Grilled Vietnamese Pork Chops

6 pork chops, bone in.

Marinade:

1/4 cup salad oil
2 T Vietnamese fish sauce (or to taste.)
1 T sugar
Fresh ground pepper
4 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
1/2 cup sliced green onion, tops only.

Marinate the pork chops in a plastic bag filled with the marinade ingredients. Grill over hot coals until charbroiled.

Serve with hot jasmine rice and salad.

Salad dressing:

1/4 cup salad oil
1/8 cup white vinegar
2 cloves garlic, skinned and crushed
plenty of black ground pepper.

We just use romain or green leaf lettuce for this dish. Nothing else in the salad.

On the table we have soy sauce and shark brand hot sauce.

Is it safe?

Sandy, of the aforementioned 'We Actually Collect Electric Mixers' club asked me to post pics of my cake safe. Because of the teak handle, I am pretty sure it would fall into the Danish Modern catagory. Although that might be a huge assumption on my part. Kind of like people on ebay calling everything "Eames" trying to capture people in the search engine. (Did the Eames actually make kitchen gadgets, table cloths, toasters and purses? You should see the stuff attributed to them on ebay!)

I bought this cake safe at the resale store down the street from me. They have a lovely, but small, selection of kitchen stuff. It is on the third level, which is a sort of catwalk that overlooks the big second floor filled with furniture. There are deals to be had. I found a great, cream colored cassarole dish with cover for $12. The cake safe was on sale for $15. Occasionally you will find a vintage toastmaster or electric skillet. Even a cuisinart, once, with a bunch of attachments.

In the days following my foray into English mixers, I have been trying to account for the irresistable pull that vintage kitchen stuff has for me. I don't think it is nostalgia, exactly. My mother, though she is a superb cook, was not too into gadgets, especially vintage ones. She had a brief romance with a GE food processor in the late 70s, but mostly her cooking involved a big Glenwood C wood stove in the dining room of our farm. Yes, we had an electric stove, but for years, literally, the element in the oven was burned out, so we made do with wood in the winter and cooked on the grill or stovetop for summer.

My granny didn't have vintage appliances much, either. There was a toaster oven at the place in Canada. And a hot plate for when it was too hot to cook on the wood stove in her oven. At some point her daughter convinced her to install an electric stove and the woodstove was pulled out. But there was no mixer, no blender, no electric gadgets save for the tea kettle and Farberware percolator.

My dad certainly isn't into this stuff. He is a man who collects bits of nature. In particular, animal skulls that he finds on his daily walks into the woods. He has hundreds of them, classified and lined up on shelves. Periodically he culls his collection, giving away duplicate specimen to anyone he thinks might be interested. The other day, my children got a box, posted from Newfoundland, of teeth. Horse molars, beaver incisors, moose. Packaged in a box with a label for customs: Toys.

So where does this romance come from? I try to keep from collecting much of anything. I have the demon of aquisitiveness which I hold at bay by avoiding 'collections'. (Meaning three of anything!) I have a tarot deck collection which I am planning to dismantle. And a tarot book collection that I am trying to decide what to do with.

And now kitchen stuff. Both from the local junk store, and from Pampered Chef.

I wonder where it comes from?

My new love....

At first I was attracted by his boyish good looks. But when I actually got him home, I discovered that he has all the muscle I knead. (LOL)

He's my new to me Kenwood Chef A700, circa 1950. This is an English mixer, very rare on this side of the pond. Even rarer is the fact that this one was designed for export, so it actually uses 110 electricity. And he is in mint condition. 300 watts of power. Swoon.

So, why does a perfectly sane girl need three mixers? It isn't that I'll use them all at the same time, right?

Well, the story is this: I bought the Hamilton Beach model K at a Salvation Army last fall. It is a lovely, chrome mixer from the 1940s. It is in mint condition. And it is very limited in it's usefulness because it has a pair of beaters that are stuck together as a single unit, which makes them awful to clean. Plus, the old girl doesn't have the ball bearings to get through something like a stiff cookie dough, never mind bread.

So, I convinced my husband to get me a refurbished Kitchenaid Artisan for my birthday. And I was in mixer love: Sir Mix-A-Lot is extremely powerful, has a great paddle that is easy to clean, a huge bowl and the ever-necessary 'planetary action' that means the stuff in the bowl gets thoroughly mixed.

My husband thought I was crazy to want to keep the Hamilton Beach at this point, but I liked her Chromy-ness and put her on top of my cabinet, where she reflects the kitchen light.

So where does the Kenwood come in? Well, I belong, believe it or not, to a vintage mixer club on the internet. We Actually Collect Electric Mixers is a great group, full of knowledgeable and friendly people. People who will act like crack pushers when it comes to mixers. Want a little taste? Here, it's free. And soon you are hooked. HOOOKED.

I swore it was just curiosity when I logged on to ebay that day. I am NOT interested in any mixers. I will never need another mixer.

And then, there was the Kenwood. Pristine. US voltage. Can still get a potato peeler and pea huller attachments. And so. Darn. Gorgeous.

I posted to the group, begging them to talk me down. One friend half heartedly agreed to bid on the Kenwood, but by then, it was already too late. Another friend from England sent me a private email RAVING about the Kenwoods. She has 3 of the vintage ones. Ahem. (Crack, I tell you.)

So I bid. I chose a reasonable amount of money. $32.24 was my bid. I posted it at the last minute. (Yes, sniped, I am sorry to say.) And won.

And waited. I had chosen parcel post, as it was less expensive. But the seller was exceptional and posted it the next morning and within a week he was sitting on my counter next to Sir Mix-A-Lot.

I don't need another mixer. In fact, my english friend, even at this moment, is scouring ebay.uk for a beater and dough hook for it, as it only came with the whip. But in the mean time I'll make meringue and whip some cream and dream of the day I can bake 3 loaves of bread at once, with both mixers whirring away on the counter.....

grilled pizza

Yeah, you can do it the hard way, with a charcoal grill and real dough. Or you can do it the easy, cheap-ass, weeknight dinner for the kids, way.

I bought a pair of prebaked packaged thin pizza crusts. I doused them in garlic, olive oil and italian spices. I slapped them on a hot gas grill and slightly charred the top, then flipped 'em, doused the other side and covered it with red onion, black olive, fresh grated parmesan and mozarella. I turned off the heat directly below and closed the lid just long enough to melt the cheese.

That's all folks. Not a crumb left.

Why heat up the house when the weather is warm? Go outside and play!

Salad

My friend Peter thinks I make the best salads. And frankly, I have to agree.

Here's my no fail recipe:

romain lettuce, torn into pieces
kalamata olives
big chunks of feta cheese
capers (that is the secret ingredient... around these parts, I buy my capers in big jars at our local Job Lot. For those of you elsewhere, try Cosco.)
And Newman's Own olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing.

That is my every day salad. If I want to get fancy, I might add jarred artichoke hearts, red onion or some raddiccio. If I am making my own dressing, it is a lemon juice, olive oil, salt and garlic combination that I learned from my french former step-uncle.

I like wooden salad bowls. The best one I have is from a church yard sale. It is a single piece of maple that is beautifully carved. By now it is completely impregnated with oil, so it is sticky on the outside. But it is a dark, warm color, and it miraculously holds just the right amount of salad, no matter how many people are eating it. (It is like my loaves and fishes salad bowl)

I'll post a picture later.

Welcome to my new blog!

This one is all about kitchen stuff. I am a kitchen gadget fanatic, and love little odds and ends. Plus, I sell Pampered Chef kitchen tools for a job, so I am always interested in tools that make cooking simpler. I am going to invite my friend Emily to post on the Tool Crib too!

To start, I should disclose that I own 3 mixers:

A KitchenAid Artisan named Sir Mix-A-Lot
A Hamilton Beach Model K named Harriet (circa 1940s)
And I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my brand new (to me) 1940s Kenwood Chef.

I am not an addict. I can stop anytime.

Now go away. I am cruising Ebay...