verbicide | hints from heloise

Tomorrow night is our farewell-ish party for Colleen and Pete. I don't exaggerate when I say I find their departure crushingly sad. In fact, I wish we could stage a coup, and I would lead one if I thought it meant they could stay.

So we've long planned a get-together at Lisa's house for Thursday night, where we can drink, eat, and commiserate. I offered to bring enchiladas. Now, since Lisa's house is a vegetarian home, I wanted to be respectful and not bring any meat. It also makes sense since Jeff and Pete are vegetarians, too. At first I thought I would make that same tomatillo enchilada sauce, but substitute it with this goat cheese filling from another recipe, but then my ambition was up and I decided to make a new sauce, too.

This time I'm making a tomato-chile enchilada sauce. Mexican cooking is involved and layered, but I think I like it. So far, the sauce is pretty tasty and the goat cheese filling (a simple mix of goat cheese, cotija, lime juice, garlic, and cilantro) is really nice. I think it could even work as a spread for bruschetta or something, because it's super flavorful.

As I was working around in my kitchen, I really appreciated some of the tools (most of which were gifts) which make cooking both easy and a pleasure for me. So I present a list of my favorite must-have kitchen gadgets. I'm not including my Le Creuset dutch oven or the glorious giant stockpot Jeff bought me or the worshipful saute pan from Sarah. The following list includes things that are more gadget-y oriented, because even if I didn't have them once, I at least understood the relevance of good cookware.

My Shun chef's knife. It's a big DUH now, but I never realized how much faster everything would get chopped, diced, or whatever with an excellent knife. And, that because I am no longer throwing all my weight against the blade, it is also less tiring. I can dice onions so fast that my hyper-sensitive eyeballs don't even tear up. This was a gift from my big brother OB and SIL Em.

My cheap-ass kitchen scale. No more guess work (which I suck at, anyway). And for baking, it's such a freaking joy to not have to carefully sift into a measuring cup anymore. I can't believe it took me so long to buy.
My immersion blender. Amy and Martin got me one, and I love it. No more pouring scalding liquids into a blender, which then doesn't uniformly puree everything. I just used this tonight to smooth out my enchilada sauce, and it took all of twenty seconds to get my sauce to the right consistency.
My new Cuisinart, which I think is a six-cup machine. Again, no idea why I took so long to buy this thing. I had a small two cup machine, and I did everything in batches. It took so long, and was so painful. Tonight, I used it in four different applications and it made making the filling and the sauce almost trivial.
My Kitchen Aid*, organized by Jeanne, and bought for me as a group gift for a housewarming present. I think this is what started it all. It made me realize how much more I could do with the proper tools, instead of jury-rigging my way through everything.
My Kitchen Aid ice cream maker. This was a wonderful gift from Sarah (who beat out three other people with the same idea), and what I love about it is that it's an almost no-effort way of making a special dessert for a dinner. I made Jeff yogurt gelato for his last birthday, and he was more excited than he's been over other, more time consuming and elaborate desserts.
My Crate and Barrel melamine mixing bowls. A lovely gift from Dawn Taylor, they are used in almost every single cooking adventure I have. (I know they're not a gadget, but they almost should be.)
My microplane. I think this item's gotten a lot of press from cooking shows, but I always whip it out of it's sheath like it's Exalibur or something. My SIL bought me a wider, shorter one, and an attachment (for, like, slicing garlic micro-thin) and it's just glorious.

I know I'm missing something. But, this is a good start. It's not that I couldn't cook elaborate things before, but I was always so tired and cranky afterwards. I get so much more out of my time and energy with these things.

* Mentioning the Kitchen Aid mixer seems almost too obvious, but it has let me tackle so many baking projects that would have been exhausting (and thus un-attempted), I think it's almost required in any kitchen that hopes to do extensive baking. Though really, it was worth it for whipping cream alone.