Picnic Glory!

I think a picnic is one of life’s little luxuries. Relaxing outdoors with family and friends with no worries and great food and drink is what a picnic should be. Here at Kitchenware Direct, we believe these products will go a long way to facilitating this.

The Ocho and Thermos range of products couple style with functionality to make your next picnic worry free; from watching a romantic sunset with cheese and a bottle of wine to a full blown family outing with copious food there is the product for every occasion. Thermos also offer a great range of mugs, drink bottles and vacuum insulated flasks to keep your drinks at their optimal temperature.

With the picnic sets, the cutlery and utensils are all very durable and hard wearing. There is ample storage area and they even fold in on the sides to reduce space when not being used. The smaller bags have the same high quality accompaniments, but, like the Ocho Black Vigne Picnic Set, is designed to keep a couple of bottles of wine cool and comes with a cheese knife, board and bottle opener!

The picnic rugs that we stock are the final piece of the puzzle for a great picnic. The comfortable fleece covering is protected by a waterproof PVC base that ensures you stay dry even when sitting on wet grass.

These stylish and durable rugs are available in two colours; light tan and cool grey. Perfect for the summer months, these would make an ideal gift for Christmas.

For all your liquid picnic needs, Water Bottles Direct stocks a wide range of 100% BPA free Sigg water bottles, who are regarded as one of the finest makers of water bottles in the market.

With a wide range of styles and sizes for all ages, these safe and fashionable drink bottles are the perfect addition to any picnic. Water Bottles Direct stocks kid's water bottles, sports bottles, Sigg Classic and Sigg Designer bottles, and stainless steel insulated mugs.

Now that you have all the equipment you can think about what you want to take with you on your next picnic. Why not make something really special that people of all ages will love. Here at Kitchenware Direct we recommend making this amazingly simple and tasty chicken club sandwich. Here are the simple ingredients you will need to easily feed 4 people:

• 2 whole chicken breasts
• 4 rashers of crispy bacon
• 12 pieces of lightly toasted bread
• Chopped iceberg lettuce
• 2 sliced large tomatos
• Your favourite mayonnaise
• Your favourite Dijon mustard
• Salt and Pepper.

Simply cook your chicken breast in your preferred way and then slice into generous segments. Cook the bacon and cut in to equal sized pieces.

While you are toasting the bread prepare the lettuce and mix the mayonnaise with the mustard at a ratio of 4 to 1.

To prepare the sandwich coat the bread with the mayonnaise mix and apply lettuce, a few slices of tomato and approximately half of a chicken breast on top. Then add another slice of bread covered in the mayonnaise mix and repeat the process, but this time add a generous amount of bacon instead of chicken and seal with the top piece of bread. Slice diagonally and repeat the process four times and you will have a sumptuous meal for four people that will stay fresh in the insulated compartments of our wide range of coolers and hampers.

Having used this recipe many times I can guarantee you will find it as delicious as I have. You can season the chicken with herbs and spices to your specific taste if you desire.

Take advantage of our low prices and the beautiful weather and head outdoors for one of life’s simple pleasures – the picnic.

Pizza Perfect

I am a big fan of pizza, but was beginning to get fed up with the same old recipes from all the local pizza places. I never really had any freedom to have a pizza just the way I like it. That was until I got my hands on the Multifunctional Pizza Oven. Now I can add my favourite sauces and toppings on any base that I chose without it costing a fortune and waiting 30 minutes for it to be delivered.

I, like so many of you, love fresh ingredients on my pizza. I feel that from the big chains that you just don’t get the best quality ingredients. Being able to create your own pizzas you know exactly what is in them and that it hasn’t just been thrown together quickly in a production line.

At the moment my favourite pizza to make at home consists of:

• Salami
• Sundried Tomatoes
• Capsicum
• Onion
• Rich tomato and herb base
• Topped with mozzarella and a sprinkling of parmesan cheese

It is so simple and so tasty and the biggest bonus is that from the time you begin to think about making it, within 10 minutes you will be eating it. In the 5 minutes it takes for the Pizza Oven to heat up I can easily have all the ingredients chopped and ready to go. You can slice everything thin or thick, the beauty is you do it the way you like it!

WHY?: The Pizza Maker is perfect for families of all sizes and tastes. Instead of squabbling over what pizzas to get for everyone in the family now we simply just make our own. The range of pizzas I have seen is amazing. From simple ham and cheese to an experimental ‘nacho pizza’ I made that featured refried beans, corn chips, salsa, cheese and a generous helping of sour cream once it came out of the oven. There aren’t any restrictions, only what you do and don’t like.

Simplicity: Many times I have come home from work and been too tired to make a big meal. Even with the emptiest fridge I have been able to find ingredients for a pizza. Any sort of base cooks perfectly and using my pizza cutter I had a hot and tasty meal in front of me in no time.

Extra: The interchangeable deep dish adds a new dimension to the Pizza Oven. Simply take the stone base out and replace with the deep dish to cook a wide range of other foods such as:

• Omelettes
• Frittatas
• Fish fingers
• Warms up pies, quiches and pasties

My honest opinion is that once you start using this Pizza Maker you won’t want to go back to buying from the big chain pizza stores. I have had a lot of fun making and eating the pizzas I have made and am sure that you will have the same experience too.

Start cooking: To find out even more information and how to purchase a Pizza Maker, please visit Kitchenware Direct - Australia's premier cookware and kitchenware retailer. 

Home-made Peanut Butter Ice cream with Mini Marshmallows and M&M's

One thing I know for certain about almost every single child in the world: they love ice cream. And come the hot summer months, there will be a lot of begging and pleading for said icy confection. I've seen it too many a time and when it's sooo hot outside and they're just begging sooo hard, it almost feels like bad parenting to refuse to buy them a scoop.



Let me put another proposition about children forward: they love to act like adults and make things. Therefore they love tinkering about in the kitchen, usually making a mess, in an approximation of what a grown adult does in the kitchen. My mother feared our culinary attempts so much that she convinced me at age 7 that wholemeal Lebanese bread would do as an Apple Pie Crust. It doesn't in any way, shape or form and I still recall my disgust at seeing my slowly and carefully peeled and sliced apples in the wholemeal crust. It scarred me for a good 15 years. I digress...



Let me put through a proposition about parents throughout the world, they're all trying to: cut down on additives, keep the kids amused and save some money. This is bizarrely where I've found a soft serve ice cream machine comes into play. I had some hungry boys to feed one weekend and I had to keep them amused for a short period of time while I was minding them. I've witnessed their mum spend a small fortune fueling their growth spurt with ice cream so I figured this was the best way to amuse them, amuse me and to feed them.



I decided on a Peanut Butter ice cream as it's a kid's (and adult's) favourite flavour and one that would go well with the mix ins. Assembling the unit wasn't too hard, but what I needed to do was make sure that my freezer was at least -18c or colder. If it wasn't then it just wouldn't work. It required a quick defrosting of the freezer but it was about time that it was done and I set the bowl inside a plastic bag and checked the temperature. -24c, excellent!



The next day (although you could do it a minimum of 12 hours later) I filled in the mix ins and made the ice cream mix and put it in the fridge to remain cold. The mix ins had to be a certain size, mini M&M's were ok but full sized ones weren't. Hundreds and thousands and other miniature sized sprinkles were the go. Skittles are fine but probably best saved for a fruity ice cream.



With everything ready, I removed the rock-hard, freezing bowl from the freezer, shaking it to see whether it had any liquid sloshing around (which means that it's not frozen enough). I slotted it in the machine, snapped the lid on, turned it on and started pouring the mix in.



The kids were delighted, it was like a science project coming to life only better as they got to eat it. We waited 15 minutes while it churned and it was fairly firm but not quite right. Then at 23 minutes it looked about the right consistency. They devoured it hungrily, one even briefly getting brain freeze. Their mum was inordinately impressed when she came to pick them up as there was no more whimpering for ice cream and they got a box of it to take home with them (with a warning that they weren't to get it all over the car).



I tasted some too and it was sweet and creamy, if anything I'd add a little salt into the mix to make it more Reese's Peanut Butter Cup-ish. I also preferred it when it was harder (which you can easily do just by leaving it to churn for longer and then scooping it out instead of using the soft serve dispenser).
I got excited about the possibilities, not just for kids but for desserts like the Tetsuya's Green Apple Sorbet I had bookmarked in his cookbook. So whilst this amused and delight the kids to no end, it will also do the same for me and my grown up dinner guests.



Pros: very cheap per batch of ice cream (although there is the initial outlay for the maker), healthy, no additives. easy to understand instructions and easy to put together, mix ins have a very cool way of being dispensed into the ice cream. Kids love it and for the cost of buying 1 child a $5 scoop of ice cream you can feed 8 or 9 kids a scoop.
Cons: A few nooks and crannies when cleaning and mix ins have to be very small. Can make one flavour at a time with 12 hours in between.






Peanut Butter Ice Cream


• 350g smooth peanut butter

• 2/3 cup of caster sugar

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1 3/4 cup milk

• 3/4 cup of cream



1. Whisk peanut butter and sugar in a bowl until combined


2. Whisk in milk and cream until smooth and the sugar has dissolved. You can make this ahead of time and cover and keep in the refrigerator.


3. When ready to use, remove from fridge and pour into frozen bowl via the top opening. Churn for 15-25 minutes depending on how soft or hard you want your ice cream.

Smoked Trout and Fennel salad with Wasabi Mayo dressing

I don't think that I need to convince anyone in Australia that salad or seafood is a good idea at Christmas. One Christmas Eve I attempted to buy fresh fish from the Pyrmont Fish Markets only to be greeted by a scene of utter chaos. Luckily, everyone was in a fairly jolly mood knowing that there was a lot of fish to be bought, although I sensed the mood could have turned ugly had they run out of seafood (Seinfeld Chocolate Babka episode flashback).



Considering our temperatures can reach 40c in December, a salad is always one of the more welcome items on the table. And this salad pairs a fish that you don't need to get from the Fish Markets, indeed it's one you could buy a few weeks ahead of time, with some fresh yet substantial ingredients. Sold? OK the final pitch is the taste: a smoked trout with a scattering of salad leaves, crispy fennel and waxy kipflers and a hint of zing (or a ferocious growl - your choice) with the creamy wasabi mayonnaise.



I found that using a Vslicer was something I was at first trepidatious about, hearing about lost finger tops and cuts. So much was my fear that I asked my husband to supervise me. We removed the VSlicer from the holder (held snugly with a safety catch). What I needed to do was slice the fennel thinly so I spread open the multilingual instructions and followed the directions on which attachment to use. I V-sliced the fennel in two thicknesses: the number 1 producing a gorgeously thin slice whereas number 2 gave it a sturdier slice for frying. Not so bad-although I admit that I am still scared of the julienning attachments which look a bit medieval.



If you've never removed the flesh from a whole Smoked trout, do not fear, it's easy. Using a sharp knife, cut deep all the way along the belly of the smoked trout (which should already have an incision) like you were slicing a burger bun in half to fill, and flip the fish open and remove the head, backbone and tail in one.



There may be smaller bones within the fish itself, look out for those, especially smaller ones like the ones along the top fin that people may not notice. The skin will also slide away easily from the meat.



I had shunned salad spinners for years. Not for lack of wanting one but from hearing from friends that the ones with cords wore out after a while. But the Kuhn Rikon one has a turning lever and a more sturdy construction so I came with an open mind. I also think that if you can’t buy organic all of the time, with the amount of chemicals used, it’s always good to wash salad leaves as much as possible. This one dries the salad beautifully and you should lose patience with watching it spinning (I didn't) you can always press the button down firmly and it will stop spinning. It’s surrprising how much water it does remove from the delicate leaves and you can see this collect at the bottom.



There's no fancy way to present a salad, on a plate is about it but to give it a special touch, the Laguiole Salad Spoons in a Christmassy red would do the trick. I'd first seen Laguiole cutlery when I dined at Gordon Ramsay's Royal Hospital Road Restaurant in London. My sister recognised the trademark Bee symbol on her steak knife and we set about looking for them in the stores in London. I hunted down a lovely set at Waitrose but missed my opportunity to buy them and have pined for them ever since.





Smoked Trout and Fennel salad with Wasabi Mayo dressing


• 3-4 Kipfler potatoes peeled

• 2 tablespoons of olive oil

• 2 fennel bulbs with fronds reserved

• 1.5 tablespoons of flour mixed seasoned with 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper

• Grapeseed or olive oil for frying

• Baby Spinach leaves

• 1 avocado

• 1 whole smoked trout, deboned and skin removed

For first dressing

• 1/3 cup of Extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and 3 tablespoons of lemon juice for dressing.



For second dressing

• Wasabi

• 1/3 cup of whole egg mayonnaise (Hellmans, S&W or similar)






1. Boil potatoes for 15 minutes in salted water until done and then drain and slice each potato diagonally into 3-4 pieces. Add the 2 tablespoons of olive oil and some salt and pepper and set aside.




2. Cut off fronds from both the fennel and cut it in half. Using a VSlicer slice one fennel bulb using the number 2 thickness (3mm approximately if cutting by hand). Heat the frypan with some of the 1/2 cup of oil and dredge the fennel slices lightly in the seasoned flour and fry until golden and crispy. Drain on a paper towel.





3. Then slice the other fennel very thinly using the Vslicer on the Number 1 thickness.





4.Using the Kuhn Rikon Salad Spinner, take out the green sieve and wash the thinly sliced fennel, baby spinach leaves, and the fennel fronds (that resemble dill). Spin until dry and place in a large bowl along with the potatoes and half of the trout meat and pour over the first dressing.








5. Make second dressing by combining the two using the amount of wasabi that you prefer.



6. Place 1/2 of this salad mix onto a serving plate or bowl and using a Stockholm avocado slicer place 1/2 of the avocado on top of this layer. Then add the rest of the salad and the rest of the avocado and place remaining smoked trout and crispy fennel on top.





7.Drizzle over second wasabi mayonnaise dressing and season with salt and pepper.

Mango and Cranberry Fruitcake: an Australian Christmas cake

I know that fruit cakes divides people. There are some that find it possibly the vilest cake on earth and others that adore it, soaking their fruit for months and polishing off pennies to put in the cake. I always think of grandmothers as the keepers of the fruit cake. They're the ones I usually see making them although I can't say that either of my grandmothers ever did so, one notoriously preferring to socialise than cook.
So please do allow me to throw another variation into the mix. Something a little more Australian that your traditional English fruit cake. For our Christmases, we have a bounty of fresh fruit and one of the best fruits in season is the Mango. A tray of these juicy, sweet mangoes can be yours for $20 which is one of the best things about Christmas (my husband going so far as to request a tray of these last Christmas).






If I could urge any fruit cake lover to do anything, it's to make this cake. You will be duly rewarded in your endeavor with an incredibly moist, dark, rich cake that is unusually light too. The darkness comes courtesy of the muscovado sugar and the lightness comes from the method including the bicarb and the rest of it. My husband, a fruit cake enthusiast (read=maniac) claims this is the best fruit cake he has ever eaten.















Viola! All the meat removed from the pip and no stringy mango between your teeth
I used an Oxo Good Grips Mango peeler to help remove the pip from the meat and found that it worked a treat in removing almost every bit of the meat from the pip. Macadamias are also an Australian ingredient and whilst I know that cranberries aren't exactly Australian but they are certainly festive looking. I also found that the Analon Suregrip Square Springform Cake tin was a much easier way of easing out the cake. As it's somewhere in between a heavy fruit cake and a regular cake, I didn't want to risk it using a non springform cake tin.






This won't be one of those cakes that you sit in the living room until Christmas. Like most things around Christmas, making a fruitcake falls to the wayside while you are battling Christmas queues in a last dash attempt to avoid buying Christmas presents from a petrol station. You can make it a week or a few days ahead and it will be good as it's so moist, but you will need to keep it in an airtight container in the fridge.












Mango and cranberry fruitcake
• 500g mixed dried fruit (premium mix)
• 150g dried cranberries
• 100ml rum
• 1 large fresh mango (400-430g)
• 100g chopped macadamias
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 large eggs
• 150g muscovado sugar or dark brown sugar if not available (or 200g if you like your fruit cake quite sweet)
• 1 1/2 cups of self raising flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of bi carb of soda


1. Soak the dried fruit and cranberries with the rum overnight or for as long as you have patience for.
2. Prepare an Analon Suregrips Square Springform 22x22cms baking tin with greaseproof paper. Using a Mango peeler, remove all of the flesh from the mango and chop it up into smallish pieces.


3. Preheat oven to 160c. In a large saucepan, place dried fruit, cranberries, mango, rum liquid and water and bring to the boil and simmer on a low heat for 5 minutes. Cool.
4. Add sifted flour, bicarb and crumbled muscovado sugar.


5. Lightly beat 2 eggs and add them to the mix. Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake for 50-60 minutes until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
6. I decorated these simply with blanched almonds although you could continue the theme with some bought honey roasted whole macadamias. To blanche almonds, pour boiling water over almonds and rest for 5 minutes. Then slip the skins off by rubbing them with your fingers. You can also bake them briefly in a low oven to dry them out.

Recipe Christmas Pork Roast Porchetta

A Traditional Christmas Roast-Porchetta

I often find myself torn at Christmas. Torn between wanting something traditional, much like everything that you see on television and at the movies of softly falling snow, bright glowing Christmas lights, huge trees and convivial family scenes indoors where tartan features regularly. And then I'm confronted with the reality. An Australian Christmas where the weather reaches up to 40 degrees and the idea of slaving over a hot oven for hours would make a party pooper and martyr out of the most well intentioned cook.

I usually choose a bit of both in order to satisfy the traditionalists and the modernists. This year what caught my eye was an Italian Roast Porkcalled Porchetta. I ate this once at a London restaurant Arbutus (a place with 1 Michelin star) and it was one of the most delicious entrees I've had, the pork fall apart soft and sliced paper thin.

Which brings me to another point. I hate overeating. I feel uncomfortable when I do it and afterwards all I want to do is curl up and sleep or hide so I don't do it often. Although I feel compelled to do it at Christmas where the spread is so bountiful and delicious. But this is where the Porchetta can actually help. By slicing it paper thin, you eat a much smaller amount of the meat. It's so richly gorgeous and fatty you don't really need to hoe into a thick slab anyway. Not unless your Christmas Wish was an angioplasty.

The advantage of cooking the meat on a low heat for such a long time is that the meat is meltingly tender and the fat melds into the meat perfectly. The lemon zest is the perfect antidote to the fatty meat giving is a zing where it is needed. I usually do like a Pork Roast with an Apple sauce but this one doesn’t need it, although you could certainly pair it with one if you’re missing it terribly.

And if I can offer any advice, save your sanity, don't make everything yourself and instead have everyone bring a plate. I tried making everything myself one Christmas and it was the most miserable Christmas ever for me. The year afterwards, everyone sensed my impending crisis and offered to bring a plate each. And it became a magnificent Christmas where I was only committed to making two dishes and everyone else brought something fantastic and home made which invited even more conversation. And conversation about food and passing on recipes during a family Christmas is much more pleasant than reliving Festivus and the "Airing of Grievances", in which each person tells everyone else all the ways they have disappointed him or her over the past year. Trust me, we've done it.

Christmas Pork Roast Porchetta

• 1.8kg large square of pork belly. Ask the butcher to remove with the excess fat and bones but keep the bones to use as a trivet
• 1 tablespoon salt flakes or sea salt plus 2 teaspoons for seasoning after roasting
• 1/2 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 fat garlic cloves skinned and sliced into pieces
• zest of 1/2 a large lemon
• 2 tablespoons rosemary
• 1 tablespoon fennel seeds
• 5 fresh sage leaves
• olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 220c or 200c fan forced. Using a large mortar and pestle, pound salt, pepper, garlic, lemon zest, rosemary, fennel seeds and sage leaves until it resembles a rough paste

2. Place bones on the bottom of the baking dish so that the roast can sit on it.

3. With an absolutely dry pork belly place it skin sin down and with your hands rub the herb paste into the pork and then roll meat up into a roll and secure with a few pieces of string (I used 5). Drizzle oil over the skin and sprinkle salt over the top.

4. Place on top of the bones and place in the oven for 15 minutes. Then lower the temperature to 180c/160c fan forced and cook for a further 2hours and 15 minutes.

5. Baste every half an hour using a baster such as the Cuisipro Dual Baster.

6. Throw out bones (tempted as you may be to nibble on them, they will be like deep fried ribs). Rest for 15 minutes before carving thinly.

Cookware Comparison

Stainless Steel, Aluminium and Hard Anodised Pans. Which ones?

I’ll put up my hand now and admit that my cupboard is an exercise in how not to choose your pans. I, like a lot of people I suspect, used the trial and error way of honing in and deciding on my favourite pot and I know little about the difference between Stainless Steel, Aluminium and Hard Anodised pans, going more by the brand than by any inherent quality they may possess. The one thing I do know is that once you use a good pan you’ll find that you’ll have difficulty going back to those $15 supermarket jobs that seemed alright when you first moved out of home but then swelled at the base and scratched on the surface.

Not all pans are the same, as I learnt with some research. Without boring you with all of the details (and I sometimes nodded off) here is the quick lowdown, all you need to know before you buy when comparing Stainless Steel, Aluminium and Hard Anodised pans (all 3 make up 85% of the world’s cookware business and 90% of department store cookware business). “Traditional” means that there is no non stick coating applies to it, while “Non stick” obviously means that they have non stick properties.

Non stick versus traditional

The advantage of non stick versus traditional is obvious. You food won’t stick to the pan. Non-stick is the most slippery substance in the world, shorted to "PTFE" in trade talk.

Non-stick coatings are apparently safe and do not pose a hazard to human health. If particles of non-stick coating are ingested, the coatings are inert and nontoxic.

Stainless Steel traditional

The quality of SS depends on the nickel content. 18/10 stainless steel with 10% nickel content is the grade to look for although for pans 18/8 is also acceptable. How shiny it is depends on how it is polished.

Nerd fact: The number "18" stands for the chromium content, which is the same for all stainless steel. Chromium prevents rusting.

As Stainless Steel cannot conduct heat well, you either need an aluminium base or a copper one (a aluminium base needs to be thicker, up to 3 times thicker than copper). They’re bonded either by using “Brazing” or “Impact” bonding (eg Scanpan Impact), Impact bonding being the more favoured way as the process for Brazing bonding means that if you expose the pot to prolonged overheating or boil it dry for an extended period the base will separate.

BUT of course it’s not that easy and as aluminium and copper are soft metals, you may have heard of Tri ply, where there is an additional Stainless Steel protector under the copper or aluminium base. This is the pan I have and if it’s possible to love a pan, then yes I do. There are also “tri ply clad” like All-Clad where the whole base and sides of the pan or pot have 3 layers, not just the base, and obviously these will conduct heat up the sides well as well as the bottom. And stay away from any tri ply with a carbon steel core instead of aluminium, just because it’s heavier, doesn’t mean that it’s better. Carbon is a poor conductor of heat.

And as for which is a better base, copper or aluminium for heat control, copper is better but for retained heat, aluminium is better. French chefs prefer copper pans but a copper pan gets hot very quickly and cools off very quickly. This level of control is why copper has always been the French chefs' choice. If you have chef fantasies (and no I don’t mean Mr Darcy fantasies about Gordon Ramsay but being a chef), you may favour copper.

But the obvious advantage to the aluminium retaining heat is that when you go back for seconds, the aluminium will keep the food warm for longer whereas a copper base will cool off quickly.

Brands: Scanpan Impact, Essteele Australis, Scanpan Fusion 5, Scanpan Fusion 5 Copper, Scanpan Coppernox

Stainless Steel non stick

The above applies for non stick and like most pans as you’ll see, thickness is the key to quality in pans. We’ve probably been drilled into us by now that non sticks can only be used on low to medium heat so I’ll dispense with that warning. Brands:Jamie Oliver Professional Series Stainless Steel, All-Clad Non Stick, Tefal Ingenio, Circulon Steel Elite

Aluminium traditional

Aluminium is the most popular finish because it is inexpensive compared to Stainless Steel and Copper and conducts heat well. Thickness is the key, the thicker the pan the better. They can either be very good quality (huge stock pots found in restaurant kitchens) or shockingly bad (the kind you’ll find in variety stores or supermarkets). Needless to say, steer clear of the latter.

Aluminium Non stick

Again thicker is better. Don’t be dazzled by pretty patterns on the base of the pan. It is size that matters!

One thing to look out for is that aluminium expands when it heats up so if the base of an aluminium pan (or stainless steel pan with an aluminium disc) is absolutely flat prior to heating, it will most likely become convex when heated, due to metal expansion. This creates what is called a "spinner," which is very dangerous when cooking as the surface is not steady or flat to the heat.

Good cookware has a concave base so that when it heats up and the metal expands, the base remains flat and steady on the heat. You can test this by turning a pan over and putting a ruler on the base. The centre of the pan's surface should not be touching the ruler, rather slightly concave. It is this concave base that prevents warpage.

One thing that aluminium is is soft, so cooking utensils will start to break down the surface quicker than other finishes and thus the non stick coating will gradually decrease.

P.S. We have all heard about aluminium and Alzheimers. The latest is that there is no correlation between the two and that Alzheimers is due to a gene mutation.

Brands: Scanpan Classic, Scanpan Professional

Hard Anodised non stick

This is the most popular and fastest growing category. Again the toughness and durability of these are better than regular aluminium or Stainless Steel pans. The non stick coating is also protected due to the durability. Again, like a lot of pans, the thickness is what determines the quality (rather than price).

And the reason for this category’s popularity is the durability of the non stick. It is at least 100% more durable than aluminium non stick pans. Like aluminium the surface is porous allowing the non stick coating to be lokce din permanently but it is much harder than aluminium which means that whilst cooking utensils can break down the surface of aluminium, it cannot with the Hard Anodised surface because it is so hard.

Brands: Circulon Infinite, Jamie Oliver Hard Anodised, Anolon Advanced

All the best in cooking,

Not Quite Nigella