Once Works Well was pure technology. Now it seeks merely to divert.
Pansy subjects - Verse! Opera! Domestic trivia! - are now commonplace.
The 300-word limit for posts is retained. The ego is enlarged

Sunday 6 July 2008

Distrust giant steps for mankind

Great leaps forward in the kitchen end up, as the Americans elegantly put it, getting filed under Drop Dead. Think electric carving knifes and chicken rotissomats. The best developments are incremental. This pan of ours, fairly recently acquired, qualifies I think. The holes in the curtain below the lid "stop the lid diddling" (in the judgement of my technical adviser) and, since the holes align with pouring lips on the pan itself, they allow sieved water to be got rid of. Also the pan looks good.

No one who has commented on my posts will need telling that the vegetable is rainbow chard which I was about to sub-title the poor man's asparagus. I now withdraw this casual definition. Chard has a flavour and - especially - a consistency all its own.

Further note on pans. Speaking as the house washer-up I regard non-stick surfaces as terrific. But in the end they get scratched and the pan should then be thrown away. Not used to mix paint or to create a bird-bath - thrown away!

2 comments:

Lucy said...

Dying. They're good for dying. Or you go to Emmaus and buy an old pan. I keep the old fryer for bacon because that's what buggers them up (the salt), and just add extra oil. Then fry mushrooms in the bacony oil, not the healthiest option but who cares?

any ideas for keeping the rainbow chard rainbow coloured?

Roderick Robinson said...

Gosh, you had me scared. I take it that's "dyeing"? Go to Emmaus, eh? There's one in Nantes and in three goes I never found it open. The horaires d'ouverture are shown on a poster near the door but since they locked off the car park I would have needed binoculars. Nor could I find them in the phone book.

Re: chard. My Head of Culinary Research initially said don't boil it too long. But I don't think you would - you're not that sort. Later she confessed to preferring the steamer.