New twists: Spiralizers and pasta-makers
As healthy as they are, crisp apples and carrots can be hard for little kids to chomp on. Maybe that’s part of the thinking behind all the new fruit and vegetable spiralizers, mechanical marvels that super-slice produce into cute, easily chewed strands and curlicues that’ll have children singing “On Top of Spaghetti.”
A 2017 International Home + Housewares Show award winner, the manually operated Oxo Good Grips hand-held spiralizer ($14.99, )isa compact, low-cost introduction to the species, turning out uniform, curly vegetable noodles with the texture and mouth-feel of pasta. Starfrit’s new $59.99 electric spiralizer
features interchangeable blades with a safety interlock, while the soon-coming Bella electric spiralizer works four transformative shapes on fruits and vegetables: ribbon, linguine, spaghetti and fettuccine/curly fries.
I’m champing at the bit to taste test the output of a real spaghetti-maker: the Philips Viva compact pastamaker ($199.99 at HSN. It’s also available at WilliamsSonoma, Kohl’s, Philips.com and Bed, Bath & Beyond, and “coming soon” to Amazon.com). It was on display at the recent home and housewares show at Chicago’s McCormick Place in March. While capable of processing and spewing forth up to 14 ounces of fresh, super-fastcooking spaghetti (two to three servings), this smallfootprint motorized processor hardly takes up any shelf or counter space. Pasta shape and flavor can be customized. And the see-through ingredients compartment offers quite the entertaining mixing/ kneading/extruding show.