Tech and Gear
There was a time when I loved fried anything: chicken, pork, fish. You name it, if it’s fried I love it. But those days were long gone. These days, the aroma has become a stink, the crunchiness has become dryness, the juiciness has become greasiness, and the taste has become simply salty. Not that I wouldn’t eat fried. It’s just not my first, even second or third, choice.
UPDATE: Guess what was for dinner? Fried chicken wings! :P
People love to eat. Nothing wrong with that. Except when it’s excessive. Excess here having a two-fold meaning: eating more than what is necessary and leaving food to go to waste. You see it around you: People pigging out on all-you-can-eat buffets. People eating all-you-can eat pizza, and worse, leaving the outer edge of the crust. People drinking buckets and buckets of beer. It may not exactly be gluttony, but it’s uncomfortably close. Personally, I think less is much better than in excess.
One of the problems when you play around the kitchen, is keeping your pots and pans sparkling clean. I try to follow three simple rules.
First, don’t go too hot on the burner. This burns oil turning it into stubborn gunk that sticks to the pan. It also vaporizes some of the oil stinking up the air and your clothes. Worse, with time it gunks up your range, range hood, kitchen, lungs even.
Second, don’t spill. The spill gets burned into the sides of your pot and onto the burner. If you spill, you’re using the wrong pot size or you’re cooking way too much. Or you’re just plain sloppy.
Third, clean. If you somehow screw up the two simple practices above, I guarantee you will have a tough time cleaning up. And you will need abrasives. To avoid scratching up your pots and pans too much, use the mildest abrasive pads if possible. This will require a lot of elbow grease.
In the tougher cases, you will have to use harsher abrasive pads. In that case, once the pot is gunk free, you will need to polish your way down to the milder abrasive pads to lighten the scratches and, finally, top off with a metal polish if you really want to be shiny.
Clean up is a lot of work, and in this case, as with most, an ounce of prevention is worth and pound of cure.
Michelle, Jeanne, and I went to the Clark Hot Air Balloon Festival last year and the experience wasn’t that ideal. This time around we were better prepared. A week ahead Mines booked hotel rooms (actually rather late since there were few choices left) and I bought tickets (also rather late since they have been pulled out from ROX. Luckily they were still available at SM/TicketNet). Aside from Glenn, Mines, Michelle, Jeanne, and me who were staying overnight, Roly and her friend Steve joined us for a day trip.
We got this Bialetti Dama as a wedding gift from Bing. It is a stove-top coffee maker based on the classic Bialetti Moka Express. The Dama is the newer, slightly modernized model.
The differences are actually pretty subtle: silicone rubber handle and “soft-touch” plastic knob instead of bakelite and a slightly rounded tank instead of octagonal. Both are made of aluminum and are functionally the same.
To make coffee, pour water (preferably filtered) into the tank, drop in the funnel, and put some coffee grounds (espresso grind but not too fine!) on the funnel. Screw the pot onto the tank, put on top of stove on low to medium heat (my preference), and wait as the water boils. Because of the gasket on the tank, the pressure and heat is higher. Once the water boils, steam drives through funnel into the coffee grounds, up the pot stem and into the pot. Remove from heat when, or preferably before, you hear the characteristic gurgling sound.
Pour and serve your freshly-made coffee! Okay, it’s not exactly espresso, since the pressure and heat is not high enough to produce crema and the thick consistency of true espresso. But it’s as close as you can get without spending a lot.
After use and enjoying the coffee, just wash with water. This lets the coffee oils coat and season the metal so that your espresso gets better and better as the years go by. You might want to clean the tank a bit more vigorously though since all the boiling leaves stains and calcium deposits. But, aside from replacing the rubber gasket, that’s about all you need to do to make it last.
A classic piece of coffee gear that you shouldn’t be without.