Ready, steady, cook for a battle of the gadgets

Tag : kitchenware
Ready, steady, cook for a battle of the gadgets
Oct 31 2008 by Our Correspondent, Liverpool Daily Post
YOU can always rely on flat-sharing to bring out the bizarre inpeople. This applies especially to that key area of conflict, thekitchen.
There are tussles over designated space on fridge shelves, markingindividual coffee grains with your initials, stand-offs overemptying the flip-flop bin.
Or how about that war of nerves over who’d crack first andstart dismantling the week-old pyramid of dirty crockery?
But some flatmates do have the best intentions. I remember one whotold me that all we had to do was buy a hot sandwich maker anddisputes over meal times would be consigned to the past.
This was admittedly an advance on a previous flatmate in anotherhouse who’d expressed similar beliefs over a cheesefondue-maker. I didn’t even have grounds for jeering, asthey’d yet to appear in Haydock (we’re still waiting).
Although, less glamorous, my favourite kitchen gadget was the K-TelChop-O-Matic. Not a wow to boast about at dinner parties, but greatfor attacking spuds – if you like pureed chips, that is.
This was the George Foreman grill of its day, although itcouldn’t produce a fat-free steak in five minutes.
The Foreman grill was an early attempt to add a celebrity brandingto kitchenware, although using a famous heavyweight boxer ratherthan, say, the “Galloping Gourmet” Graham Kerr, showedthat the marketing technique needed some tweaking.
Although Nigella and the rest are all at it these days producingtheir duck-egg blue casserole dishes and stainless steel omelettepans, it seems that true cooks like the simple life, when it comesto implements.
A recent supermarket survey showed that the most popular utensilabove the smoothie-makers and egg-poachers is the humble woodenspoon.
It beats, it stirs, it lifts and it separates. Batteries are notincluded, but then they’re not needed either, so its carbonfootprint is nil. How green can you get? Likewise, other simplefavourites which have stood the test of time include the spatula,the pestle and mortar, and metal tongs. The most underused rangefrom a designer lemon squeezer at £40 a pop to breadmakersand milk-frothers.
To this list, I’d like to add my own personal pieces ofworthless kitchenware junk: juicers, steamers and ice cream-makers.To use them once is a novelty, more than that is a grinding chore(and don’t get me started on the coffee machinery).
You simply can’t beat a good vegetable peeler, althoughI’ve searched in vain for the perfect blade.
Among the technical gizmos which have stood the test of time arethe Kitchenaid Mixer, invented in the 1930s, and the hand-blender.The latter is not to be used if you’re cooking with wine,especially if you don’t pour it in the food.
I should add that the Hostess trolley, that mostest essential itemof the dinner party set of 1970s, has been and gone in my neck ofthe woods.
My mum still uses hers – but only as a plant stand in theporch, which is not exactly what years of culinary research anddevelopment intended it to do.