In My Kitchen July 2015

I suspect that Celia, who hosts the In My Kitchen series over at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial, will be quietly surprised at the fact that I’ve managed to post consecutively for all of this year (so far)!  Check out Celia’s home page for the full list of participants in this pleasantly nosey look into our kitchens.

Regular readers will know how fond I am of baking, so I was pretty thrilled to receive this selection of the new range of bakeware from KitchenAid.  The range is made of 0.8 mm commercial grade aluminised steel for even heating and baking, with folded corners and reinforced rims for extra strength and has a safe PFOA & PTFE free non-stick coating making for a much easier clean-up. I can’t wait to put it through some paces very soon.

I’m a total tea tragic. I can’t function in the morning before I’ve had my first cup and drink it through the day, varying the selection according to time of day, the weather or simply my whim. One of my earliest posts on this blog was devoted to the large selection of teas I found in the cupboard when the presence of a mouse necessitated a quick spring clean. The mice have stayed away but, due to my utter lack of self-control, the tea hasn’t. One of my favourite local tea vendors and blenders is Robert at The Devotea so when he hosted a tea competition on Facebook a few weeks back I was in – and won! My prize was a selection of that which is so very necessary to my life including a vanilla tea, The Duchess, a beta version of a spiced tea which he is still working on and my favourite Assam. All gorgeous, IMHO.

Once again, there is a new pile of food-related books in my kitchen this month. The copy of Irish Traditional Cooking, by Darina Allen, was an extravagant indulgence on my part. I was brought up in my grandmother’s house and her (traditional, Irish) cooking left a little to be desired – with the exception of her spud dishes, which were always excellent. I’m keen to sit down with this book to see what I missed out on.

“Death in the Pot”, a look at the impact of food poisoning on history and “Sweet Invention”, a history of dessert, were purchases from my favourite Melbourne book shop, Books for Cooks. I always pay them a visit when I’m in town and was thrilled to find that they have moved house and are now in much larger premises right in the middle of Melbourne food-central, Victoria Markets. I have spent much happy time browsing their shelves and look forward to even more wicked temptation from them with all the extra space for extra stock.

Adelaide is about to celebrate beer and barbecuing in the best way possible on 10-12 July at the first ever Beer & BBC Festival to be held at the Cattle Pavillion and lawns at the Adelaide Showground. The festival will have over 30 exhibitors, showcasing the best of South Australian, Australian and International Beer and featuring live music, degustation dinners, exclusive festival brews and rock star chefs. With Happy Motel’s Andrew Jeavons & Grant Nowell, Brendan Bell from the King’s Head and Duncan Welgemoed from the nationally famous Africola behind the fires, the food promises to be pretty fab. The organisers sent me this great selection of local brews to get me in the mood. It worked.

For Mother’s Day this year, I received (upon request) this very splendid Wusthof Santoku knife to add to my kitchen kit. It is a perfectly balanced, finely crafted piece of equipment, but what I  didn’t foresee was that I had no storage for it in my knife block, so it had to stay in it’s box until I rectified that little problem. I was unable to find a knife block with enough slots to hold all of my knives and, because I am blessed with  many windows in my kitchen, I had no wall space for a magnetic knife strip. What to do??? 

Then I found this clever bock of wood.

A hunt on the interwebz sent me to the website of Messermeister (translation – ‘knife master’) the home of top quality German knives and knife accessories, where they produce this wonderful magnetic knife block – the perfect answer to my problem. This beautifully crafted walnut block contains industrial strength magnets which hold up to 10 knives securely. It will also hold steels or scissors. I was unable to source one here in Adelaide and when I contacted Messermeister to find a local stockist they very kindly offered to send me one.

Good knives are not cheap, so it just makes sense to look after them properly – and I love this very innovative, handsome and practical solution to my storage problem – thank you Messermeister.