Saturday 11 July 2009

Kitchen tips

I recently had a breakthrough on my pie crusts, and thought I'd share. Don't know if I'm a genius for thinking of it, or an idiot for not thinking of it sooner.
I use the pie crust recipe my mother uses; it's called Fool-proof Pie crust, and it is delicious and flaky and tender. The recipe makes 5 single crusts, and we wrap each dough in plastic wrap (that's cling film for you Brit-type people) and freeze for later or chill for today. We've always then unwrapped the dough, place on a floured surface and roll out. Turns out okay, but then there's the mess on the counter. SO yesterday when I went to make my strawberry pie, I thought "Why not?" and straightened out the plastic wrap, put a little flour on it, and rolled the dough right on the plastic. Didn't stick at all; was a cinch to fold over for placing in the pie pan, and no mess to clean up! And it's not wasteful, because I was using the plastic wrap anyway.

Another little tip.
I'm in the process of transferring all my recipes to regular-size paper, so I can keep them in 3-ring binders. But in the meantime, I still have quite a few on 3x5 cards in a little box. I assume most people have something like it. As the box has been dumped out more than once, I recently got a better system. I put each category of recipe into a ziptop sandwich bag and wrote on the bag with a marker what its category is. So if I want chicken, I pull out the chicken bag and they are all there, instead of trying to hold my place in the box while I flip through cards. And if the box gets dumped again, all I have to do is put the baggies back in. :-)

1 comment:

Wil said...

That's a great idea with the recipe separation.

I'm still a fan of having all the recipes on the computer, because it seems like such a great way to organize them. But then how do you get the recipe back to the kitchen without dirtying the computer or having to print every time?

That's something the tech gurus still haven't figured out.