Choppers and Graters

Today I did a big cook-in. 

This involved lots of chopping.  Instead of chopping with a kitchen knife and grating using the hand grater, which are rather tiring and time-consuming, I got out the Tefal Fresh Express grater (see:  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tefal-MB750G36-Fresh-Express/dp/B006ZCU3T0)



I found this machine really good, especially for slicing or grating carrots and similar vegetables and also for grating cheese. Haven't tried zesting lemon yet.

However, for onions and celery the machine could not cope, either slicing or grating.  Slivers of onion skin and celery membrane kept getting caught on the cone attachment, stopping it working. And then, when I wanted to remove the cone it was stuck. Unfortunately, if this happens there's no way to remove it easily.



For onions I found one of these choppers (http://www.lakeland.co.uk/16531/Zyliss-Smart-Clean-Food-Chopper) was far superior.  They're noisy to use and can only manage a small amount at a time but it takes mere seconds to chop onions and suchlike any size you want.  

We'd had one of these in the family for many years, since my grandmother bought one at the Ideal Home Exhibition, probably way back in the 1960s.  Ours worked on the same principle but didn't have a tray at the bottom to collect the choppings.

My mother and grandmother used to make up to 70 Cornish Pasties a day in the 1950s and 60s.  One of their most useful implements for preparing the potato and swede (known in Cornwall as turnip) was a Mouli Julienne,or mouli grater.  

Onions and the meat (always beef skirt) were chopped by hand.  For pasties this machine is superior as most graters these days have too-fine cutters for potato and turnip for pasties.  The legs fold up for storage.  Very useful indeed, but not too great (grate ha ha) for doing cheese.


I'm coming to the conclusion that no single piece of equipment works for all foods, we need to clutter up our kitchens with lots of items.  Or perhaps get rid of all of them and revert to an excellent kitchen knife and spend much longer preparing food.