I'm regularly baking pies again and I might want to get into pastry a bit more and looking for tools to help me out.  I have seen about a dozen videos about creating the perfect pastry dough and I cannot decide between the Dough Blender and the Dough Cutter/Scraper. The dough cutter seems more versatile white the blender should do it's job of blending the butter with the flour the best. However, the people using the cutter made it look easier then the people with the blender where the dough and butter mixture stuck between the blades and you still had to push it out with your hands or another tool. Whereas holding two cutters you can clean them by simply scraping them against each other and to shove the blend together with one scraper and chopping with the other looked very efficient.  So I am very much leaning towards buying two good sturdy cutters. But every pro makes his tools look so easy to work with. I am just going to make a dough two times a week at the most and I am looking for the right choice.  -edit-  I understand my question is a bit hard to answer. The short question is:  Do I need to be a Japanese ninja to blend my butter and flour with 2 scrapers/cutters? 
To set expectations here, you aren't going to infuse flavors into the middle of steamed vegetables and fungi, you may get some flavor penetration on the outside, but the best bet for flavored vegetables is to coat the outside with the flavor.   When you put flavorings into water for steaming food most of the flavor stays in the water rather than getting onto the food, it's a waste of good ingredients to be honest.   Many of the flavors you are working with are oil soluble, so your best bet would be to infuse the flavors in oil then mix with the food after steaming. A tablespoon or two of vegetable oil on low heat would be enough, you could add the garlic, pepper and ginger to the oil and cook it slowly to extract the flavors, then discard the solids. The oil could be drizzled on the vegetables. You could also go for a higher temperature method, sauteing the garlic, pepper and ginger for a short time in oil before adding your steamed vegetables to the pan and sauteing them with the flavored oil. I've used both methods, slightly preferring the second one because I like the extra flavors you get from the maillard reactions.  