I’m a sucker for kitchen gadgets. I recently acquired a few more, to help with all the chopping, slicing and dicing that I am doing as we move towards a more whole food, plant-based diet.
Dicing gadget – which does so much more
As I have mentioned before, I follow Chef AJ on Youtube, and she sometimes mentions some trouble she has with her hands, making chopping difficult, and one day she brought out this brilliant dicing gadget which I decided I had to get! I think mine is superior to hers, though, because it has so many fun accessories.
It’s a clever design. The removable lid has two spaces for different accessories. The chopped food goes into the clear container at the bottom, which has non-slip feet. When not in use, you stow all the accessories inside the container in their own special rack.
The next photo shows the dicer end of the lid in the open position, showing the grid of projections which push the food through the cutter, which is not yet in place. You place the food on top of the blades, and hinge the lid down on top, forcing the food through the slicer into the container beneath. This is particularly good for onion because it does keep the vapours away from your eyes! You can see all the accessories stowed in the container.
This photo shows the largest dicer grid cutter in place, with the medium and fine ones beside it on the counter. The little comb tool is used to get the bits of food out from between the projections in the lid. Beside that is a useful little double-ended peeler – a normal peeler and a julienne slicer. To open the blades, you just pull the green parts out from the white centre, and rotate the blade ready for use. You can see it in the folded position in the previous photo, lying on top of the accessories in the container. This is not part of the larger gadget, but a stand-alone tool.
You can see how each blade slots into the storage rack. When they are in place, they are not touching each other, and you can air-dry them in the rack after washing. The blades are extremely sharp, and you cannot dry them with a towel.
The next photo shows the other end of the lid, with the mandolin slicer in place, and the food pusher laid on top. Beside the rack you can see the other blades that slot into this end of the lid – two sizes of grater, and a julienne slicer.
The citrus squeezer is on the left at the front. When all is packed away, this is the one that remains on the top.
I made a useful discovery – the citrus squeezer fits exactly onto the rim at the top of the goblet of my high speed blender! This means I can juice half a lemon into the blender direct, without having to use the container to catch the juice. The citrus squeezer is also extremely easy to rinse off, unlike my original lemon squeezer which involves more work. Serendipity! Very helpful, because I juice one lemon into the blender every day, as part of the process of making my regular rehydration/electrolyte drink.
As a bonus with the gadget, they sent a special protective glove. The label says “High performance cut level 5” – the glove is supposed to protect your fingers from getting sliced when using the mandolin. I wish I’d had this glove earlier – I might have avoided my recent nail injury when using one of my kitchen knives! I haven’t tried the glove yet.
Manual mini-processor
Another neat gadget I got recently is this little manual processor, another gadget I’ve seen Chef AJ using. It is very useful for chopping small quantities of food, such as garlic. You put the food in the container, replace the lid and lock it into place, and then pull the handle repeatedly. This extends a cord attached to a spring which retracts the cord after each pull. The cord rotates the blades rapidly in the bowl, and after about 20 pulls, you end up with chopped garlic, nice and fine!
The processor with the lid removed, showing the blades, which are easily removed for cleaning.
The handle, slightly pulled out. I couldn’t pull it out and photograph it at the same time because you need two hands to operate this gadget. The handle won’t stay pulled out because the spring retracts the cord.
Three-in-one peeler
My final gadget is a nifty three-blades-in-one peeler and julienne slicer. There is a regular blade for peeling vegetables (potatoes, butternut squash, etc.), a fine, serrated blade for soft fruits and small things – even grapes apparently! – although I haven’t tried that yet, and a julienne slicer. To select a blade, you turn the notched white wheel at the side, and the next blade clicks into place.
It has a nice soft-grip handle and feels quite heavy and substantial.
Here is the dish I cooked over the weekend – a vegan broccoli casserole with “cheese” sauce.
In addition to two whole heads of broccoli, it contains rice and chickpeas, onion, garlic, peppers, celeriac (which I substituted for celery, which I don’t like), and some herbs and spices. One of the spices is something I’ve only recently discovered – smoked paprika. This stuff has to be smelt/tasted to be believed. The “cheese” sauce is made from potatoes, carrots, onions, cannellini beans, nuts, lemon juice, spices and nutritional yeast. This last ingredient gives a good cheesy flavour, as well as providing Vitamin B12. Both elements of the dish contain vegetable broth. Next time I shall add more of the broth because the casserole was rather dry, with more of a cottage pie consistency than than of a casserole proper.
To cook the pulses, grains and vegetables, I made use of my new Ninja Foodi electric pressure cooker. Awesome results!
These new gadgets, as well as my brilliant high speed blender (a Froothie Optimum, which is a cheaper, and more powerful, blender than the Vitamix), all reduce the hard graft and give added pleasure to my cooking.
