Serving suggestions
A look at the best kitchen gifts, gifts with a design aesthetic old or new, and gifts that add a touch of fun to the season.
PASTA MAKING
In my pantry, Barilla spaghettini is stored in its original box but the National Gallery of Australia shop sells Alessi Rigatone spaghetti holders in orange, clear or cobalt blue rigid plastic with a red tomato knob handle ($59). Flash items for the kitchen bench.
If you plan to make your own pasta, Tutto Continental in Mawson has the ultimate electrical Marcato Ristorantica pasta machine that makes its own dough. But at the affordable end, it also stocks the Mercato Atlas stainless steel pasta maker ($99.95). Calabria-born Gina Cristofaro, who works at Tutto, says he's owned one for 27 years. It is turned by hand and you have to mix your own dough in a basin but it makes perfect cannelloni.
SERVING BREAD
The Craft ACT Shop in the city is the first retailer in Australia to stock the new Fink bread bins ($336). These sleek bins have a moulded acrylic top and a silver base. They come in lime green, white, charcoal and blue. The Craft ACT Shop also sells Treehorn breadboards, designed in Tasmania by Joe Chester, long ($88) or short ($55). The boards are made from wood and have a bright splash of colour on the edges, white, black, red, purple, pink or turquoise.
ECO GREEN
My kitchen fruit and veg scraps go into a 16-year-old garden compost bin made by Reln, the parent company of Australian Tumbleweed. The Canberra Environment and Sustainability Centre in Acton, which holds its Eco Elves night market this Friday, has partnered with Tumbleweed to bring you the new 140 litre compost tumbler ($189) for small gardens and courtyards, and the Organi bin ($20) to keep in your kitchen for organic waste. Available online, ecoaction.com.au or tumbleweed.com.au. Collect the tumbler and bin in Fyshwick.
Fair Trade kitchen vegie scrubbers at Shop Basics in Fyshwick are handmade in Sri Lanka from unbleached coco fibre and galvanised wire ($3.95). The larger vegie brush has an alstonia wood handle sealed with clear non-toxic coating and an unbleached cotton rope to hang it up is $4.95. Shop Basics manager Maryke Booth also uses a coco fibre brush for drink bottles; medium size $3.95.
A Microplane grater makes fine zesting magically easy, without grating fingers. Kate Wellington at the Essential Ingredient in Kingston stocks the US-made Microplane zesters Artisan, with a plastic handle ($22), and Gourmet, which is metal-framed ($40). She uses a four-sided Microplane, which grates, zests and slices ($89).
TO THE TABLE
Canberra's most eye-catching bowls are at Home by Creations at Manuka. Discovered at a trade show in France earlier this year, the ceramic bowls are made by Italians Ivana and Saura Vignoli at the Faenza Istituto d'Arte for ceramics. Their studio opened in 1976.
Inspired by Mediterranean, Islamic, Hispano-Moresque, Roman and Byzantine styles, the full fire-reduction bowls have iridescent reflections and are painted in metal oxide. My favourites feature dark ocean-blue backgrounds with shoals of sardine-like fish (small$140, large $1420). Use them for salads, nuts or fruit but empty looks best (see ceramichevignoli.com).
CHILL FACTOR
On editor Kirsten Lawson's personal wish list for this season is a benchtop ice-cream maker, one that you don't need to put in the freezer because it has its own refrigeration unit. The Essential Ingredient stocks Cuisinart machines ($549) that do everything on the bench.
Rhonda Arnall of the Chameleon Ice Creamery, which has won prizes at the Royal Easter Show in Sydney for her rose petal ice cream and lemon sorbet, uses a commercial Italian Carpigiani pasturiser for the milk and a batch freezer - each item costs new about $45,000. She also has a 100-year-old demonstration model made from wood, where ice and salt are placed around the edge and you hand churn. Try Chameleon's flavours at Queanbeyan Markets this Saturday and at Carols by Candlelight at Lanyon on Sunday.
Jan Martin-Brown of Cooking Coordinates at Belconnen Markets has a class on making home-made ice-cream this Saturday, led by university student James Solomon. It stocks the Canadian Donvier ice-cream maker ($167) and Martin-Brown has been using one for 37 years. She says hand-churning a litre of ice-cream is easy and fun with kids. The white unit with clear lid is placed in the freezer for seven hours before churning. If you have an American KitchenAid mixer, Cooking Coordinates sells ice-cream attachments ($195).
It also has new Zoku paddle pop makers ($47.80) that make three fruity popsicles in the freezer in seven to nine minutes.
COFFEE AND CARDS
To combine coffee and cards, look at Leafy Sea Dragon Artwork (mickashley.org). Mike Ashley's retro paintings of coffee spots around Canberra were exhibited at Belconnen Arts Centre in October. His coffee cards are for sale at Shop Handmade and prompted me to stroll along City Walk to cute Kindle Cafe for a coffee.
If you want to take home coffee beans, try those roasted by the team at Red Brick Espresso at Curtin shops ($14 for 250 grams). Tim Manning says they are celebrating the first birthday of the cafe with the delivery of a tonne of green beans, Colombian Huila and Ethiopian Sotia, for roasting in their new Probat L12 roaster from Germany.