The Love Tool: A Blender
The Chef: Robert Danhi, Southeast Asian Chef and teacher, and author of the James Beard Nominated cookbook, Southeast Asian Flavors — Adventures in Cooking the Foods of Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, & Singapore. He runs Chef Danhi & Co., a consulting firm based in Los Angeles.
The Love Tool: Chef Danhi professes his love right out of the gate. “A blender, for sure!” he gushes.
Where You First Fell For It: “I fell in love with the mighty blender when I was just starting out in restaurants 24 years ago,” he recalls. “I discovered that instead of making a hollandaise in a bowl with a whisk and lots of elbow grease, I was able to heat the butter, add the egg yolk mixture and butter into the blender, and have a luxurious sauce in about a minute.” He then experimented with traditional spice pastes of Southeast Asia, though results turned out a bit different at first. “With some deliberate steps, however, I could come damn close, close enough for most occasions,” he adds.
How Do You Use The Tool? “When I make a spice paste, I begin with the shallots and other wet ingredients and grind them first to create a wet base before adding drier ingredients like lemongrass and galangal,” he advises.
Interesting Factoid: Not only is Chef Danhi a James Beard nominated author, but he’s a history buff as well. “The electric blender has only been around for less than 100 years, as it first appeared in 1922,” he reports.
Do You Use It For Anything Besides Cooking? “My blender grinds roasted sticky rice very fast, which I use to thicken and enrich Thai salads.”
But Wait! There’s More! Chef Danhi so enjoyed his stroll down Love Tool Lane that he couldn’t stop! He seamlessly segued right into an abbreviated You’re Kidding, Right? entry:
A tablecloth can be used as a salad spinner
The Tool: A tablecloth.
What Do You Do With It? I use it to spin and dry large batches of greens.
How Did You Stumble Upon It? “As the chef at j’Adore in Palos Verdes, we did large parties out of a small kitchen, and we had no room for a large salad spinner,” he says. “So I gathered the greens in a tablecloth — clean, that is — went out back where we had a hidden parking area — and spun it round and round over my head.”
Interesting Factoid: “Cotton absorbs more water than other materials.”
Anything Else? “Salad spinners rock,” he says. “They’re the second-most necessary tool after a blender.”
Totally been there and done that with the tablecloth when I worked in kitchens!!