Recently in My Kitchen Stuff Category

Last year, on a trip to London, I picked up a spork - a light plastic utensil which features a spoon at one end, fork at the other and serrated knife edge on the fork side - in a kitchenware shop and I've rarely been without it since. The last quarter of 2008 was taken up with train trips to Dublin as I worked on the Foodtalk documentary series and, food on the train being what it is - or isn't - my spork was invaluable.

Breakfast on the early morning Mallow-Dublin train was made easy by making sure there was some tortilla left over from last night's dinner to pack and eat en route but it was on the homeward leg, normally in the late afternoon, that the spork really came into its own. Short on time, I often ran into Fallon & Byrne or Avoca to choose from a selection of hummus, crackers, cheese, bread and pâté with, perhaps, a few cherry tomatoes thrown in for good measure.

After my usual last minute scramble to make the train, I relaxed, ensconced in my train seat, and - to the amusment of my fellow passengers - happily cut, scooped, spread and (s)forked up my supper. At that stage in the year, pregnant with Little Missy, I just couldn't wait until I got home for food or stomach the limp train sandwiches.

Since LM has started on solids, the spork is back in use again. For the last week, while we were housesitting for friends in East Cork, it let me prep her lunch on the move. Bananas, nectarines, pears or, on one day, much to Little Missy's distain, a kiwi fruit were brought along in a little bowl, peeled, chopped, mashed and fed to the child while we were out and about. While we were able to enjoy lunch in the Ballymaloe House Café (yum), Stephen Pearce Emporium (yum) or Aherne's of Youghal (hmm), LM chowed down on her own food, making it a positive experience for us as well as the other diners!

The only places I've seen these sporks in Ireland are in the shops at Ballymaloe House and the Ballmaloe Cooking School (priced about €2.95) but I think that they should be easy to find in outdoor shops and you can see them online at http://www.light-my-fire.se/230-147-spork.htm. Well worth picking up - for children of all ages.

I have a confession to make: I've just bought myself a shiny, glossy red KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer! The workhorse of many an American kitchen and beloved by cooks like Nigel and Nigella, I've been lusting after one of these babies for quite a while. I first fell in love with one I saw in the Cork branch of Meadows and Byrne a few years ago but, after peeking at the price tag, never thought there was going to be a chance that it would ever be sitting in my kitchen. Then we got married. And one of the lovely things about having a celebration of your relationship is that people give you gifts. So, several of those gifts, in the handbag of a rather giddy girl, made their way to Brown Thomas a couple of weeks ago. Although my hopes were initially dashed as they had sold out of red mixers - and, having set my heart on a red one, who would want an almond-coloured one instead? - the helpful staff ordered one in and gave me a call when it arrived. The poor Husband got the job of carrying the heavy box, all rapidly-getting-heavier 22lbs of it, home, having been promised future riches of cakes, cookies and breads, and it sat, in its box, in the hall of our Dublin flat - no space for mixers - until this weekend when I finally got to take it down to the cottage.

We barely got in the door before the KitchenAid, together with its shiny stainless steel bowl, dough hook, flat beater and a wire whisk, was taken out from its wrapping and I was finally able to admire it! Looking wasn't all I did with it, and over the weekend I made a Passion Fruit Cake (perfect with an afternoon cup of tea or coffee on a rainy Irish summer's afternoon), finally got the chance to try out the Husband's family's recipe for Chocolate Chippies, a loaf of bread - I just had to try out the dough hook - and some small bread rolls, which I baked in my Baker's Edge for maximum crust. It now sits proudly on the table in the baking corner of my cottage kitchen, below the flour cupboard and right next to the weighing scales. I've been revisiting my cookbooks with new eyes, no longer ignoring or skimming past recipes that involve creaming sugar and butter or whisking egg whites! Although it is also useful for kneading dough, if I'm making just a plain loaf of bread, I think I'll stick to the very successful No-Knead Bread recipe - because of its slow rise, it's got a lot more flavour than any normal homemade bread.

To read more from some fellow KitchenAid converts, check out David Lebovitz's article on the KitchenAid factory, other bloggers' joy at the arrival of their mixers, and some KitchenAid-friendly recipes.

Ever since I saw Feast@Home by New Zealand food writer Julie Le Clerk I've been wanting to make the cake on the cover - a Chocolate Ripple Sliver Cake. But, every time I've re-read the recipe, I've realised afresh that I simply can't make it without an electric handheld mixer.

Now, I know that it's possible to cream sugar and butter together by hand, that eggs and sugar can be whipped to a light froth without an electric mixer, and that it's possible to beat egg whites into stiff peaks with just a hand whisk - but have you ever done it? Do you know how much it makes your hand and arm ache? And how damn LONG it takes?! The last time that I made a cake involving the creaming method - an Avoca chocolate cake when I was catering the Writer's hen party - my arm nearly fell off and I had to get the Boyfriend out of bed early on a Saturday morning to help mix. I don't think he was best impressed. So, ever since then, I've been taking the long path around any recipes that entail using an electric mixer. But I knew that I'd have to get one someday - there were just too many recipes in my must-cook files that were getting ignored otherwise.

So, last Thursday when I decided that I simply HAD to make Julie Le Clerc's Chocolate Ripple Sliver Cake for Friday night's dinner, I had no time to make a well-considered purchase, instead legging it into cheap household goods store Argos and picked up the Kenwood HM310 Deluxe Handmixer. I don't quite know what's deluxe about it, but - although the engine didn't sound too happy about mixing the chocolate part of the cake - it was still capable of doing the job.

While standing around the kitchen, beating the eggs/sugar mixture and waiting for it to turn "thick and pale" - it took so long, even with the electric mixer, that I would probably still be beating if I had tried to make it by hand - my mind and my eyes were roaming. I couldn't resist adding some freshly grated nutmeg, to compliment the cream cheese topping, and, given that I love the flavour of orange with dark chocolate, the zest of an orange got thrown in there too.

This was one of the first times I've had a suitably decadent recipe to make the most of the 1kg bar of Fairtrade dark chocolate (60% cocoa solids) that I got from the Connoisseur's Italian boyfriend who works in Amnesty and it was fantastic. It's amazing chocolate and is available from Amnesty's Freedom Café at 48 Fleet Street in Dublin's Temple Bar - a great place for a cup of (Fairtrade) coffee and panini, incidentally.

And the cake? Julie isn't joking - it is seriously rich. I easily got 16 slices out of it and we served with ice cream, strawberries and blackberries on the side, the Tax Advisor's contribution to last week's dinner. What little was left over after desert disappeared between that night's drinking and breakfast the next morning. It's always a good sign of a cake when there's nothing but crumbs left the following day. This is also a flourless cake so is perfect - given that you make sure your cream cheese is gluten free and, as far as I know, the Philadelphia brand is - you can happily serve it to all your coeliac and gluten-intolerant friends.

Equipped with one very large mixing bowl (also useful as a basin!) and a scattering of much smaller ones, I was in the market for a medium sized bowl or bowls. When the Boyfriend and I were in Avoca Handweavers a few weeks ago, queuing for our late lunch, I did some wandering around all the gorgeous goods on display. Piles of enticing cookbooks, soft and richly coloured blankets and throws, sparkling jewellery, jars of jams and jellies, sweet-smelling breads - all laid out to entice browsers and shoppers alike.

It's the kind of place that makes the Boyfriend get very tired, very quickly so I had limited time for wandering. I did, however, manage to find these colourful, lipped bowls with handles - one baby pink, one shocking pink with contrasting lids - from a company called Rice and they have more than proven their worth since. Because of the lids they are useful as storage containers, the non-slip ring on the bottom makes them perfect for mixing and they've been a good size for a making a double mixture of Chocolate Chip Chocolate Muffins and some Buttermilk Pancakes (thanks to Nic over on Bakingsheet) for an impromptu cousins' brunch on St Patrick's Day. A word of warning, though. I bought these bowls in Avoca's Kilmacanogue branch in a set of two for €10.95. I've since seen them on sale separately in the Suffolk Street shop, with the big bowl alone priced at €10.95. Still gorgeous - and very useful - bowls but not such a good deal at that price.

I have become a cast iron convert. A Thursday night dash into a post-Christmas sale at Kitchen Compliments on Chatham Street in Dublin led to me becoming the proud owner of an oval "Racing Green" enamelled cast iron Chasseur casserole dish (the Chasseur range is like Le Creuset but a little cheaper). Well, I started off being proud until I realised how heavy it was and that I had to drag it - with the Boyfriend's help - to an opening at an art gallery, all the way round the (very large) exhibition, to the after-opening drinks in a local pub, and into a bad Mexican take-away on its way home to my kitchen. It survived its eventful night out in Dublin and, since then, has been put to use on many occasions, some of which have, again, involved trips across town.

This Spiced Chicken Tagine, inspired by Julie Le Clerc's recipe for Spiced Chicken with Apricots and Chickpeas, was the first dish I cooked using my cast iron pot. Being a terribly lazy cook (and refusing to use a dishwasher!), I love when I can use one pot from start to finish. No special serving dishes for me, thank you, as meals normally arrive on the table in whatever they've been cooked in - a "Racing Green" casserole in this case.

One of the first guests I cooked this for - my cousin's husband - is chilli-intolerant so, unlike many of my recipes, this is not hot-spicy. The ginger and cinnamon give it more of a mellow, laid-back, warm spicy flavour. I normally serve it with roasted vegetables - carrots and squash are current favourites - tossed in a little olive oil and a sprinkling of cumin, and a Spinach Bulgar Pilaf or piles of plain buttered couscous.

As with all casserole-type dishes, this Spiced Chicken Tagine gets tastier if made the day before you need it. Depending on the chicken pieces that you use, this can be a little fatty so an overnight sojourn in the fridge lets any excess fat rise to the top and solidify so that you can remove it easily. If you're not that organised - and I rarely am - you can just use a spoon to skim any fat off the surface before you serve up.

Having been torn from my well-stocked kitchen back in Ireland, there are many items that I miss and recently I've been searching for a second hand pestle and mortar. Well, I do need some excuses for constantly going into the fantastic second hand shops - known as 'opp' or 'opportunity shops' - here! I've been able to get all my cake tins, roasting tins and many utensils replaced at a fraction of the cost of buying everything new. And they've much more character too - very important in a kitchen!

Today, though, the Boyfriend got thoroughly fed up with me going on and on about my latest holy grail, ie the pestle and mortar, so he upped and bought me one at the swanky department store in town. Not that I'm complaining, as this fine white porcelain piece is an upgrade on my beloved old marble pestle and mortar. But the purchase is not the end in itself - there'll have to be a shift in my thoughts about cooking as I'm now able to grind my own fresh spices, pound herbs into fragrant pastes and maybe that's a pesto-making evening I feel coming upon me?

My, oh my. Who would have thought I'd have to come all the way to New Zealand to get my first bread machine, known here as a breakmaker? And who would have thought that an unemployed journalist could afford to buy herself one of these breadmakers? Well, if aforementioned journalist spends time surfing on Trademe, the Kiwi equivalent of Ebay, it seems that anything is possible. For the princely sum of $25 I purchased a PALSONIC Auto Bakery Breadmaker and we collected it tonight. What excitement!

Well, that was nothing as compared to the excitement felt by all the occupants of a certain wee house in Christchurch when the breadmaker was coming towards the end of its 3½ hour cycle. The yeasty, homey smell of fresh baked bread filled the air and the end product actually looked like a loaf of bread, albeit square - the cooking tin is not very loaf-like - but the proof was going to be in the eating. Well, you never know if you're buying a pig in a poke with this online trader activity.

It's reassuring to report that not only did the end result have the accurate appearance and smell but it also tasted like real bread. Phew! Apart from the fact that it was cooked in my own house, I have to say that I wasn't hugely impressed with the first loaf. It was a bit too...normal for my liking. Time to pore over the recipes that came with the breadmaker and see what innovations can be introduced.