Things ain't cooking in my kitchen

[venta]

Nicked from bopeepsheep's LJ:
Bold the ones you have and use at least once a year, italicize the ones you have and don't use, strike through the ones you have had but got rid of.

I wonder how many pasta machines, breadmakers, juicers, blenders, deep fat fryers, egg boilers, melon ballers, sandwich makers, pastry brushes, cheese boards, cheese knives, crepe makers, electric woks, miniature salad spinners, griddle pans, jam funnels, pie funnels, meat thermometers, filleting knives, egg poachers, cake stands, garlic crushers, martini glasses, tea strainers, bamboo steamers, pizza stones, coffee grinders, milk frothers, piping bags, banana stands, fluted pastry wheels, tagine dishes, conical strainers, rice cookers, steam cookers, pressure cookers, slow cookers, spaetzle makers, cookie presses, gravy strainers, double boilers (bains marie), sukiyaki stoves, ice cream makers, fondue sets, healthy-grills, home smokers, tempura sets, tortilla presses, electric whisks, cherry stoners, sugar thermometers, food processors, stand mixers, mincers, bacon presses, bacon slicers, mouli mills, cake testers, pestle-and-mortars, gratin dishes, apple corers, mango stoners and sets of kebab skewers languish dustily at the back of the nation's cupboards.

I think the short version is: I've got quite a lot of crap in the kitchen, but I do use most of it. The mincer is a recent[*] acquisition which I expect to use, but have not used yet. Get back to me next week. The juicer is a close call; it probably gets used about once a year. Used to be much more often when I lived in a house with an apple tree.

I'm bewildered by some of these things, though. What is a jam funnel? I don't own one, so it clearly isn't necessary for making jam. Mind you, I had a boiled egg for breakfast on Thursday and I don't own an egg boiler, either. How does a gravy strainer differ from any other kind of strainer (or is it one of those slanty jug things)? I have flat, ceramic dishes which I use, but I'm not sure if they're legally gratin dishes or not. I have made gratin in them. I counted my Kenwood as both a stand mixer and an electric whisk (I use it for both).

[*] Hmm. Not as recent as I think, though. Must get on with it!

Comments

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Crowded House - Weather with you.

I want some of the things I don't have marked on my own list - a stand mixer, for instance! I reckon "a good food processor and mixer" covers quite a lot of these items. But space and cash and stuff prohibit me from owning them just yet... I'd own the whole of Lakeland if I had the space and money! If I win the lottery ever there'll be a heck of an order put in! :)

narenek's parents have some very niche gadgets - but the sheer fun of the cherry stoner and the tomato juicer would justify once-a-year use for me (and they get far more use than that out of them, as it happens).

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think the principle thing I'd like that's on my list is a rice cooker - I can cook most kinds of rice reasonably well, but I always mess up Japanese rice. Which is a shame, because I eat a lot of it.

Sadly, although rice cookers aren't massively expensive, they do require a certain amount of space. Wot I don't have to spare.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I consider my parents to be reasonably heavy tea-drinkers, but then I met hendybear's parents and realised mine are rank amateurs :)

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Is this reply meant to be on my LJ? :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Er... yeah :)

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

d_floorlandmine has a microwave rice cooker which is very good. It comes with a little table showing the proportions of rice and water and the cooking times. It's only good for white rice though, not brown.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I presume "white" there means "standard white long grain", too, not the shortgrain that I have problems with.

[ringbark.livejournal.com]

Well done, BPS, a kudo from me. venta seemed to forget to give you a kudo this time, and if you hadn't been playing, I would have failed to be given a kudo instead. Or something.

Now, to the question for venta. I saw this on another LJ and wondered what on earth a "banana stand" might be. I see that venta not only has one, but uses it too! So, at the risk of ounding like a bad music-hall act, I say, I say, I say, what is a banana stand?

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I have quite a collection of kudos now.

[venta.livejournal.com]

A completely irrelevant comment.

I saw a picture yesterday I thought you'd appreciate. A colleague of mine showed me a photo of his son, who's about 6, wearing a charity t-shirt. The t-shirt was sold in aid of the premature baby charity that was set up by Clint Boon after his (premature) daughter died.

It reads "This is how it feels to be small". It's got a squiggly cow on it and everything.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Awwww! Inspiral cows!

I knew his son had cut his hair off to raise money, but I didn't know they'd set up a formal charity. I might try to locate a tshirt or two.

[venta.livejournal.com]

M'colleague bought it at Ramsbottom festival and said they were being sold there in aid of this charity. A quick google (by me) earlier, though, failed to turn up much evidence of a formal charity - I reckon it might have just been raising money for the baby ICU in Manchester hospital. Also failed to find much in the way of available t-shirts online, but your google-fu may be stronger than mine.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I have assumed it to be what I'd call a banana hook (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Banana-Tree-Natural-Hevea-Wood/dp/B00022M3GA). You hang your bananas on it rather than putting them in the fruit bowl, as putting bananas in with your other fruit causes other fruit to ripen (and hence go off) quicker.

Technically, I have a fruitbowl-banana-hook-combo which looks like this (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Premier-Housewares-Banana-Hanger-Chrome/dp/B0038JJOM0).

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

I usually call mine a banana gibbet, and until now hadn't quite realised how ... strange that might seem to other people. I thought this was common but Google denies the phrase exists in its entire corpus.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, in the interests of you not sounding strange to other people and not sounding as if you keep fairly specialised sex toys in your kitchen[*], I shall begin referring to mine as a banana gibbet forthwith.


[*] Unless, of course, that's an image you're keen to project.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I think. Nice to be not the only person who keeps fairly specialised sex toys in their kitchen.

[lnr]

I just have two fruit bowls, and keep the bananas separate - but sometimes add in something which is refusing to do the ripen-at-home thing. I think hanging is also supposed to help the bananananas themselves ripen more evenly or something too - but I've never had any obvious problems.

[venta.livejournal.com]

No, I've never really had problems with them either.

While I don't object to its presence, I was not the motivating force in the household behind the purchase of the banana gibbet :)

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I was also going to ask about the gratin dishes! I think mine count. Does macaroni cheese count as a gratin, though?

I used my martini glass a couple of weeks ago after the James Bond exhibition. First time for several years.

[venta.livejournal.com]

According to Wikipedia, macaroni cheese is a casserole (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casserole).

Which is so desperately, woefully wrong that I'm certainly willing to accept gratin instead.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Jam funnels are great, iff you are making jam. You only need it for jam/preserve/chutney-making, but it does serve as a slightly strangely-shaped regular funnel the rest of the year.

The point is to help with getting the jam out of the preserving pan and into the jars or bottles. Jam funnels have a shallower slope than normal funnels; they're very wide at the top (easy to plop jam in to), and not very narrow at the bottom - just a little smaller than the diameter of a small jam jar - so it's easy for gloopy jam with large fruity lumps in to fall through without getting stuck. They're usually made out of metal, so they don't melt when you put just-off-the-boil jam in to them.

When I try to bottle jam or chutney without one, I almost always burn my fingers and waste a lot of jam on the counter top. It's also hard to get the stuff into the jars quickly enough that even the last jar is still nicely hot (for sterilisation and making the lid pop down properly) when you get to it.

Mine gets specific use around now in preserving season. It also gets a bit of extra use in the Spring - the bottom diameter is just the right size to fit snugly inside a toilet roll inner tube. I plant my peas and beans in toilet roll tubes, and the jam funnel makes the process of scooping compost in to them very easy and speedy. I start them off in the greenhouse, and then when it's time to plant out, I just dig a series of holes in the ground and stick the whole tube in.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I get jam out of the preserving pan and into jars by dipping a plastic jug into the jam, and then pouring into the jars. Almost certainly because that's the way my mum does it. I get jars out of the oven in small batches, to avoid cooling.

I've never yet melted the jug, burnt my hand, or significantly spilled the jam (which is a miracle, because I'm often quite clumsy).

So I believe you that a funnel makes it easier, but since I seem OK without one I don't think I'll add another single-function item to the kitchen. Or, rather, a dual-function item of which I will only use one because I don't have a garden for growing peas and beans in.

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

We have a metal ladle with a pouring lip on one side...

I suspect the use of one of these would be rather less risky than either dipping plastic containers, by hand, into bloody hot sugary doom - or indeed tipping a large pan full of the stuff over a significantly lower volume glass jar...

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Heh, T stole my first jam funnel for precisely that alternative purpose. Glad it's not just us.

[rabbit1080.livejournal.com]

Out of the entire list, I own:
- meat thermometer (I use this at least once a fortnight, usually for roasts or occasionally measuring oil tempeature)
- Fondue set (I use this once every few months - recommend Gina Steer's non-traditional fondue cookbook)
- Pressure cooker (every fortnight or so, usually for chickpeas/kidney beans/etc)

I did have a meat-mincer until a couple of months ago when I accidentally found out it wasn't dishwasher-safe. Oops. I used it instead of a food-processor, and intend to replace it sometime.

For most food-chopping requirements, I just use a carving-knife and big wooden chopping-board. For cooking, I mostly use v non-stick saucepans.

(Almost forgot, I also have a pizza stone and a pasta machine. I used both fairly often a few years ago but haven't for a while. My stand-mixer has been replaced with a dishwasher-safe whisk.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Indeed, food processing is one of the things I intend to try out with my meat mincer :) Mashing beans (even cooked) with a fork is a mug's game.

I wanted a mincer because I make a few things out of minced chicken, which is hard to find. Shortly after I acquired a mincer, the butcher became much more willing to mince on demand. Sadly, that butcher has now closed and I think the new one isn't, so the mincer may be in the running again.

[rabbit1080.livejournal.com]

The mincer was pretty handy, usually for veggies (eg. Gazpacho Soup or other soup-related stuff). I was just starting to think about maybe using the mincer for pork when I broke it.

Often, I'll just cook soup ingredients for an extra 10-20 mins and then use a potato-masher for a rustic texture.

[venta.livejournal.com]

On the soup front, I've heard a few people singing the praises of these (http://www.lakeland.co.uk/16900/Vitamix-Aspire-Black), recently.

At £400, though, I think I'll carry on with the saucepan and the masher :)

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I do this also :)

I do have a hand blender, and have used it in the last year; there's really no substitute if you want to get carrot-and-honey soup absolutely everywhere in but a single moment of incompetence.

I like my masher...

[beckyl.livejournal.com]

Too late for the kudo, but I did actually know that one. Ignoring all the kitchen stuff since it's much more himself's domain than mine.