View from any given night…
Oil, filtered from the previous deep fry, repackaged in a Nikka whisky bottle, because they’re cute, and Nikka whisky is frikkin’ fantastic, so of course we’ve got some old bottles lying around.
Soya sauce, decanted daintily into a maple syrup bottle, which is totally not at all confusing some times.
Salt and pepper shakers that are big and chunky and sit in a really crappy wooden base I made to stop them falling over all the time because I’m the clumsiest person I know.
HomePod, playing bleepy noises. The other half of the stereo pair is on the other side of the kitchen, because stereo separation is important and don’t lecture me about how speakers are arranged. Tonight there was a decent selection featuring Wolfram Spyra, Space Frogs, International People’s Gang, Woob, Si Begg, Basement Jaxx, Tosca, and a fun Grimes track from before she went a bit mental after hanging out with mister nazi-baby-maker.
The handle of my Chinese cleaver, the knife I use for literally everything.
The handles of 2 quite nice Global brand knives that were a wedding present from a family member. These are very good Japanese knives. The other knives (and these) are all hanging from the magnetic knife holder I installed.
Preserved lemons. Gotta start using them now, because it’s been long enough. Better decant some into smaller bottles to give away. Funny that I don’t have any Moroccan cook books. Probably still traumatized by “that event in Morocco” 25+ years ago.
Garlic oil. Such an amazingly simple thing to make, and you end up with 2 x awesome things. Chop up garlic. Fry in oil till crispy. Scoop out crispy garlic and use as topping. Add garlic-infused oil to literally anything to make it taste amazing.
Super-cheap oil spray thingy from Aldi. Think it was $10. So useful.
Rosemary-salt. In a blender, combine rosemary, salt crystals, lemon rind, peppercorns. Whizz. Zero to hero.
Left-over Sichuan pepper-salt. Grind Sichuan peppercorns with salt. Left over from making 白切鸡, bái qiē jī, “white-cooked chicken”, then shallow-frying half the chicken the following day for a lovely crispy-skin experience.