measuring up

When Mum and Dad came to visit, they gave me these charming measuring cups. The cups open out like Russian dolls to give six standard-sized measuring cups, marked inside. I already own a set of four stainless steel measuring cups that will probably outlast me--they're from Paderno ("Pots for Eternity"). But these new measuring cups are getting used quite a lot too--they have 3/4 cup and 2/3 cup measures that my other set doesn't, and they are so fun that I can't let them fall into disuse.

rice cooker

Ant arrived here in Hong Kong three weeks before me. Bless him, he was cooking for himself in the tiny apartment kitchenette after the first week. Most new arrivals tend to eat out because it is so cheap here, but I seem to have trained him well on the benefits of home cooked food. He went out and found the grocery store down the road, and found a department store where he bought a wok-sized frying pan and a rice cooker.


I had no idea he planned to buy a rice cooker. But rice is his favourite food, definitely. And in the past we have often cooked rice in the oven (a method I learned from my mother). That wasn't going to be possible in the kitchenette. Ant would not be long separated from his rice!


This little gadget can take up to 900 mL (about 4 cups) of uncooked rice. It plugs in and, when switched on, takes about 20 minutes to cook the rice to perfect, fluffy grains. Ant bought a 2 kg bag of Thai rice (Jasmine, the main type sold here) and had eaten it all by the time I arrived. He does like his rice!

I have used it a few times now as well, and for simplicity, it gets full marks. It makes rice faster than I can make the rest of the meal. This weekend I decided to try using it to cook quinoa, since I know that in a pan quinoa and rice cook in a very similar amount of time.


There was a tiny bit of slightly scorched quinoa on the bottom of the bowl, but the rest of the grains were perfectly cooked and there was no burned taste. I love quinoa the way Ant loves rice, so I can see that between us, we will be very satisfied eaters with this rice cooker as our new best friend.


I served the quinoa with meatballs, green peppers, and carrots cooked in the frying pan Ant bought. (So far this is all we have for kitchen items.) I would recommend the rice cooker if you eat a lot of rice. It doesn't take up much space and it's so simple. It cooks a large or small amount of rice perfectly every time. It also came with a steamer basket so you can cook vegetables as well. In fact, you can cook the rice and vegetables at the same time. Very clever. I guess if you are only going to have two cooking items in the kitchenette, Ant's choices of a frying pan and a rice cooker seem like good ones.

hand blender

When Ant's friend Angela (who used to feed him at Uni before I came on the scene) moved away from London, she gave us an immersion blender. What a useful gadget! It is masterful for making blended soups, and it plays a key part in the speed of recipes like pasta with velvety sauce. (Using a regular blender means waiting for all the ingredients to cool down, then having to heat them back up again afterwards.)


I used our immersion blender three times this week: to make a salad dressing (pictured above before blending, and at the top of the post after blending), to make soup, and to make breadcrumbs. Angela's blender came with a great little beaker as well. But the blades are not so sharp any more and the motor section doesn't screw onto the blade section very straight any more either. But I saw this fancy blender at Sainsburys this past weekend, so it will be my next kitchen purchase. Or maybe someone will give it to me for my birthday?


It has a whisk and a mini food processor as well! I often think that a food processor would be my next logical (larger) purchase, but I've been putting it off until I find one with which I fall in love. I love the look of the KitchenAid mixer, but really I don't need a mixer; I need a food processor. Shame they are so ugly.

But this little hand blender will be a perfect addition to my collection of small appliances.

new gadgets

Paul gave me a new cookbook for Christmas--yay! That means more tasty ideas for meals are in my future! It is Jamie's Dinners by Jamie Oliver. Because he bought it in Canada, it is the North American version, where the ingredients are converted to cup measures, which I find a lot easier. And I went out and bought two new kitchen gadgets; one was this new palm peeler. It slips onto one finger and then you hold it in your palm. Ant and I both tried it out and found that it worked well once we got the hang of it.


And we also bought a lovely mini mandoline--which has a very sharp double-sided blade in the centre. It makes perfect eighth of an inch slices, as seen in these photos.


On Christmas Eve Ant and I were out with Mum buying our vegetables for our special dinner. We were at Farmer Clem's and we saw this fantastic squash! I wish we had bought it but really, we would be eating squash for days.

new kitchen item

In a very exciting event, Matt and Ant and I have inherited a small George Foreman grill. Woo hoo! I used it for the first time today, grilling some marinated chicken breasts to serve to some friends from church. I marinated them with half soy sauce and half maple syrup with added garlic and ginger. Wonderful! I am looking forward to learning about how to use it properly.

My new chopsticks.