Something new, old and stolen.

In the process of making Quick Coconut Ice Cream with Saffron, taken from www.davidlebovitz.com, who practiced the recipe created by the woman who invented the idea author of  Delicious Days: Nicky Stich; I realised that there were a number of kitchen tools that I had fell in love with! Here are a selection of items that I think - in an Asian kitchen, I could not live without. 

Something new.

Ok, when I purchased this, I knew that it was a cheese grater. The base which is made to grate is actually just like any other similar grater. The only difference is that this Rayen grater is fixed into a body that allows the blade to propel. In affect, grating is faster and best of all you don't have to have super biceps the next time you need to grate more than 1 carrot. I used this to grate my gula melaka when I was making ice-cream.


Something old.

When I was a little girl, my mum and dad would always try to make me understand the importance of traditions. She would make me wear our traditional clothes and accessories, practice traditional malay traditions and even to the extend of telling me folklore stories for bedtime. Now that I've grown up, her final initiation for passing on traditions to her only daughter, was passing down this mortar to me. Ever since, this mortar has been a great kitchen helper for making paste, pounding, pureeing and just crushing small portions of garlic, onions, dried condiments, chili and herbs. This is the type of mortar you would use to make your sambal belacan or sambal ulek. Using the mortar makes your sambal taste far better then blending, because with a mortar you do not add water to the blend. So, your paste is pure and not diluted.

Something stolen.

This small itsy bitsy rolling pin has been an essential kitchen tool in my kitchen. Its no longer than 1 ft in length. Because my kitchen has very limited counter space - this rolling pin is essential and most suitable for small kitchens like mine. Easy to handle for rolling out smaller sized dough for making naan or cute tarts and easy to store too. Nope, no happy endings or beginnings with this tool, I ransacked my mom's kitchen and claimed the little bugger as mine :).

I find that all three items are the most useful and a god sent best kitchen utensils I have in my kitchen.