Busy in the Kitchen Day

Today, I spent many hours in the kitchen and I was glad. You know why? Because I made sambal ikan bilis, fried chicken wings and nasi lemak. That's to be our dinner.

I decided that I was going to show you what other things I do to save time.




I try to find ways to minimise my hours in the kitchen, especially when it comes to getting my big bulky grinder out to grind chillies for the day's cooking. One of the things I do is to grind my dried chillies and store it as a powder form in a tupperware, in the fridge. When I need to use it I take about 3 tbsps of chilli powder and add water to it. (If the dried chilly looks dirty or dusty, then I use another method that involves washing it, soaking it in hot water and wet grinding it). Here's the dry form, because the chillies looked so very clean.




I use the grater to grate my ginger and garlic, instead of taking out the grinder or even my pounder and pestal. It saves me time and wash. However, if I need to use alot of ginger and garlic, say for the many dishes for a feast, then it's the grinder that I use.

When I first came here, it was so difficult to get fresh ginger and I had to always go to rotterdam to buy my ginger. I used to buy in bulk and then what I did was to grind ginger and garlic and put them into ice cube trays and then use them when I needed to. I resorted to this because we were not going to rotterdam every other weekend. Secondly, some seasons they were cheap and some seasons they were expensive. So, when I happen to spot them at the right price I used to buy in bulk and then just grind them and freeze. For those interested in the ratio of ginger to garlic it's 2:1. Say for 100 gm ginger, use 50 gm garlic, grind them and store in ice cube trays. You can also remove the frozen cubed ginger garlic paste and put them into a container in the freezer.




I save the skins of onions, and any vegetables that is rotting in the freezer and when I go to the tuin (garden) I dispose them into the compost bin. I have one whole tray in the freezer for this purpose.

Used coffee powder goes into the freezer too, I remove the paper btw.




My latest addition to the kitchen. Honey got me a mini chopper and it does an excellent job of chopping. It's small and handy and with a press I get chopped onions or ginger or garlic or tomatoes in an jiffy. The reason I had to have this is because I injured my right wrist and I seem to have problems in handling the knife and cutting vegetables up. I am happy with my latest addition.

See how fine it chopped and in seconds. Go get one, I highly recommend this, it's from Kenwood by the way.