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My kitchen is full of useless junk—gadgets that looked like a good idea at the time. Here is my list of the items that I still use, in the hope that it will save your money and temper. When you decide what you need, buy the very best quality there is. Sometimes you will do best to go to the shops that sell to the catering trade, where the equipment may lack bright colours and fancy decoration but will be of better and more enduring quality.

Stainless-steel knives are not much good to any cook. Buy three good-quality steel ones varying from the tiny vegetable knife to the large heavy one that has enough weight to be used as a chopper; it should curve upwards to the point, so that you roll it as you cut.

Use this one for dicing onion. It will also divide a chicken into pieces. Or use the back of it to hammer at a steak or escalope. Buy at least one filleting knife which looks exactly like the others, but has a thinner and more flexible blade. Buy any sharpener you can use, and use it often.

A really good bread knife is most useful. Get one with a saw edge—use it for all sorts of kitchen jobs—it slices tomatoes particularly well.

You probably have a peeler. I find that stainless-steel ones are best, although difficult to get. It is extraordinary how hard the catering shops try to force inefficient stainless-steel knives on the customer, while all the other kitchen gadgets that would benefit from stainless steel are both hard to find and ridiculously expensive. For instance, a stainless-steel strainer is a great help. The conical ones are called ‘Chinois’ and give you the greatest area of strainer for size—this speeds the job. A French Moulin, which is a strainer with a turning device to force things along, is a wonderful gadget. Two less necessary gadgets are poultry shears—very powerful scissors—and a roasting thermometer which you leave in the meat so that it registers the temperature at the centre of the meat. This is a dead certain way of timing the joint. Two very large serving plates are useful. You can put all the vegetables on one plate, or surround the roast meat with the vegetables. Junk shops are full of these huge plates—buy one.

Get one really good tin-opener. The sort that fix to the wall are best. Whatever sort of purist you are, you are going to open a lot of tins over the next decade. Fix another light in the kitchen—I bet it needs more light.

We all know that saucepans should be thick and heavy and all that jazz, but let me suggest that you buy those with two little metal handles instead of one long burnable plastic one. These saucepans can be put in the oven, which for my money is well worth the penalty that the handles get hot. So the next thing you need is half a dozen thick oven cloths. Those like gloves are very good. You know what I think about blenders: they are wonderful—save up to buy one. Refrigerators are far less important in my opinion and by no means a necessity for the work that many kitchens do.

The butcher will give you a handful of short skewers if you ask him. Use them to hold the joint together; a roasted piece of beef will taste better if you remove it from the bone only just before you cook it. Rolling it and jabbing the skewers in is easy, and you won’t have that huge piece of fat inside that the craftier butchers insert. Better still, and even easier, cook the joint still on the bone. Certain joints lend themselves to stuffing, e.g. shoulder of lamb, breast of lamb, leg of lamb or pork. In these cases secure the flap over the stuffing with the skewers. Many experts still use needle and thread, but this is tedious work. These skewers will rust. Dry them carefully after washing. Long (12-in.) skewers are great for kebab: simple, yet most impressive. The authentic ones are flat in section, most of the ones on sale in England are like a piece of wire. They will do. The kebab skewer conducts heat through the centre of the meat, etc., while the outside is being grilled. For this reason wooden skewers are no good for kebab. In the same way potatoes roasted in their jackets will cook more quickly with a couple of short skewers (or nails) run into them (remove before serving).

For maximum efficiency, have two scales: one to weigh small amounts under one pound, the other one for joints of meat. You can do without the latter one if you make a note of the weight of the meat before leaving the butcher’s shop. It is important to be able to measure volume as well as weight. A simple transparent plastic measure will do as long as you remember this:

An American pint is 16 oz.

A British one is 20 oz.

A standard cup is half a pint.

Measure therefore according to the nationality of the recipe (see Measuring section).

A double boiler is one of the most used kitchen items. It gives a gentle all-round heat by surrounding the cooking vessel with a jacket of hot but not boiling water. It can be simply improvised by putting a basin in a saucepan. On a larger scale a water-container into which saucepans are placed on the stove is called a bain-marie. Mostly seen in restaurants, it keeps sauces at a gentle heat without spoiling. The same principle is applied, inside the oven, for terrines and Crème Caramel (see page 276). In using a water-jacket prevent the base of the inner container from resting flat on the bottom of the water-container. If it does, the contact will conduct heat directly and make the water-jacket useless.

A heat diffuser is another way of spreading the heat under a pan. It is very useful, for even the best-organized cooks sometimes face the problem of keeping something warm without spoiling it. If you are brave enough to put earthenware pots on the gas (manufacturers swear they will endure it), you probably already use a mat. Earthenware pots come in all shapes and sizes, both English and French. One really huge one is worth having—cassoulet for less than a dozen is not worth the bother. Make sure the lid fits well.

A cast-iron casserole with a heavy lid is another useful utensil for slow cooking inside the oven, or on top. A marmite is a tall narrow pot designed to present a small surface of liquid and therefore a low rate of evaporation. This is used for long cooking of stocks. A marmite can be made of anything, but the one I like best is a stainless-steel model.

Stoves have now begun to improve dramatically with the import of the transatlantic models. I particularly like the built-in oven units. They can be installed at eye-level, and the interior light and glass door become really useful. The Moffat has a built-in meat thermometer which makes meat cooking a simple and precise science, for the timer rings when the centre of the meat is done. With the built-in oven comes the table-top counter unit, a stainless-steel platform containing four cooking rings which can be gas or electric. This means you can have an electric oven with gas rings, which I personally think is the best of both worlds.

A flour dredger—a thing like a huge pepper pot—makes flouring meat or fish very simple.

An egg whisk is an essential thing. Have whatever kind you like best. There is a device called a Horlicks mixer (a plunger in a straight-sided glass) which beats egg whites better than anything else I know.

A wire rack for cooling is useful.

Have at least one terrine. It can be used for a small stew.

Tins: A pie dish, flan tin, loaf tin (great for pork pies) and a cake tin.

One really good ladle (stainless steel if possible). The decorated porcelain ones are fine for the table, but too fragile for the cook.

A mandoline is a slicing device. Buy it if you do enough slicing, or would do enough if you had it.

A big, kitchen-size pepper mill is a basic necessity. If you can afford another for the table, do so.

A wire basket (panier à salade) gets a lot of the moisture off lettuce, but the leaves should still be dabbed dry or the water will dilute the dressing. Use the basket (plastic ones are no good) to dry out celery leaves, save them to put into stew, etc.

A wooden spoon doesn’t get hot, nor does it scratch the pan. Use it when making scrambled egg to prove this. The best kind have a square corner on the bowl to get into the corners.

A really thick, good-quality chopping board will last for ever. Keep it wiped down and clean, and you will be able to use it for bread. Whisk it away after the main course and it reappears with cheese on. Or you can buy three.

Buy a good omelette pan. Keep it clean, use it just for omelettes. It must be made from heavy-gauge metal. Warm it before use.

Any really large dish or bowl will do for the salad—you don’t have to have a wooden one which is very expensive. Keep it only for salad and serve a salad as frequently as possible.

I have half a dozen old china plates which, because they are old and ugly, never get smashed. I use them to serve meals that demand very hot plates. Roast meat, for instance, is more easily carved if you rest it out of the oven, but in a warm place, for 15 minutes before serving. If you do this, a really hot plate will prevent the meat from being distinctly cool by the time the poor old carver gets around to serving himself.

A soufflé dish is something for which there is no substitute. Best buy one small one (say five inches across), big enough for two portions, and one really large one for entertaining. Tiny dishes for individual servings of egg dishes, etc., are rather luxurious. The bowls (with or without lids) in which items like onion soup with grilled cheese floating on it are served individually, are posh.

Plenty of tinfoil (it must be used rather lavishly or not at all), for wrapping joints, poultry, etc., or making papillotes (envelopes in which to wrap fish or chops—more correctly papillotes are made from greased paper). Tinfoil can also be placed over dishes in the oven that are getting a little too much heat.

Greaseproof paper should also be kept on hand.

A tin for small cakes is also useful for tiny Yorkshire puddings.

A large chopper—use side for tenderizing.

Nowadays an electric mixer is no longer considered an extravagance. If you have one it must be kept permanently in the place where it operates, for no one ever gets machines out of cupboards and sets them up. The large Kenwood mixer will peel potatoes, grind meat, knead dough, slice paper-thin vegetables and grate cheese—mine is used every day.