Bamboo Steaming Beats Metal!

I have a fancy steamer (All-Clad, in fact). I also have a cheap little folding steamer. While in Chinatown recently, I finally picked up a bamboo steamer, and I am now a convert. It cost me around nine dollars, and a brief search on Google reveals reveals the shear variety and low cost of these items.

Bamboo works better than metal as a steamer, particularly for starchy items like potatoes, buns and dumplings, all of which tend to stick to the metal, even if greased. I have been giving a brief spray to the bottom of each steamer tray with Pam, placing my food, and steaming away. The steamer, which is stackable, also holds a lot more than my really expensive All Clad Steamer insert.

The only problem with bamboo steamers is that they tend to break or get destroyed reasonably fast. I soak mine before use, which may help. I also realize that for another 10 dollars and a trip to Chinatown (or a little more up here and no trip) I can just buy another one.

Grate Parmesan With a Rasp

I would like to thank our friend Lauren for this trick. I have usually grated Parmesan cheese with either a grater or with a mini-prep. Watching me do this in her house in Connecticut yesterday, Lauren let out a hearty laugh and informed me that she had a better way to grate Parmesan: despite my shock that anybody could know anything I didn't it turns out she was correct. Using a rasp, which she purchased in a hardware store (cheap!), we were quickly and efficiently able to grate a cup of Parmesan for dinner. Rasps are also useful for zests and for grating other hard things such as chocolate, ginger or garlic. You can buy them at your local cooking store, or at Home Depot.

Alessi Egg Cups: Make Soft Boiled So Cool!

The lovely wife loves her soft boiled eggs. And who can blame her? They are like a poached egg in a shell. For Chanukah, I bought her (with a little prompting, I must admit), the incredibly cool "Cico" egg cups made by Alessi. Getting them is harder than I thought: although available online, the only place I found them in NY was at Pinkberry, where I must give props to the manager at the 110th Street and Broadway store for being so helpful to me. Compared to the garden variety egg holder, the "Cico" is cool looking and also comes with its own built in salt shaker.

Cico is part of Alessi's "A di Alessi" line of affordable, cool looking products: I highly recommend a look through their site.

As for me, I like my eggs fried, but thats probably not a surprise to anyone.

Pineapple Slicers

I realized that besides grilling and eating cheese, there's something that we do a lot of here on Fire Island. No, still not that! Its grilling Pineapples! Now when we first started out doing this, we relied on a sharp knife and plenty of patience, but although the knife was fun, the patience started wearing a bit thin. Enter the pineapple slicer!! Dan bought two different kinds of pineapple slicers and we tried them out. Although both worked, and one has some advantages in terms of presentation, we both agreed on a clear favorite.

Vacuvin makes a pineapple slicer that consists of a handle and three different sized plastic blades. The slicer works like a pineapple corkscrew. You push down and turn the handle and get a continuous spiral of pineapple. Sort of like a pineapple curly fry. The advantage of the Vacuvin is that the pineapple shell is preserved, so you can use it as a drink holder or other decorative object. The multiple sizes of cutting blades are also a plus. The disadvantage is the cutting hole in which the pineapple passes clogs easily, leading to thinner and thinner slices as you screw down the pineapple. For most cooking purposes, this makes the device more of a problem than its worth. Although we got ours at Zabar's, if you Google the words "Vacuvin Pineapple Slicer" you will get a multitude of vendors willing to sell it to you.

The second device is pictured above. It has no name, and basically consists of two sharp metal wheels and a handle. Although its difficult to preserve the pineapple shell, it quickly cores a pineapple and removes it from the shell, allowing you to cut the slices to whatever thickness you desire. This slicer was available at Zabar's, and I could not find it anywhere on the internet.

Either way, you'll be fine. But the second corer, although it will kill the shell, will give you much more attractive and uniform fruit.

ADDENDUM: You can get the pineapple slicer right here online from Maui Pineapple