'Cooking tools & gadgets' archive

Bowls and platters

Back from the sickbed. I caught some bug two days before Christmas and I didn’t start feeling better until a few hours before Christmas Day ended. My husband did the cooking but you know how it is when you’re not feeling well — nothing just tastes right. He’s still in charge of the meals but I felt well enough to bake a banana walnut streusel cake this afternoon, the recipe for which I will start composing right after I post this entry about new pretty additions to my kitchen. Well, probably not exactly cooking tools. More of things for the dining table but since some of the items can go into the oven, in a way, they can be considered as cookware too.

Kitchen thermometers

Never thought the day would come when I’d get a meat thermometer. I like being able to look at roast beef, pork, leg of lamb or turkey or duck and know if it’s done, undercooked or overcooked. But I’m preparing a stuffed turkey for a New Year’s Eve family reunion and I don’t want to take chances. Food is too expensive these days and a whole turkey going to waste is not how I want to start the New Year. So, yesterday, I bought a meat thermometer, the kind you insert into the thickest part of the meat where it stays for the duration of the cooking.

Silicone baking cups

The first set I bought are the ones at the back, the four round cupcake cups with feet. My daughter, Sam, discovered them at Living Well (Mall of Asia branch), showed them to me and I just fell in love with them. I have used them several times (see the carrot cupcakes and the self-frosting peanut butter cupcake entries) and found them so easy and convenient to use that when I saw the square and heart-shaped ones several months later, I bought them too.

Lamb chops, grilled indoors

I love grilled food. Grilled fish, grilled chicken, grilled pork… even grilled vegetables. But outdoor charcoal grilling requires too much work. I tried using an electric grill but the power consumption was astronomical. Result? We had been doing very little grilling during the past several months.

The sabbatical from home-grilled food was combined with a delicious anticipation, however. I had e-mailed my brother-in-law in Chicago and asked if he could buy a stove-top grill for me — the nice kind, not the crap that sell for P200 in supermarkets…

Welcome to my kitchen!

There are people who like to build showcase kitchens just so they can be admired. Many of these kitchens go unused because the dirty job of cooking gets done in an outdoor “dirty kitchen.” That weirds me out really because I don’t understand the point in buying top-of-the-line appliances and installing heavy-duty counter tops and cabinets then let them gather dust. We have a “dirty kitchen” too. But the only part of cooking that gets done there is the washing of used utensils and plates. The cooking gets done in the kitchen.

Let me show you. Let me prove that a kitchen can be BOTH attractive and functional.

Kitchenware sale and the breakfast blog

First, The Breakfast Daily is up. I mentioned it a couple of entries ago and I was hoping to launch it much earlier. But we just moved houses and getting broadband installed took longer than I expected so the blog didn’t actually go live until last night.

What’s in The Breakfast Daily? Breakfast ideas, some with recipes. Why didn’t I just integrate the content in this blog? Lots of reasons, the most significant of which is that I want to write about food and health issues which I don’t think properly belong in a recipes blog. Food and health can be very political issues so I needed a separate space for that.

Belgian waffler by Nordic Ware

The American Home electric waffle maker is a lemon. The non-stick coating started peeling off after I’ve used it twice or thrice and bits were actually getting embedded in the waffles. Serves me right for buying the cheapest brand in the market. I wasn’t going to get a new waffle maker after such a disappointment but I was browsing eBay one day and I saw this stovetop Belgian waffler by Nordic Ware. Heavy cast aluminum with non-stick coating.

Oven-proof plastic bakeware by Glad

My own children are not immune from the charms of my baked mac and my younger daughter, Alex, requested that I prepare a tray of baked mac for her class’ Christmas party today. I did. But since I preferred not to send the baked mac in any of my Anchor Hocking glass baking dishes, my intention was to use one of those disposable aluminum trays. I found something better last night in the supermarket — oven-proof plastic bakeware by Glad which comes with transparent covers.

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House On A Hill

Noche Buena

• Bangus belly steaks
• Pork and pineapple stew
• Roast duckling on New Year’s eve
• Christmas jello
• Blueberries and cream
• Food for the Gods and the accidental Christmas cake
• Ernest’s pancit canton with bacon-cut pork
• Chili garlic prawns
• Cooking for Christmas and the New Year
• Rellenong manok (stuffed deboned whole chicken)

How to cook

• Poached egg in dashi — with ground sichuan peppercorns!
• How to extract tamarind juice
• Don’t be a kitchen slave
• Stir frying basics
• Marinating a whole chicken
• Sauteing basics
• Soup tricks
• Sweet and sour fish: don’t forget the ginger
• 1 kilo of fish equals soup and spring rolls
• Making the most out of pritong isda (fried fish)