I am going to start of this month by paying tribute to the one thing that I love the most. As you probably picked up already, it is the kitchen, the place where I cook most of those recipes I post here. It has served my as experimental space for the whole time I ‘ve been here. The people who know me have heard me complaining many times about the size, and the discomfort it causes every time I tried to cook something that involves more than one pot or more than a pot and a cutting board. But you know… It is functional and I love to hate it. It is small but I don ‘t have to travel a lot around. I just sit in the middle and I can each everything pretty easy.
That is pretty much all of my kitchen. As you can see this is all the counter space I have and to get things done I am using a large cutting board that covers one of the two sinks and gives an extra square foot of working space. But I want to focus your attention on the pepper mills, that are the heart of ever recipe. I have three… ahem actually two. The tallest is a cheap one that I am currently using for decoration only. However, the other two pepper mills carry black pepper and mixed pepper that I always use in cooking. Moving on the right (yes on the right, he knifes will come later ok?!) I have a toaster oven that is much, much better to toast bread, make double decker sandwiches and even cook chicken breast, although it is not as tasty. Next to that I have a block of knifes that I am not using that much. I call them the specialty knifes, since the block has a cleaver, a slicer and a honing steel. None of the are actually used in regular base but are handy to have around. Let ‘s move on…
We have here the knifes again, and the coffee section (and tea…) I have four little pots (called briki from the word ibrik). Two of them are coper made, and are inlayed with an alloy of tin and silver to make it food grade. Coper is very toxic at this stage. Only the yellow coper is food grade. I also have a frappé hand mixer that I use for frappe, that I usually serve on the coasters that you see in the picture (in the little tin box) on the right of the big standing serving tray. They were both collectable items that I got from my grandmas. You can see the french press, the water kettle and the tea pot.
On the other side of the kitchen we have the refrigerator that serves as base for the spices, and to top is a messy storage place. The spices have been already extensively outlined, in a different section so I will note talk about them here. Just not the two paprikas and the Old Bay seasoning (which I love). How the heck do they stay there? Well for one thing they get support from the spice jars on the bottom but also they are magnetically attached to the refrigerator? How? How you ask? Well do you remember the magnets you get on the phonebook? Those magnets that ask you if you ‘ve been injured or stuff like that? I cut them, and stick them on the tins with clear tape. As for the messy storage space… let it be messy… However one of the most space time and injury saving things I ever bought is the magnet I have right above the sink, for adding all my knifes… or more precisely my cutting tools.
On the left there are my knives with knife one (the further left) to be the oldest knife and currently retired, awaiting a good sharpening. Knife two is no a great quality knife and just have it for the dirty jobs, slaughter a chicken, decapitate a lamp or kill a home intruder. Nah… not really, I handle meat with it, making chops and stuff. It is not very sharp, but the idea of my sharpest knife striking a bone is horrifying. And then number 3 is the knife that does all the jobs, perfectly sharpened, and excellent, excellent steel. The white thing that is in between the small knife and the vegetable peeler is a sharpener for that particular knife. Both the knife and the sharpener were given to me by Asako, that was the witness of my worst and best cooking and soon to be koumpara.
Well there you have. All my kitchen from Alpha to Omega. All I have and all (well not quite all) the gadgets I am using. Maybe in a future post I will give you more details on the really really really cool gadgets I have.
P.S. In one of the photos the hanging basket shows some ecorn squashes. Well they will be a follow up post.
Leave a Reply