Imperative cooking: kitchens )/A L )1Thip.jimk. )74,010L intib e I EXPECT it's the
recession, but I keep getting telephone calls from people called Kirsty asking if I'd consider buying a new kitchen. The answer to unsolicited sales calls is to try to sell the caller something: 'So you are Kirsty. Kirsty, I've got just the thing for you. It's time you pampered yourself. I have just what you have always wanted. Just think, a beautiful second edition of Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force. You haven't? Never mind. R will be a surprise. Let me tell you about the cover. It's a picture of Lieutenant W. sitting on his kaffir servant's shoulders in order to fire at . . . But listen to the advantageous never-to-be-repeated terms.'
Anyway, I remembered the calls be- cause I am trying to think of a wedding present for the lovely lady who has been my secretary for the past eight years. Obviously not a kitchen. She's got a kitchen. We've all got kitchens. When Kirsty goes on about kitchens, she doesn't mean kitchens. Kitchens are rooms. What Kirsty means is rather expensive plastic cupboards with recessed searchlights. Hor- rid things, although I gather there are social circles in which wives insist on having new sets of these cupboards every two years, as evidence that their husbands love them and earn as much as other husbands.
No, what makes a kitchen is not the furniture — an old room with a dresser, table, sink and cooker will do — it's the various utensils. Good non-stainless knives and chopping boards, that sort of thing, can be taken for granted. But what are some of the less obvious ones which no Imperative kitchen would be without? First a big iron frying pan, one which will take three pounds of bangers, a dozen eggs or a side of chops. It is amazing how many of those kitchen owners, who have suc- cumbed to the Kirsties and shelled out thousands on plastic gothic cupboards, don't have the basic wherewithal to give four guests and themselves two fried eggs each at the same time. Oval ones — frying pans — are useful because they sit on two burners. But better still, buy, in Spain, a Belseher portable 'paella' gas ring. The medium one will do, with two rings giving gas jets on each side — a gas range of some 15". They work on calor gas, which means they can be used for picnics. Be sure to get the right tubing and connections or the thing might blow up.
Also from Spain, price £1.50, a fish de-scaler which looks like a home-made hairbrush studded with blunted nails. Equally mundane, a waste bin. Waste bins must be as small as possible (consistent with your aim and the largest object to be thrown in them). The smaller they are, the less chance of the accumulated contents ponging. They should also be open: how can you hurl eggshells across the kitchen from the cooker into the bin if it has one of those silly revolving tops?
Still modest, a salad spinner. Modern perhaps but the job, at least, is essential. Water ruins salads. If you insist, keep on patting leaves with tea towels but it doesn't actually produce strength of character. A mandolin for cucumber and other sliced veg; a hammer for crabs' claws and nuts; and a gas blow-torch for removing hairs and down from pigs' feet and ducks or feathered game.
Mrs Anderson has her own contribu- tions: sharp scissors for fish fins (they burn otherwise when grilled or in the oven) and skinning pork chops. (No, she doesn't throw the skins away but they are better done separately.) A small electric mincer (Moufinex) with a sausage-making attach- ment is important. For the odd pound of pork sausages, a hand one is fine. But once you start realising how many types of sausage you should be making at home — fresh pork, merguez, chorizos, morcilla, boudin, game, white sausage, fish sausage — the grinding becomes a little boring. Then Mrs A. is very keen on 'universal lids', which will cover the various lidless frying and sauté pans and casseroles. But I liked best her last requirement of the basic kitchen. Mrs A., as a Turandot-and- crossword fan, likes to try her hand at the odd enigma. What a good kitchen needs above all is nothing. That is, space, clear space, surfaces uncluttered by noticeboards, children's paintings, jars of stale herbs, reproduction brass scales or casseroles displayed for decoration.
I had been thinking of giving Miss Burnell, the bride, the blow-torch (with calor gas cylinder of course) but Mrs A. is right. The most useful thing for the cook who has nearly everything is indeed no- thing.
Digby Anderson
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