KitchenBoy

For most of the United States, spring has sprung. Trees and flowers in bloom, pollen making everyone sneezy and wheezy. It is time for cleaning, gardening and so on, but from a culinary perspective it means more. Spring means fresh, seasonal foods are once again available. It is a time of berries and cherries!

Well, those are my favorites anyway. This time of year also brings us spinach, lettuce, peas, artichokes, asparagus, fava beans, beets, and more.

So what tools do you need to have on hand to be ready for these fresh springtime treats? Let’s take a look, shall we?

First, for those berries.

When it is time to wash the berries, what do you use? An old metal colander? Yeah that works, but what about a nice colorful berry bowl?

This collapsible silicone berry bowl is great for washing berries and is nice enough to take them to the table for serving. The great thing is that it stores flat. You can also use it for many general colander needs.

You could also use this cute mini colander.

I also like this square corner colander.

This nice large melamine colander is a good option and comes in many colors.

For the more practical among you, there is this over the sink colander.

Now once you wash the strawberries, how to take out the unwanted top part? I like to use a paring knife, but many people use a form of huller. The newest kid on the block is the Oxo strawberry huller. It works well. It pushes into the fruit grabbing a small cylinder shape, that is pushed out when the top button is pushed.

For most, the oldest, most basic huller is best. In this case, it is also the least expensive.

There is also a similar model from Amco. It is sturdier than the basic model and a bit more costly.

What if you didn’t wash strawberries but cherries? Well, you will need to remove the pit from the cherry and of course, there is a tool for that too (did you think there wasn’t?).

The tools for this particular task are simple and the choices are based on how you like to work. There are one at a time pitters, four at a time and rapid fire pitters. Cherry pitters can also be used to remove the pit from olives as well. If pitting olives, remember that larger olives may not pit well in a cherry pitter.

You have the Oxo cherry pitter, which comes with a splatter guard.

Then there is the Progressive cherry pitter, which can do four cherries at once and has a reversible tray for larger and smaller cherries.

And finally, you can do rapid fire pitting with the Leifheit cherry pitter. This product allows you to load a bin with cherries and pit them quickly.

I don’t know about you but one of the things I find frustrating about springtime shopping at the market, is this annoying trend to sell bowl shaped sponge or shortcakes only for a limited time. I got so sick of it that I bought a pan to bake my own so that I can have the little sponge cakes with fruit whenever I want.

The Nordicware shortcake pan comes with a recipe that is both easy and very tasty.

You can also make it in a larger version, by Nordic Ware, it’s called a Fancy Marianne Pan. It has a basket weave pattern and fruit designs on top. You could use the recipe included or use another if you wish.

Now how about those fresh leafy greens? The spinach, fresh lettuce and young arugula and be washed and spun dry in a nice Zyliss salad spinner.

Or perhaps the Oxo salad spinner.

The asparagus will cook perfectly in a nice, vertical steamer. The nice thing about these pans is that they can double as corn steamers or can cook any vegetable of a vertical nature, even artichokes. When cooking asparagus, I prefer to peel the stalk of the asparagus to give a more tender bite.

I like the Allclad asparagus steamer. One of the key points about these pans is the spacing between the wires in the bottom of the basket. If there is too much spacing between the bars, thinner produce may fall through.

And speaking of artichokes, I like the artichoke cooking stands by Spanek. These stands allow you to steam your artichokes without getting them in the water. Some people even present them at the table still on the stand.

And what do you serve artichokes on? How about this artichoke plate and dipping bowl? They even look like artichokes.

Like you, I get so excited when spring is in full bloom. It means fresh seasonal fruits, vegetables and greens. It gets me psyched for the coming bounty of summer. It’s spring - cook, bake and enjoy the great weather!

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