Kitchen Gadget Girl Cooks

A few weeks ago, I decided it was time to replace my old salad spinner with something new. The old one was great – 15+ years old and still going strong. No cracks in the bowl, dry lettuce the norm, all good. But, it was feeling a little gunky and had some cracks around the lid. My intention was to replace with exactly the same brand. Off I went to Bed Bath and Beyond with my 20% coupon to buy a new one.

However, when I arrived and looked at the possibilities, I realized I had a new criteria in mind. I needed the salad spinner to dry my greens, but I also needed something easy to store. My old salad spinner was large and bulky, and frankly, a pain to put away.

Fortunately, Progressive International offers a salad spinner almost specifically designed for me!

The feature I love the most on the Collapsible Salad Spinner is the collapsible part. It shrinks down to 50% its original size, which makes storage a breeze. I can now put it inside a big pot, or on top of the waffle iron, and get the cabinet doors closed.

It uses a retracting cord pull, with an integrated brake button to stop the spinning, which allows nice control. Mostly, I am drying lettuce, so I crank it as fast as I can. However, when I want to dry greens for cooking, a little water left on the greens is helpful for steaming, so I don’t pull quite as fast.

The basket is quite big, and holds lots of lettuce and greens. I have also used it as a colander, to wash greens and lettuces before spinning.

A couple downsides – even though the lid is clear, water can still get in between the plastic and is a little difficult to drain. And, at $29.95, it is one of the more expensive salad spinners on the market.

Overall, a well-made product good for space-conscious consumers.

Not sure how it works at your house, but pancakes and waffles are a big deal around here. I think my kids would probably have them every day of the week, they love them so!

A few years ago, I was introduced to the Danish treat of Aebleskiver, (also written as Ebleskiver) a round puffed-pancake. These pancakes are light and fluffy, similar to a popover, but made in a special pan (wahoo! Another kitchen tool!) on the stove. The pan allows the Aebleskiver to come out round, and traditional Aebleskiver have little nuggets of goodness inside the pancake. Apple is common (Aebleskiver means apple slices in Danish), but my family also enjoys brown berries (chocolate chips). Savory Aebleskiver can include ham and cheese, or any thing else your heart desires.

At Foodbuzz earlier this month, I met Chad Gillard, one of the founders of Aunt Else’s Aebleskiver, from Minnesota. We got to talking and Chad shared with me the reasons Aunt Else’s Aebleskiver pans are so great:

1. The cast iron pan is made in Minnesota
2. Their special mix is hand-mixed using organic Minnesota grown flour and organic buttermilk from Wisconsin
3. The nine-whole square pan allows the home chef to make enough for two (or three) hungry kids!

Chad also shared the Aunt Else’s YouTube video, which makes the process of cooking Aebleskiver so much clearer:

Following these instructions, my kids and I whipped up a batch this afternoon for snack. After a few false starts, and some less than puffy rounds, we got the hang of it and turned out some masterpieces. Heed the instructions about low-medium heat, that is important. And remember, powdered sugar is a perfect disguise for less than perfect pancakes!

If you are interested in an Aunt Else’s Aebleskiver pan of your own, Chad has extended a special offer to readers of Kitchen Gadget Girl! Mention “Kitchen Gadget Girl” in the “Add special instructions to the seller” during the checkout process, and receive 10% off your purchase. And if you follow Aunt Else’s on Twitter, Facebook or Foodbuzz you can also receive 10% off your order. Mention your follow in the same area during checkout. Plus, free shipping on orders over $50!

And if you, like Alton Brown, are worried about the pan being a uni-tasker, check out these pictures for Japanese Takoyaki and a recipe, as well as this recipe for Sand Dollar Cakes with Pork or Shrimp (Vietnamese)! It is possible you could use your Aebleskiver pan to make these tasty treats as well!

And yes, Chad did send me an Aebleskiver pan for review. What does this mean for you? Well, if you live close enough, you are welcome any weekend we are making these delightful Danish pancakes.

Ableskiver Pan

I have been dying to post this recipe for a while, but every time I mention it to my friends, they look at me in disbelief. They are too polite to say anything nasty, but I think they cannot believe this combination. Honestly, it works!

Aunt Janet turned me onto this breakfast, after vacationing together in Park Rapids, Minnesota. There is lots of wild rice grown in Minnesota and North Dakota, and Janet tells me she often makes this dish to bring to a brunch. She recommends whole milk yogurt with berries, which works great in the summer at a party, but in my house, since I am the only one who enjoys this breakfast, I use Strauss Organic Nonfat Plain Yogurt, along with whatever fresh fruit I have around. Lately, that has been bananas and pears.

In Minnesota and North Dakota, you can find hand harvested wild rice, which is quite a treat. Wild Rice is low in fat and sodium, and high in some essential minerals, including folic acid, niacin, potassium and zinc. In addition, wild rice is higher in protein than most white rice and whole grains. All in all, a worthy addition to your diet.

I make a batch at a time in my pressure cooker, which allows me to use some for a dinner recipe, and then have leftovers. The rice keeps pretty well in the fridge, so I can have it all week long for breakfast.

Wild Rice and Yogurt with Fruit

• 1/2 cups cooked wild rice (I like mine chilled)
• 1/2 cup plain nonfat or whole milk yogurt
• Fruit to taste
• Honey, optional

Pour all into a bowl and enjoy!

With Thanksgiving only days away, and my in-laws arriving on Tuesday, plus a boat-load of cooking planned between now and then, I am operating on the KISS principal for dinners this week – Keep It Simple, Stupid. One of the dinners I had planned last week did not get made, since we had tons of leftovers, so I will incorporate that into this week. And the soup dinner for Tuesday is quick to put together, especially when I use cooked beans from the freezer.

Our Two Small Farms CSA box contained Beets, Leeks, Chard, Turnips (which I traded for more Beets), Butternut Squash, Sweet Potatoes, Red Butter Lettuce and Green Pippin Apples. Most of these things will hold well over the next few weeks, but I will plan to use the greens quickly, before they get ugly.

Here is my Menu Plan for Monday, November 23 (along with my T-Day to-do list):

Monday: Baked Acorn Squash, grilled chicken, bulgar and orzo pilaf, salad with Fuyu persimmons and watermelon radishes

To Do:

• Order Crab (7 crabs, cracked and cleaned, from Cook’s Seafood)
• Purchase Salmon, pickle and refrigerate

Tuesday: Bean and Swiss Chard Soup (from Barbara Kafka’s Soup, A Way of Life), whole grain bread (from Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day)

To Do:

• Bake Date Pecan Pumpkin Squares for Wednesday night crab feed
• Get house ready for guests

Wednesday: Crab Feed in Santa Cruz

To Do:

• Pickup Crab
• Bake auction pie (Pecan Pie)
• Bake 2 pumpkin, 1 pecan, 1 apple/pomegranate tart, and 1 batch mince tarts
• Prep cabbage
• Prep cocktail (Citrus Sparkler from Everyday Cooking)

Thursday: Thanksgiving!

Friday: Recovery

What is on your menu plan this week? Are you making Thanksgiving dinner? What is your favorite Thanksgiving dish?

Check out Org Junkie for more ideas on menu plans this week!

With an over abundance of squash from our Two Small Farms CSA, I was looking for new recipes to try for last week’s menu plan. The recipe for Gingered Butternut Squash and Wild Rice in Lorna Sass’s book Whole Grain Everyday Every Way caught my eye.

Even though the recipe included a few techniques I don’t use regularly, it was not difficult to follow. I made the wild rice in my pressure cooker earlier in the afternoon, so it was ready to go when I put the dish together. And besides having to peel and prepare the butternut squash, the dish was pretty easy.

This would be a great dish for Thanksgiving, bright and colorful for a harvest table. Leftovers were also very tasty, even right out of the fridge!

Gingered Butternut Squash with Wild Rice
adapted from Whole Grain Everyday Every Way

• 1 medium butternut squash, peeled and cut into 2 inch chunks
• Salt
• 1 1/2 inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated (use your microplaner!)
• 3 teaspoons honey
• 2 cups cooked wild rice
• 1 Tablespoon butter

Pour 1 cup water in a heavy pot, bring to a boil. Add in salt to taste. Stir in half of the ginger, add the chopped squash, and sprinkle the remaining ginger over the top. Cover and cook over medium-high heat until the squash is cooked, 5-8 minutes. Check every few minutes and add boiling water, if needed, to maintain water level.

Transfer squash to a serving platter and tent with foil to keep warm. Stir honey into pot and boil over high heat until slightly reduced and syrupy. Stir in wild rice and butter. Simmer 1 more minute, then pour over squash and serve.

Notes: The original recipe called for coarsely chopping the ginger, but my family found the larger chunks of ginger a little too much. I also needed to add quite a bit more water to the pan while the squash cooked. Watch carefully to make sure the squash does not stick to the bottom of the pan and burn.

Roasting your own pumpkin for pie this Thanksgiving is not a difficult process. And you will be amazed at the difference in taste.

This week, in preparation for my pie baking marathon Thanksgiving week, I roasted up a Musquee de Provence pumpkin. This variety of pumpkin is huge – the small ones are over 15 pounds apiece! In two batches, I roasted pumpkin pieces, then pureed them in my food processor, strained them through a small-holed strainer, and packaged up for the freezer.

Step by Step Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 375F
• Cut pumpkin in half, or quarters if very large. The pumpkin above was cut into 9 pieces
• Rub cut side of pumpkin with olive or canola oil. Place cut-side down on a cookie sheet. A Silpat lined cookie sheet makes cleanup easy
• Roast 45 – 90 minutes, until you can poke it with a fork and the rind is soft. Thick skinned pumpkins will take longer to roast
• Remove from oven and allow to cool
• Puree in a food processor
• If your pumpkin contains a good deal of liquid, strain through a small-holed sieve, or a colander lined with cheese cloth
• Freeze puree in 1-cup increments for easy pie making later in the season
• Use as you would canned pumpkin puree, satisfied in the knowledge that you are making a pumpkin pie truly from scratch!

Pumpkin Pie
adapted from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

• 1 Pie Crust, unbaked
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (freshly grated is best)
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• Pinch salt
• 2 cups fresh pumpkin puree
• 2 cups half-and-half, light cream or whole milk (I use 1 cup skim milk + 1 cup heavy cream)

Prebake the pie crust, and start the filling while the crust is in the oven. When the crust is done, turn the oven to 375F.

Beat the eggs and sugar together; add spices and salt. Stir in pumpkin puree then the cream/milk. Warm this mixture in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until it is hot to the touch. Do not boil.

Put the prebaked pie crust in its pie plate on a baking sheet. Pour pumpkin mixture into still-hot crust and bake 30-40 minutes, until the pie shakes like Jell-O. Cool on a rack.

Note: When using my own pumpkin puree, I like to make sure the seasonings are correct, which sometimes means adding a little more spice than the recipe suggests. Be sure to test as you go to ensure the pie is properly flavorful.

Be sure to enter the Cuisipro and Vacu Vin Giveaway. A flour sifter would be a great kitchen gadget for this recipe!

I am sure you have seen this recipe, it has been in all my cooking magazines over the last 2 months. Today, we finally got around to making them and I have to say, they are definitely worth the effort.

We used Kirkland brand Organic Peanut Butter and Hershey’s Kisses Dark and the results are cookies that are crisp and light, not too sweet, with a good chocolate-to-peanut butter ratio. It is also an ideal recipe for kids to help with, as there are 60 chocolates to unwrap!

Hershey’s Kisses Peanut Butter Blossoms
recipe provided by Hershey’s Kisses

• 48-60 Hershey’s Kisses Dark Chocolates
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup smooth peanut butter
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 Tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 375F. Remove wrappers from chocolates.

Cream butter and peanut butter together in a large bowl. Add in granulated and brown sugar; beat until fluffy. Add in egg, milk and vanilla; beat well. Sift together flour, baking soda and salt. Add flour mixture to butter, mix well.

Using your cookie scoop, form dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in granulated sugar and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 10-12 minutes until lightly browned. Remove pans from oven. Immediately press one chocolate into the center of each cookie. Remove cookies to wire rack to cool. Makes 4-5 dozen.

Part of me is tempted not to cook too much this week, in preparation for the marathon that happens next week. Well that, and we have a ton of leftovers – husband made a big New Mexican feast this weekend, with smothered pork, posole as a vegetable, and black bean and sweet potato enchiladas. Oh wait, I have written about this dinner before.

But….

Our second-to-last-veggie-box-of-the-season from Two Small Farms contained loads of fun vegetables, some that I am saving for next week (Fennel, Red Cabbage), some for lunches (Braeburn Apples), and the rest I will try to use this week: Beets, Arugula, Purplette Scallions, Watermelon Radishes, Leeks, and Winter Squash. So, here is my plan (albeit late) for the week of November 16:

Monday: New Mexican Feast leftovers

Tuesday: Lentil Sausage Soup (from Ina Garten’s Barefoot in Paris), salad (lettuce and arugula), bread

Wednesday: Roast Salmon on leeks, Wild Rice with Gingered Squash (from Lorna Sass’s Whole Grains Everyday Every Way), roasted beets, salad

Thursday: Baked Acorn Squash, grilled chicken, salad with watermelon radishes

Friday: Movies and takeout

What is on your menu this week?

And we have a winner!

Heather C

Thank you to everyone who participated, and be sure to check back soon for more kitchen gadget review and giveaways.

In my post last week about my favorite Thanksgiving gadgets, I realized that I own quite a few Cuisipro and VacuVan kitchen tools. So, I contacted the public relations company for the two companies to find out what is new for the 2009 holidays. And the good news? There is a giveaway!

The Cuisipro Flour Sifter is easy and smooth to use, and the single hand scoop lets a baker scoop up measured flour right into the sifter with one hand. Many of my recipes for baked goods call for sifting the flour, as it fluffs the flour which allows for easier absorption of liquid, and sifting sugar or cocoa is a great way to garnish finished baked goods.

The curved handle is designed so the flour sifter can hang over the edge of a mixing bowl so a baker can use both hands to add other ingredients. And the angled mesh opening releases the sifted ingredients neatly into the bowl, making cleanup much easier. And with a retail price of $14, it would be a great stocking stuffer or gift for your favorite baker (hint, hint!)

A few years ago, my sister gave me a lovely nutcracker set for Christmas, and it brought back loads of memories of cracking nuts in front of the fireplace during the holidays. The new Vacu Vin Nutcracker is a contemporary take on this old-fashioned tool, providing a stylish update.

You crack whole nuts by pressing the two ergonomically formed handles together and catching the nuts in the base tray. The nice part is, you don’t have to be a body builder to crack the nuts (Brazil nuts spring to mind), the nutcracker requires very little strength even on hard-shelled nuts. Retail price is about $25.

And finally, if the cold, cold winter has you thinking about tropical islands, then the new Pineapple Slicer from Vacu Vin might be just the ticket. I had heard about a tool like this before, and the Vacu Vin model is just as easy as can be. You cut the top off your pineapple, then use the slicer just like a corkscrew to remove the flesh in perfectly formed rings. The core is removed at the same time. All this sounds much easier than opening a can of pineapple pieces!

The Pineapple Slicer retails for $14, another great stocking stuff price. It comes in white or stainless steel. And now….

THE CONTEST!!

The contest is easy. One person will win all three of these exciting new tools. Deadline to enter is Monday, November 23, 7pm PST. To enter, you have a few options:

1. Leave a comment (does not require a blog)
2. Tweet about the contest on Twitter “@kitchengirl is giving away awesome Cuisipro and Vacu Vin kitchen tools and gadgets http://ow.ly/CM43″
3. Post the link to this contest on your Facebook page
4. Tell a friend by sending them an email
5. Blog about it on your site with a link back here

For items 2-5, please be sure to leave another comment when they are complete. More chances to win, don’t you know. Only residents of the United States are eligible. A winner will be drawn and notified on Monday, November 23rd, so please be sure to leave an email address (in the secret field) when you comment.

Last weekend, I posted about the pear-almond upside down cake, which was a great recipe and well received. But I did not tell you the whole story.

We have been subscribing to Frog Hollow Farms CSA since the beginning of September. Each week, we receive a bountiful box of fresh, perfectly ripe organic fruit. What a joy!

The last few weeks, we have been into pear season, and each week our box has 7-10 Warren or Golden Russet Bosc Pears. Now, pears are not my go-to fruit for lunch boxes, since they bruise easily and turn brown. So, I have been trying to find ways to use them at home. Erin sent me email on Friday, asking for help, and I thought a list of links to recipes using Pears would be helpful to all. Using Food Blog Search, this is what I came up with, divided into Savory and Sweet.

Savory:

• Simple Recipes Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Bacon and Pear
• Simply Recipes Curried Squash and Pear Soup
• Cooking with Amy Pear Pecorino Potato Soup
• Elana’s Pantry Pear Parsley Salad Dressing
• Inn Cuisine Pear, Gorgonzola and Walnut Salad

Sweet:

• Simply Recipes Pear Butter
• David Lebovitz French Pear and Almond Tart
• Gluten-Free Goddess Gluten-Free Apple Pear Crisp
• The Perfect Pantry Cranberry Pear Chutney
• Tartelette Pomegranate and Caramelized Pear Panna Cottas

Any of these recipes would be great for my family, and you will probably see them over the next few weeks on my Menu Plan Monday posts. But if you are looking for something else, check out Food Blog Search for loads more suggestions.