Seductive Cookware

3rd November 2011 - Thursday

I am invited to a cookery demonstration tonight. It turns out to be more about what you cook the food in, what gadgets you use to prepare it, than the recipes. The stoneware casserole dishes, the spatulas, the melon ballers, the chopping machines, the saucepans and the knives. It’s all high quality - seductive cookware. I can see why you’d want to buy it. Or even better host a party and get some of it free. It taps into my love of kitchen shops - on a par with my love of browsing in bookshops, and the stationery department of Smiths. And Waitrose.

But I also know that you can do most things in a kitchen with a chopping board and a knife. Of which I already have several. And I know that if I made a baked Camembert with a filling of chopped pecans, green chillis and apricot jam ( which was the demonstration recipe tonight) it would taste just as horrible cooked on a stone plate as cooked on one of my old baking trays.

Mind you, there was a glass batter bowl/jug with a handy lid which I thought would be very useful. I might just order one of those - or several of different sizes. And a percentage will go to the charity Age Concern. And I did win a raffle prize of a cheese knife which could be a gift for someone who eats a lot of cheese......I think my husband had cheese on toast for supper tonight - that delicious savoury smell was hanging around the kitchen when I came home - making me hungry.