Kitchen Cornucopia

Posted by Verity on February 9, 2015 in Blog, Living today | 1 comment

Egg in a whisk/Timothy Vollmer/flickr

Apologies for the resolutely domestic tone of the following, but I think it’s to do with still being in the dark days of winter, and consequently yielding to the urge to cocoon. It should pass once Spring breaks through (and see Dame Tara’s blog for signs of it).

There is an evil fascination about the Lakeland catalogue, which gets bigger and heavier, and makes a louder thwack on the doormat, every time one is delivered. It offers the prospect of having a gadget, utensil or machine for every possible form of food preparation and ingredient. The down side is that anyone who wants the complete collection will be obliged to build themselves a kitchen extension to house them.

What would a dame want with a kitchen catalogue, I hear you ask (albeit very faintly . . . )? Well, sometimes sacrifices have to be made to locate the ideal potato peeler – one that stays still and doesn’t go swivelling wantonly all over the place. But in going through the catalogue, it’s hard not to be beguiled by the avocado hugger, the banana bag or the tea tool, although in each case you’ve probably already got something that will do the job just as well: clingwrap, a fruit bowl and a teaspoon.

So what’s the minimum amount of ‘batterie de cuisine’ you could get away with, while not being obliged to exist on a diet of sandwiches? A set of knives, a wooden spoon and a whisk seem to be the basic requirements for most people, though Chinese chefs can evidently accomplish any kind of slicing operation with a cleaver, and I have it on good authority that my mother-in-law could  whisk egg whites on a plate with a knife. (Don’t try this at home, dames!)

I need a bit more help than is offered by the most basic equipment, but there is definitely a balance to be struck, and some immutable laws to be taken into account: anything too small will get thrown away by mistake – bye-bye strawberry huller and orange pick – and anything too big will probably not earn its place on the worktop, so there’s no point in considering the £499.99 Heston Blumenthal blender with soup programme and world’s first one-touch ‘green smoothie’ function – or indeed the vegetable spiralizer, modish though it be. And the secondhand chocolate fountain I was given never made it further than a box under the bed before being despatched to a charity shop.

Then there are those wonderful devices that can be quite happily used for purposes for which they were never intended. As a child I spent many a blissful hour chanting tunelessly as I accompanied myself on an egg slicer – yours for only £3.99 from Lakeland, in a beautiful translucent blue. Legend has it that on my first birthday I ignored my age-appropriate presents in favour of a far more desirable plaything: a sink plunger. But surely there is something sinister about the person who can resist the allure of a sink plunger.

Next week, cleaning, and the domed telescopic cobweb duster – only joking!