My Favourite Toys

Just looking at my kitchen - other than my weakness for cooking magazines, my other favourite activity is picking up handy gadgets for the kitchen. The science of cooking is easy with the right tools and right ingredients.



One of my all time favourites - the Silpat baking sheet. A hardy non-stick surface made of fiberglass and silicone, the Silpat is phenomenally handy for rolling out pastries and baking cookies and the like.





My happy range of silicone spoons, spatulas and and whisk...in an eclectic mix of lime, plum and baby blue. I have never recovered from the time significant other used my white rice cooker scoop for stirring curry. Of course the yellowy-orange curry streaks NEVER washed out. At least with the silicon series, my utensils are Y-chromosome-proof!





Last of my silicone trio - the Cuisipro silicone pastry brush. Nothing beats this for buttering filo sheets, pans and so on. One just pours melted butter or oil into the shaft of the handle, and a gentle squirt sends liquid through the bristles of the brush. Being made of silicone and therefore heat resistant, this brush can be used on really hot surfaces...like the grill pan coming up next.




This was pure indulgence. At $200 a pop, this cast iron Le Creuset square skillet grill pan did not come cheap, but nothing beats a freshly seared steak off this pan. Thanks to this doodad, I have the allegience of the male carnivorous faction in my family.









Thanks to Singapore's humidity, it's hard to prepare a fresh, dry, crisp salad, but with the OXO salad spinner, drying herbs and salads is a cinch. I chose the smaller version (this comes in 2 sizes) because my little kitchen is really getting cluttered up with stuff and I can also stuff this spinner, salad at all into my not very big fridge too.









This is one of my little soft spots - I never used to be able to cut apples and pears decoratively until I got my little melon baller to scoop out the core after cutting the fruit in half. So simple, but profoundly useful. This makes for a very neat finish, and is excellent for fruit heavy desserts like french apple tarts, poached pears and so on. I have to confess that I haven't yet used this tool for melons...





I was most intrigued by this when having dinner at Corduroy and Finch - the lighting was low and the little battery operated pepper mill with its light focussing on the food...very cool effect. So I picked it up in Sydney (at Woolworth's of all places!) and whip it out at dinners to wow the guests.










I started off stocking my kitchen in our little rental flat about a year ago after coming back from the US with a hand blender. It has since given place of honour over to the Braun Multiquick Hand Blender - it can chop herbs and nuts, crush ice, mix cakes, whip cream, blend soups over the stove...it fulfils every gadgety need of my heart. Or at least until my mandolin slicer arrives, courtesy of my long-suffering girlfriends who haunted Tangs, Robinsons and Takashimaya to find the brand I wanted and in the end had to order online...thanks girls!