to suffer with fast food. Yesterday evening, our chosen method to avoid cooking was to acquire fancy cheeses and cured meats and artisan bread – and wow were they ever tasty.
Vegans work to not consume or use animal products of any kind. Veganism can be thought of as a sort of extra-rigid subset of vegetarianism. Like many labels that we apply to groups of people, the words vegetarian or vegan illicit an immediate response or image for many people. Tell some folks you’re a vegan, and they may conjure in their minds an image of a “dirty hippie” with hemp curtains and a self-righteous air. Conversely, tell some vegans that you eat meat, and they may instantly have a Nugent-esque image of a rifle-rack in the rear window of your truck and blood dripping down your chin. It’s funny how that stuff works.
As a long-time consumer of kitchen items, I have a reasonably well-tooled kitchen. There are very few items in my kitchen that don’t get fairly regular use. But there is always room on my wish-list for a few cooking tools (and I won’t include cookbooks or general books about food, ‘cause that wish-list would make Santa cringe). Some of them are tools I already have that should be replaced with something more useful and others would be brand new additions.
I still had most of a 5lb bag of Texas 1015 sweet onions left from my farmers market trip several weeks ago, so I began thinking through recipes that would work through those onions. Me and certain kinds of butter-heavy pastry dough have not gotten on too well in the past, but I figured a nice luxurious onion tarte might be just the thing to use up some of my sweet onion bounty.
Had you talked to me five years ago and told me that one day I would spend $400 on a blender, I would have calmly explained to you that you were out of your gourd. I wouldn’t even have been aware that there existed a $400 blender, much less had any interest at all in purchasing one. Here’s how it came to be that I’m the proud owner of just such a blender.