Around My Island

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It's kitchen time today at Project Show Me. You guys already see a picture of my kitchen each time you visit (in my header for those of you reading this on a reader - go ahead, click through, it's a nice picture) so I decided that for today's project shoot I'd zoom both in and out.

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First, the overview. This one is fairly similar to the header photo (which is quite fuzzy now that I look at it), but taken this morning on my DSLR (a Nikon D40 if you're curious) instead of last year on my old point and shoot.

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In it you see where this and this happen(ed), complete with living proof of the former, as well as a great closeup of this (I love this one).

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And from another angle

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Here's a closeup of the cruets, of spilled olive oil fame - I managed to replace the broken one and now we have a matched set again!

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And a peak at part of my cookbook collection (yes, this is only part of it. What can I say, I love cookbooks.)

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And just so I can remind myself how far I've come (both in terms of my kitchen and my photography), here are a couple of pictures of what it used to look like. It was even worse when we first bought the flat - there were two steering wheel shaped (I kid you not) fluorescent light fixtures on the ceiling which through off a huge amount of blindingly white light which reflected oh so beautifully off those pearly white cabinets (a huge honking wall of them) to make you feel like you were sitting inside a flashbulb! (You guys are old enough to remember flashbulbs, right?) Seriously, it was blinding, and the overall look was not helped at all by the horrible black plastic knobs that we lived with for years before a realtor friend walked in one day and said "you know, it wouldn't be quite as awful with chrome fixtures." She was right too, we were kicking ourselves for not doing it ten years earlier. Still, it was a very happy day the day the contractors took a sledgehammer to the thing and paved the way for what you saw above.
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Those black and white tiles even manage to make my red Kitchen Aid look ugly. Then there was the microwave cabinet that was too small for our own fairly small microwave, the stove that had to swim in the too-wide refrigerator spot because our fridge wouldn't fit in the stupidly small hole, leaving the fridge standing alone on the opposite side of the room, the missing bit of counter at the far end where the previous owner had installed her washing machine, which had to be filled in with something that didn't quite match... It was hideous. Big I'll grant you, but my god was it ugly. Here, see for yourselves:

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Now quick, go back up to the top of the page before your eyes start to bleed!

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Ruby Tuesday - Kitchen Aid

I'm still deep in leavingonvacationnotatallreadyyet hell so I thought this would be a good time to pull out this photo I shot a few weeks ago and hop on the Ruby Tuesday bandwagon. It's been sitting in my photo file just waiting for the right opportunity to shine. I love it's shiny retro feel and the upward looking angle of the shot.

Where the Magic Happens

As a bonus for my regular readers, in the background is the infamous green cruet of spilled olive oil fame, which, together with the red cruet behind it coordinated so beautifully with my dishes. Luckily I just got a call this morning that the housewares store down the road has managed to find me a replacement. Now I just need to find the time to go get it.

Sate Chicken Skewers

The chicken itself was long gone by the time Janet asked for this recipe, so since I didn't have any food to photograph I decided to show you the recipe card itself. See for yourselves how well-loved this recipe has been over the years. The card is one of a number of family recipes my mom wrote out for me when I got married and nearly seventeen years later it's still a family favorite. We make it often at home, and it's our favorite go-to dish for summer barbecues whenever we're asked to bring "something to throw on the grill".

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Enjoy.

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Indonesian-style Sate Chicken Skewers

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Ingredients:

4 large chicken cutlets, cut in strips (or easier to skewer bite-sized pieces, whichever you prefer)

1/4 cup soy sauce

1 Tbl oil

1 Tbl molasses

1/4 tsp crushed red pepper

1 clove of garlic, crushed

2 Tbl lemon juice

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Mix above ingredients in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate. Marinate chicken for at least 2 hours.

Just before grilling, soak bamboo skewers in water (so they won't catch fire, which might put a damper on your dinner, so to speak). Thread the chicken onto the skewers. Grill 4-5 minutes or until done. (May take longer if you've done your chicken in chunks.) Brush with marinade. Or don't, I often skip this step.

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Note: The original recipe calls for serving this with a spicy peanut sauce, but since no one but Jay and I ever ate the sauce (Israelis don't tend to be big fans of peanut butter in any shape or form) I've stopped bothering over the years. The chicken is delicious plain, but the sauce definitely kicks it up a notch. This recipe is similar to the one I used to make, but I leave out the coconut milk, thinning the peanut butter with a bit of hot water instead. Get creative, it's hard to go wrong with peanut sauce.

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Click here if you'd like to see more of my recipes.

Even Better Onion Chopping Tip

I have had a breakthrough in my neverending quest for a way to cut onions without ending up in major pain with tears streaming down my face! I got an onion chopper for Hannukah, and you know what? It really DOES work!

You just quickly peel and half (or quarter if they're big) the onions (even I can manage that), stick them on the cutting grid, press down and voila - chopped onions. Because the chopped onion remains in the storage part of the chopper there is almost no odor either, and thus NO TEARS. It's even got measurement lines up to two cups so you know how much you've got without taking it out and fiddling with it.

The night we first tried it my husband and I were both cooking. I chopped up the onions then took what I needed. The rest stayed in the chopper until dh was ready. They were right out on the counter for nearly an hour and never bothered me at all. The chopper is a built bulky and you need a fair amount of force to close it, but those minor disadvantages pale in the face of tear-free onions.

I suppose those silly looking onion glasses (or even just swim goggles) would work too, but when you're done cutting you'd have to remove them and you'd have all the onion odor in the air, which seems like it would just postpone the crying.

(This is not a paid post, I just love this thing and wanted to share my find with everyone who posted on the last thread looking for solutions.)

Drop by Rocks In My Dryer for lots more great tips.

Onion image courtesy of StockFood. Onion chopper image from Amazon.

Thursday Thirteen #21 - My Favorite Cookbooks

Many of you already know that I love cooking (or more precisely I love eating good food and am happy willing to cook it to get it) and that I collect cookbooks, often bringing one back as a souvenir of my travels. This week I'm going to share 13 of my favorites with you. They're not all the most sophisticated. In fact, some are pretty basic, but they're all tried and true standbyes that I can turn to and feel confident of finding delicious to eat.

1. Sheila Lukins' USA Cook Book - this one was a real find. It was in an odds and ends bin in a small bookstore I just happened to stumble into in a small city in Israel. I got it for about $5 and it became an instant favorite. All those great American standards, but with loads of interesting twists. And, it has my favorite chocolate brownie recipe.

2. The New Pillsbury Family Cookbook, 1975 edition - this one was my grandmother's, which makes it all the more special now that she's gone. It's ancient and battered and completely outdated (recipes say things like "use 1 can of mushrooms (ok to substitute fresh)", but for the basics it can't be beat. Whether it's finding out how long to roast a stuffed turkey or finding the classic chocolate chip cookie recipe, this one gets the job done. As long as you only use it for the standards it serves just fine, just don't look here for anything more exotic than a salad, unless you want it covered in aspic LOL!

3. Molly Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook - The bible for healthier vegetarian cooking, but not just for vegetarians. After more than 15 years with this book I still find new discoveries. You can tell my favorites by the number of stains on the page. Be forewarned though, vegetarian food is not necessarily diet food!

4. New York Cookbook, Molly O'Neill - a taste of home on every page, in all it's multicultural glory.

5. Gloria Bey Miller's The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook - the absolute must-have handbook for anyone who wants to learn to cook Chinese food. I don't refer to it that much anymore, but it's served me long and well and still retains pride of place as a reference book.

6. 100 Fast Noodles, John Midgley - many of my very favorite noodle recipes come from here, including mango chicken, pepper chicken, and the ever-popular cold sesame noodles

7. Marcella Hazan, The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (the one that got my husband started making homemade pastas and pizzas!). Marcella NEVER takes shortcuts. She can be an incredible pain in the ass, but she knows her stuff. The gold standard for classic Italian cooking.

8. A Taste of the Caribbean, by Angela Spenceley - a vacation in a book! This one even has cocktail recipes. Every time I cook something from this book I imagine myself sailing the turquoise waters of the Caribbean again.

9. Gap's Cooking School Thai cookbook - poorly printed and chock full of MAJOR mistakes, but a great souvenir from a fun day in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It's even a good cookbook guideline if you remember to use common sense when the recipe says something ridiculous (like an entire CUP of chili paste! My god, that would singe your eyebrows off!).

10. Mevashlim, Haim Cohen - an Israeli cookbook (in Hebrew) by one of Israel's favorite chefs. What makes this one unique is that it's arranged by ingredient, rather than by course, so if you go to the greengrocers and find that the asparagus, or cherries, or broad beans look great you can snap them up and then come home and easily find inspiration for what to do with them.

11. My birthday cake books. I'll lump all these together. I have four or five books just on decorating birthday cakes. My kids pore over them for weeks before their birthdays, heck months even, trying to decide which cakes they want that year. And since each birthday needs at least 3 different cakes (friends party, afternoon program, and family party) that means I've generally got my work cut out for me.

12. The Northwest Best Places Cookbook. Another vacation souvenir, from an earlier trip. It's got amazing, albeit fairly complex and time-consuming recipes.

13. Pasta e Verdura, Jack Bishop. An entire book of vegetable-based pasta sauces. Always something fun in there.

Whew. That was tough. So many great cookbooks to choose from... So, what are some of YOUR favorites?

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