Kitchen Doodads, Gadgets and Gizmos

Pasta servers, gnocchi board, taglia puntarelle

Do we really need lots of specialized equipment and gadgets to be good cooks?  I find the more time I spend in the kitchen, the less of my clever gewgaws I actually use.  I sometimes open the utensil drawer in the kitchen and wonder what I was thinking.  What compelled me to buy these things?  I have not one, but two of those weird claw-like spoon/fork things for serving pasta.  Bones likes them but I don’t, and I’m the pasta cook around here.  I either use tongs or a big spoon for serving pasta.  Then there’s the garlic press, now deceased.  I chop garlic with a knife or crush it to a paste with a mortar and pestle.

Why do I have a taglia puntarelle?  For the non-Italophiles among you, a taglia puntarelle is a tool for slicing puntarelle into neat little strips.  I do not, however, live in Rome and we don’t get puntarelle, a quintessential Roman vegetable, in the Caribbean.  At least I can justify that purchase as being a holiday souvenir.  It might come in handy to make zucchini matchsticks, should I ever find myself without a knife.  And I’m keeping my gnocchi board, even if I can use a fork to obtain those lovely ridges that hold sauce so well.  It’s a beautiful handmade tool, carved from olive wood by an artisan in Orvieto.  The gnocchi board stays.

Then there’s the melon baller.  Every time I’ve ever tried to use this implement for its intended purpose, I end up with a few pretty melon balls and a lot of useless, pitted melon flesh.  Maybe there’s some trick to melon balls that I don’t know but I’ll stick to cutting melons into cubes.

Stuffed zucchini

I have, however, been able to put the melon baller to good use.  It’s just the perfect size and shape for scooping the flesh out of vegetables I’m going to stuff.  Potatoes, eggplant, christophene and zucchini have all undergone the melon baller treatment.  I used it last night on the zucchini that I stuffed with my leftover Jamaican Pot Roast.  There’s no recipe here, just a useful and tasty way to use up last night’s roast.

Cut the zucchini in half lengthways and scoop out the inner flesh from, so you’re left with little zucchini boats about a quarter of an inch thick.  Chop the zucchini flesh and fry it gently it in a little olive oil, then add the finely chopped leftover pot roast, moistened with just a touch of the leftover sauce, and cook it down for about 5 minutes.  Stir in a handful of grated Parmigiano Reggiano, some chopped mint and parsley, and salt and pepper to taste, and stuff the zucchini halves with the meat mixture.  Put a little of the leftover sauce from the pot roast in a shallow baking dish, place the stuffed zucchini on top and drizzle with a little more sauce (or some olive oil if you’re low on sauce).  Sprinkle a touch of Parmigiano Reggiano on top and bake at 400° for about 20 minutes. 

And that’s all there was to it, which left me plenty of time for wondering why there at least 30 wooden spoons in that next drawer down.

We use these gadgets quite often