My kitchen

I've heard of people referring to their kitchen as their sanctuary. Mine's not anything that significant but I do spend a lot of time there.

At the place I'm living now, the kitchen is small, cramped and there is never enough bench space. On the positive side, I've learnt a lot about what I DON'T WANT to have in my 'ideal kitchen' from bad experiences in my current one.

The result of 3 days not washing the dishes - when I do wash them, there is no room to stack them. What a tragedy

This kitchen is simply not expansive enough to feel like a sanctuary.


What I can be grateful of is my collection of gadgets and recipe books. With regards to recipe books, I've pretty much taken to buying them for reading material, rather than books. Like shoes, I feel a great sense of satisfaction in hoarding cookbooks. Periodically, I find myself opening up the cupboard where they're stored and gazing in to honor my stash. I favor Nigella Lawson cookbooks because they're practical and pleasing to read. Ever since I saw a few episodes of Jamie's Kitchen, I've developed a huge sense of respect towards Jamie Oliver's cooking style. I also have a few of his books. Aside from these 'personality chefs', I also have a bunch of Women's Weekly cookbooks and the likes. There is also a significant portion of ice-cream/frozen dessert books and, for some reason, finger food recipe books. This is odd because I've only catered once and I did that purposely to make use of a finger food book.

Moving onto gadgets and appliances now. I try very hard not to be one of those people who, upon discovering they enjoy something, go ahead and buy everything relevant to that activity. An example would be to go fishing once and then invest in a 100-piece pro-fishing set. Nonetheless, I've still managed to build up quite a large arsenal of specific kitchen tools. Most are courtesy of my boyfriend, parents and friends.

At this moment in time, I'm the proud owner of:

• Mini-oven - my most precious appliance to date. Buying this oven really kick-started my ability to cook in the house, since I eased myself into cooking by baking.
• Sandwich press - a 'moving out' gift from my parents. They are very much aware that a sandwich press and a microwave are essential for survival on a uni-student diet.
• Sunbeam stand mixer - again, from my parents. This stand mixer made such a huge difference in what I was capable of baking. One of my most loved and used appliances.
• Krups ice-cream machine - I've already written a post about this because I was so excited. It's difficult to get a lot of use out of an ice-cream machine, especially when you're on a diet but I can't fault it for quality or results.
• Donut maker - I got this from Charlie for Christmas and have only used it once. That time, I stuffed up majorly by misreading the recipe. I'd love to give it another go one of these days.
• Blender - my blender is pretty powerful. It's a shame I don't have a lot to use it for. So far, I've powered it up for smoothies and cocktails.
• Food processor - I got a budget food processor from Woolies. It also came with a wizz-stick component that I've used for soup. Because I'm so uncoordinated, I dropped the body of the food processor (the bowl) on the ground and a bit chipped off. I was so scared it'd be leaky and unusable but today, I used it for salmon fishcakes and it held up :). I think the food processor is something I'll be using a lot more of in the future...
• 3-tiered steamer - my parents bought this for me for my birthday to encourage healthy eating. I've used it once so far, steaming some bok choi and that turned out OK although I got a bit burnt. To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of steamed vegetables but I'll probably be using this steamer more for fish and steamed buns.
• 9 minute marinator - this was a present from a friend. I was totally baffled when I opened up the box because I've never seen anything like this before. So far, I've used it once, marinating some pork and it worked. I'm going to have another go with this machine by marinating chicken pieces tomorrow.
• Along with all this, I have use of the conventional: microwave, toaster, rice-cooker but they belong to this house and so, are not strictly 'mine'.

On the list of 'things I still want/need', I have:

• Deep fryer (too many oil-splatter incidents from using my wok for deep frying)
• Microplane (for zesting. Using a cheese grater is just no good. You inevitably grate off a bit of your own fingernail)
• Icing set (for cupcake decorating)
• Proper chopping board
• An apron (definitely a NEED more than a WANT)

This below is my baking box:

It's a box - may have been a shoe box. Now, it contains most of my baking stuff (minus the big jars of flour, sugar and whatnot). I've got boring, necessary things in there like baking powder and bicarb. There are quite a few different types of nuts and dried fruit. Yes, that is indeed 'Home Brand' you see there. And 'Black and Gold'. I'm not a brand snob with certain things. There are other things that I always try to use the best of (like chocolate) but the rest can suit my budget and whatever is on sale. I don't purchase from exclusive baking stores... that means I can't get hold of certain ingredients. Today, I bought *gasp, shock, horror* coconut and almond ESSENCE because my local supermarket doesn't stock the 'extract'. I haven't made anything with them yet so I haven't dropped dead from disgust but hey, maybe they'll do a good job. At 80c a bottle, I'm willing to experiment.

I love browsing gourmet food stores too and if I see something that I can afford, that I'll probably use sometime in the near future, I'll buy it and store it.

Grocery shopping is something I enjoy. Although I have to walk home with all my purchases (the dreaded part of the whole trip), it's more exercise I get than any other time of the week so I grin and bear it.