Jonny McCambridge: Just what my cluttered kitchen needs … the cooking gadget of my dreams
It is perhaps the modern condition to have too much stuff. While the quantity of (mostly) meaningless possessions grows over time, the room that I have to store them in stays the same, resulting in a certain messiness and the necessity for the occasional big clean-out.
This sense of overcrowding is most acute in my kitchen. I’ve always had a weakness for buying gadgets to (supposedly) aid my cooking efforts and a stubborn resistance towards getting rid of them when it is clear they serve no purpose beyond gathering dust.
I could provide a long list of items which I’ve purchased in the earnest belief that they might change my life. In fact, that’s exactly what I will do.
There was the ice cream maker (used three times), the pasta maker (used twice), the slow cooker (I lost patience with it) and the pressure cooker (too stressful).
I was excited about the electric juicer at first, but the novelty soon wore off when I grew bored of cutting up pineapples and melons and realised how hard it was to clean discarded pulp out of the parts.
Even more useless gadgets were to follow. In purely mathematical terms, no item takes up more cupboard space relative to its usage than the salad spinner. The electric knife I simply could not use and my dream of wafer-thin slices of roast beef was replaced by the reality of a messy pulp of gnarled and shapeless bits of meat.
The spiraliser, I was able to use perfectly well, but quickly realised that it was utterly pointless. The mandoline slicer, bought on an impulse, has never even been removed from its box because I genuinely don’t trust myself to use it without severing a limb.
There are some fads I have resisted. I’ve never bought a bread machine because I take some sort of masochistic pleasure from making dough by hand. The air fryer, which is currently popular, I have eschewed because I’ve not yet seen one with a container large enough to produce a portion of chips substantial enough to satisfy my appetite.
In addition to the above, I have a huge amount of Tupperware in my kitchen. For reasons which I can’t understand, I go through life with the prominent and persistent fear that I’m going to run out of small plastic containers to store food. Therefore, I buy Tupperware on an almost weekly basis. (I once tried to explain this to a psychiatrist who was treating me when I was unwell. His face was a picture.)
Some weeks ago, I was presented with an Amazon voucher. It was for a small sum but enough to make a purchase that I felt I should not rush into. So, I hesitated, I talked it over with my wife, the need to buy something that I would not quickly regret, something from which the whole family could benefit.
I tried to identify an object which would enrich all our lives, an item which we were all the poorer for not already possessing. I took time, rejecting several ideas as too extravagant or not truly useful. And then it came to me, the gadget that I knew would make an undeniable difference….I was going to buy a pizza oven.
I should explain that it has been one of the quests of my life to master the art of home-made pizza. How can the taste and experience of the takeaway boxed Italian bread with toppings be replicated in a domestic setting?
I’ve experimented with different yeasts and flours for my pizza dough and herb mixes for the tomato sauce. I’ve tried just about every topping that is known and invented several exotic combinations of my own.
However, while my home-made pizzas are passable, I’ve always been aware that something is not quite right. I’ve tinkered with the hardware, cooking the dough in the oven or the barbecue. I’ve gone through multiple pizza stones (to avoid the dreaded soggy bottom) and own a paddle with a long handle which I coat with semolina powder to ensure the pizzas can be easily and efficiently slid in and out of the cooking vessel.
And yet, I am still not content. When I order takeaway pizza from the shop in the village, I converse with the man who makes them. He has been generous in letting me study the gas-fired oven. It reaches a top temperature of 480 degrees Celsius. A conventional domestic oven won’t go much higher than 220. No matter how hard I try, the results of my domestic offerings will never be the same….unless I buy a pizza oven.
When I excitedly announced my purchase to my wife, her first questions were “How big is it and where are you going to keep it?” This was not exactly the reaction I was hoping for, although it did introduce the question of dimensions into my mind for the first time. One of the challenges of buying stuff online is not being certain of the size of the object until it is delivered (yes, I know you can read the measurements in the small print, but who does that?)
I watched out the window nervously on the day the pizza oven was due to arrive. A lorry pulled up and I was alarmed when I saw two men carrying the huge box towards my front door.
I removed the gleaming oven from the box (in which I could have fitted my car) and tried to work out where to put it in my already cluttered kitchen. I struggled to haul it onto the counter where it dwarfed the microwave beside it. My dreams of crispy Neapolitan pizza were already being replaced by concerns over the practicalities of what I had done.
My son arrived home from school and almost fell into the enormous box I had carelessly discarded in the front hallway.
“That’s the biggest box I’ve ever seen daddy.”
“Yes, it is.”
“You’re in trouble when mummy get home.”