The New Kitchens

The title refers to my new kitchen(s): the one I moved into when I got married and its newer, renovated incarnation.

I have made all the recipes in the cookbook (unless otherwise noted on the recipe), most of them more than once, and most of them in one of the new kitchens. These are all the recipes that I make frequently now; a few old kitchen recipes haven’t made it into the cookbook because it’s been so long: some Latin recipes from Cato, which are of mainly historical interest, my collection of ricotta pie and rice pudding recipes, and even my favorite recipe, Dobrada com Grão, long neglected due to the difficulty of obtaining tripe (not to mention the lack of general interest).

Equipment

The new kitchen has convection ovens and I usually use them with convection on, but often don’t “convect convert” (as the oven says, which means knock 25°F off the recipe temperature) unless the recipe temperature was at least 400°F. Sometimes I convect convert once the food has browned but I distrust the center (e.g., with bread).

I have an immersion mixer but not a stand mixer or a blender; I find it suffices in cases where my pastry cutter won’t do. I also have the smallest two of these scoops which I use for making cookies and muffins. The black one is 2 T and the purple one is 1 ½ T.

The newest appliance is a KitchenAid stand mixer. Also of culinary note are a BlendJet and an Instant Pot (the original 6 quart Duo) that Peter got as swag. The latter has spawned some Instant Pot-specific recipies, as well as some pressure cooking footnotes to regular recipes.