Kitchen Gadget Reviews – Page 2 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Tassimo Home Brewing System

Imagine my delight when I saw a big box on my chair after being out of the office for two weeks. My co-workers gathered around to watch me unpack the Tassimo Home Brewing System from Kraft Foods. I had the public relations agency specifically send me a sample to test at work where coffee connoisseur wannabes can help me evaluate the cute little machine made by Bosch. We already have a Keurig machine set up in the kitchen, so we set the Tassimo up in one of the designers’ cubicle to schedule coffee breaks and tea times during our regular work hours.

The Tassimo was easy to set up. After following the instructions to clean, we started to make our coffees and teas. Throughout the first day of testing, co-workers came up to make their own cups. The following are the pros from several testers:

1. I like that it has a sensor to stop brewing if you move the cup.
2. Convenient. I don’t have to drive to get my coffee in the middle of the day. (We are, after all, testing in a Connecticut office.)
3. Easy clean-up.
4. Making coffee is quicker than going downstairs to the cafeteria!

But for such a compact machine, the Tassimo is pretty loud. It did help with advertising it to the rest of the office because a few of them stopped by to check out the whirring noise that was coming out of the cubicle. The button that starts the quick brewing process looks like a dial, so all the testers kept trying to turn it to skip a step ahead, i.e., to add more water. The designers asked why the buttons couldn’t be separated and labeled clearly.

We were also sent several samples of the beverages: Starbucks, Espresso, milk for latte and cappuccino and Chai. Each came in small pods with a barcode. The Tassimo reads the barcode and magically knows what to do with it. We all loved that when you put the milk pod, it knows to make it frothy for cappuccino, but some worried if they have to waste and throw a pod if the machine deems it unreadable for one reason or another.

For the Starbucks fans in the office, they thought the coffee brewed up nice and strong. For deli coffee fans, they had to re-brew just to add more water to it because it was too black. A couple of people didn’t like the idea that the milk came in the pods. Although convenient, they didn’t like that they could be sitting on a shelf for a long time. For those who like their coffee with only a little milk, they wanted a button to stop the machine from processing the entire milk pod. But what to do with the leftover milk? They deemed a pod a waste if only one user can process the milk at a time.

On Amazon.com, a box of twelve pods is retailing for $21 which means a cup of coffee is less than $2, but there was a also big concern about the waste of plastic that the pods use even if you use your own mug to brew your coffee.

Overall, the Tassimo Home Brewing System is affordable, compact and convenient, but it could use some design tweaks to make it easier for people to operate without having to pour over the manual. You, as the coffee drinker, should just decide whether you like the taste of the coffee and tea it brews.

Seared Scallops with Fava Beans

I’ve shelled fava beans before and I can’t say it’s my favorite thing to do in the kitchen, but I love them so much in salads that whenever the summer season starts, I always buy a few handfuls of them from Fairway or from any farmer stand outside of the city. If shelling raw, you have to do it twice: one from the pod and two from the casing. If you have access to a grill, it’s easier to grill them first and the beans come out of their casings much easier. I realize it’s not the season for fava beans anymore, but hey, bookmark this recipe for next!

To sear the scallops, I used my new 10-inch skillet from Bonjour. I never owned a skillet without Teflon on the surface and I’ve survived this long in the kitchen, but now I know why it’s so much better for delicate food items like scallops and hardy meats like a beef steak: the skillet gets so much hotter faster and you get that satisfaction that your food is getting thoroughly cooked without overdoing it. The bonus part is that, since there is no rubberized handle or nonstick surface, you can finish cooking in the oven without having to turn the seafood or the meat.

Ingredients:
a few pieces of fresh scallops, dried with a paper towel
a handful of fava beans, shelled
1 bunch of young purple carrots, chopped
oil, salt, pepper

1. Using a large skillet, heat some oil until almost smoking. Sear scallops for no less than 5 minutes. They will not stick to the pan if your scallops are dry and if your skillet was hot enough. Gently turn them over with a spatula to cook the other side for another 3 minutes. Remove to a plate.
2. Keep the remaining oil in the skillet and add a little bit more and reheat. Toss fava beans and purple carrots. Sauté in high heat for several minutes until the fava beans are semi-soft. If you bought them from the farmers’ market, a little rawness won’t kill you.
3. Assemble to a plate and serve with seared scallops.

Recommended tool/s:
Time to upgrade your skillets to Bonjour

Stuffed Zucchini

My new Microplane Ultra Coarse grater came in very handy when I was making this recipe. It’s not often that I find a giant zucchini on my desk at work, but Lisa brought me one of the bounties from her garden earlier this week. Zucchini bread and stuffed zucchini were both suggested by co-workers. I opted for the latter because I already had the ingredients handy; ground pork and bacon were in the fridge.

I’ve never owned a grater before–I’ve always used a vegetable peeler if I needed grated cheese when cooking and I simply shaved the cheese off. For a recipe like this, a peeler would have taken me an extra 10 minutes; it took less than one with the Microplane for me to grate all of the Piave I needed.

I realized how easy my cooking life would have been if only I’ve purchased one years ago. Without putting too much pressure on the grater, the Piave cheese I used with this recipe easily fell on the plate like soft snow. I loved the rubberized stand at the end of the grater: it kept it steady against a plate even when my cheese wedge came down to a small knob. The hefty handle also had a very firm grip–my hands didn’t even feel like they did any work.

Now I just have to find more recipes that require grating everything I can get my hands on!

Ingredients:
1 large zucchini, halved lengthwise, each chopped in 2 or 3 large pieces
1/4 lb of ground pork
4 strips of bacon, chopped
shiitake mushrooms, roughly chopped
1 small wedge of Piave cheese
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
red chili flakes
salt
oil

1. Take each zucchini piece and spoon out the flesh to make them hollow like boats. Roughly chop including the seeds. Set aside. Place the boats on a lined baking sheet and brush with some olive oil. Preheat the oven to 350º.
2. Make the filling. In a large skillet, render some fat by cooking the bacon pieces. Add garlic and sauté until brown. Add the onions until soft. Add the ground pork and brown while occasionally stirring to avoid burning. Season with chili flakes.
3. In the meantime, pass the zucchini flesh through a sieve to remove excess water. You might have to do this one more time before adding to the filling. When ground pork is cooked through, add the zucchini flesh to the skillet, stir until well-combined and keep cooking for another 5 minutes.
4. Salt the zucchini boats. Spoon the filling into the zucchini boats without pressing in. Finish off with a generous sprinkling of grated Piave. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until the zucchini boats have heated through and a crust has formed at the top. Best served hot so the filling doesn’t dry up.

Recommended tool/s:
Microplane Ultra Coarse Grater

Wusthof Classic Wave Knife

The first time I held the new Wave knife from Wusthof, I thought, This isn’t sharp at all. And I don’t mean the blade is dull; I meant that it’s not one of those scary knives that you can’t even comfortably hold. The feel is definitely heavier than I am used to but it also means the grip is more stable and that it feels safer in my hand.

The extra wide blade is similar to the shape of a Santoku knife and it has a reversed-scalloped edge that slices smoothly and efficiently. I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s attached to a Hostaform-C black handle with triple rivets to make them durable and feel solid, a signature feature that all Wusthof Classic knives share. (Hostaform-C is a plastic molding used in products under abrasion stress to prevent degradation which also makes the knife hygienic even if it ages.)

I had corned beef that has been in the fridge for a few weeks and I sliced through it without any difficulties even though I did not give the beef time to cool down to room temperature. If I had used a serrated knife, it would have torn the beef into crumbs.

The new 7-inch Wusthof Classic Wave Knife is now available in your favorite department store for a suggested retail price of $99.99.

Recommended tool/s:
Compare the Wave knife to the Santoku knife

City Shuffle’s Diner’s Deck

At my last job, I ate lunch with a big group of people almost everyday. You can imagine how difficult it was to agree on a place that everyone liked, so one of the developers wrote a quick script where we could sort out our list of lunch places downtown and picked one for us with a click of a mouse, slot machine style. (We started with a pair of dice and each total was assigned to a restaurant, but we turned classy.)

It’s not technically food or drink, but a deck of City Shuffle’s downtown and Brooklyn Diner’s Deck came in the mail this week and I couldn’t stop showing them off because it reminded me of that story. The idea is that when you can’t seem to decide where to eat, you leave the decision-making to the cards. Each deck features fifty-two of the staff’s favorite restaurants. My deck included the ones below 23rd Street in Manhattan and some from Brooklyn. There’s also a Manhattan ($29.95) and a Bar and Lounge deck ($19.95).

They’re sleek and nicely-designed with the restaurant’s info including very useful cross streets. The best thing about it? Each card is also a $10 coupon you can use at the restaurant after you spend a minimum of $30 before alcohol, tax and tip. If a restaurant has closed, you can “swap” the card by sending it back to City Shuffle and you’ll get a replacement card to another eatery of their choosing.

They’re great as a stocking stuffer or a corporate gift to your employees.

Related post/s:
Buy your own deck at City Shuffle