"If we have only one pan, then it should probaby be a frying pan."
Nigel Slater/Eat
At the beginning of his section on food cooked in a frying pan, in his book Eat, Nigel Slater tells the story of his first frying pan:
"A frying pan was the first piece of kitchen kit I owned. A basic shallow pan that saw many a meal, from a simple bacon sandwich to a full English. It helped me master everything from fish fingers to fried sea bass. I made risotto and fishcakes in it. Pork chops and hamburgers. Fried chicken and potatoes. I made a curry in it, for heaven's sake."
Which made me think (a) about an 'idea' in my notebook to do frying pans because of something I had read by Delia and (b) was a frying pan my first piece of kitchen kit? So I am here today to try and cover those two things, and probably to ramble fairly meaninglessly anyway.
Let's get the 'first piece of ktchen kit' out of the way first. Mmm. I think that well before I left home, I brought back from France a salad shaker, and a mouli - and I have mentioned those before. They however, were to add to my mother's collection, even though I took them with me when I did leave.
For myself, the first piece - actually two - of kitchen kit that I purchased were two largeish aluminium camping pots which looked very much like this. And I still have at least one somewhere, although I am not sure where. They were bought for our post university camping trip to Yugoslavia with our friends and they cooked up many wonderful meals of sausage and pepper stew, although I also remember cooking potatoes in them. We must have cooked other things besides sausage stews, but I honestly don't remember what they were. The pans were useful for years when I wanted to cook a large quantity of something.
But did I also have a frying pan? Because I suspect that you might not have been able to fry sausages, for example in them very well. Or could you? For, honestly I do not remember a frying pan on that trip. If we had one, I don't think it was mine.
For those Sunday sort of meals that we occasionally cooked at university did we have to supply our own cooking equipment or was there a basic set there? I honestly do not recall.
I do recall a little more when we married. One of my aunts gave us a set of Crown Corning saucepans, which I also still have up in the Gatehouse - our guest house at the top of the drive. I must surely have had a frying pan, but I simply do not remember it. Obviously I must have bought one at some point, or acquired one from somewhere. David brought a few things from his sister's flat when we married - I still have her garlic press.
Today I have several - mostly non-stick - on which more in a moment - as you can see from the photograph at the top of the page, and this one. They are a pain to store aren't they? And for years I have never really known what to do with them until two revelations. First, my friend Monika who has a butler's pantry in her house had a rack on the wall, filleldwith frying pans, similar to the one at the top of the page, and so I vowed to have one in my new kitchen. And I do and it's great. I heartily recommend. Secondly Ikea had a neat storage rack that you could put in a drawer - and it is good - but not nearly as good as hanging them on the wall. I've also seen a kind of rack in which you store them - sort of stacked one above the other on a bench top or in a cupboard.
Nigel Slater claims he has just two - "one cast iron and so heavy I need both hands to lift it, and the other non-stick and light as a feather", but then he also claims he has a small kitchen. I should probably throw out a couple of mine, because I can think of at least a couple which I bought to replace others, and the others are still there.
I was interested in the list of things that he made in his frying pan - which included a risotto and a curry, and indeed you can do all of those things. For all I know you can probably make a cake in one too. Yes you can - I just looked - although nobody who I would think of as a serious cook seems to have a recipe. Chocolate seems to be the favourite. Pancakes though - of course. And yes, I suspect that the other vital piece of kitchen equipment - a pot of some kind is not suitable for as many things as a frying pan. I doubt you could cook an omelette in it for example.
Now non-stick. Interesting that Nigel has a non-stick pan considering that he goes to great lengths in the same introduction to tell you how to season your 'ordinary' frying pan. As you probably know you heat some oil and wipe it with a paper towel - a few times. I have to say I have tried this with several of my frying kind of pans and it has never worked that successfully, but I am not a patient person and I probably do something wrong, like not doing it enough times, not heating it enough, and then allowing David to wash it anyway, and moreover, scrub at it with steel wool.
Delia on the other hand is not a fan of non-stick:
"In all my years of attempting to teach cooking, buying the right frying pan has always been a tricky business. Yes, I was there when the non-stick revolution arrived in the shops, and the number of miserable, peeling, scratched and worn non-stick pans that have passed through my kitchen is legion.
The problem is that there are strict rules, and the rules have to be obeyed: thou shalt never place the pan over direct heat without anything in it; thou shalt never turn the heat higher than medium; thou shalt never, ever use metal utensils. My problem with non-stick is that I can't stick to the rules." ... it is a useful piece of equipment - it's just that I'm not careful enough."
She is also not a fan of stainless steel:
"Stainless steel was never a good conducter of heat, and pans made only of stainless steel, however good they look, are to be avoided."
And indeed those long ago wedding present saucepans were aluminium on the outside and stainless steel on the inside and they actually looked wonderful too.
Curiously though Nigel is a fan:
"A good flat pan with a heavy base, whether stainless steel or cast iron, is a food friend to have in the kitchen."
Maybe Nigel has some copper sandwiched in the base of his steel pan. Copper being a really good conducter and also it seems the first metal used for frying pans, which date back to Mesopotamia. This one - which looks very modern, dates back to the 5th-4th centuries BC - probably from Greece, since it is in a museum in Thessalonika.
These days, I mostly use non-stick I confess, but I also admit that they wear out long before the plain stainless steel ones - although I try to get one with copper or some better conducting metal in the base. I do use them for all sorts of things, but have never tried risotto. I suspect that Nigel doesn't either. It was probably a long-ago thing when there was nothing else to hand.
Nigel opened his introduction to fried things, with this very tempting and easy almost not recipe - perhaps the best, other than perhaps an omelette, use for a frying pan:
"You melt a slice of butter in a wide shallow pan. When bubbles appear around the edge, you slip in a fillet of fish and slowly let it cook, spooning the warm butter over and over. You watch the flesh change from pearl white to snow white and see the edges turn pale gold. You toss a salad or steam some green beans. You open a bottle of wine. You lift the fish on to a warm plate, add a little lemon juice and some chopped parsley to the butter in the pan and let it foam before pouring it over the fish. Dinner is served."
I could fancy that for dinner, but alas I have to use up some leftovers first. Maybe later this week - and it will be broccolini, not beans.
"It's the lifesaver pan. The one we all start with. The one Mum packs in our backpack when we leave home. Hopefully with a copy of this book." Nigel Slater
The book being Eat - which is all about simple fast food - an update on his first book Real Fast Food.
POSTSCRIPT
August 12
2023 - August 2023 does not seem to have been a busy blogging month
2022 - And neither does 2022 - I see there is nothing until 15th
2021 - delicious. magazine
2019 - Turmeric can do anything
2018 - The marmalade challenge
2016 - This goes with that
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