Don't Sweat the Aubergine

formed the base of a delicious gravy.
Casserole dish
    Again, the price of a good one, such as a Le Creuset, is worth paying. Stews, pot roasts and the like need slow, even cooking, which the thick walls and base of a Le Creuset foster. Also, a good casserole will have a tight-fitting lid, retaining moisture. A cold stew in a heavy casserole will take a long time to get to simmering point in the oven; don’t worry about that ( see here ).
Cast-iron frying pan
    I have one that I bought for £5. I wish I had several; then, I could use one for omelettes, and the other for heavy-duty frying of meat. As it is, my all-purpose pan makes good omelettes anyway. You ‘season’ the pan by pouring in some oil and leaving it on a low heat for a couple of hours. Then you must remember never to wash it in washing-up liquid, which removes the oily patina; use water, or paper towels, only. The pan develops a slick, non-stick surface, on which omelettes slide like skis on ice. Smearing the pan with a little oil before you put it away is not a bad idea. Stacking other pans on top of it may cause rusting.
    A good many recipes in this book call for ‘deglazing’: the addition of a liquid such as wine, vinegar or water to a frying or roasting pan to dislodge the remnants of frying and incorporate them in a sauce. An acid liquid such as wine or vinegar will undermine your carefully cultivated oily patina, however. Smearing the pan with oil afterwards may be a sufficient restoration job.
    The drawback of cast iron is the weight – particularly when cooking omelettes, which require a certain amount of manipulation. If you buy a lighter omelette pan, season it before you cook with it the first time, wipe it with paper towels rather than washing it, and use it for omelettes only.
Non-stick saucepan
    No matter how well seasoned your cast-iron pan, you cannot use it for making scrambled eggs: the eggs will stick, and will not be enjoyable to wash off. They will stick to metal saucepans too. For scrambled eggs, a non-stick pan is best. If you have one, you might as well cook béchamel in it as well.
Ridged grill pan
    Also known as a griddle. Char-grilling may not be as fashionable as it once was, but dark griddle stripes on food remain highly desirable.
    A grill pan is not ideal for cooking thick pieces of food, the outsides of which will be blackened by the time the centres are hot. I use my pan for lamb cutlets or steaks; for boned chicken legs; for chicken breasts, which I slice into two or three pieces; and for bacon. I may sear a thicker piece of meat on the pan, but cook it through in the oven.
    Griddling vegetables such as courgettes, asparagus and aubergines is popular; but it leaves courgettes and asparagus too crunchy, I find, and doesn’t produce in aubergines the melting consistency I like.
    Our enthusiasm for char-grilling, incidentally, may not be good for us. Charred food has been found to contain carcinogens, as has the woodsmoke from outdoor barbecues.
Stockpot
    Your largest saucepan probably won’t be big enough for stock-making. Invest in a large stockpot, which can have a second function as a pasta pan.
Food mill
    Moulinex makes one called a Mouli-légumes. You turn a handle to push food through a metal disc with serrated holes; the mill usually comes with two discs, one with very small holes, one with slightly larger ones. I use it for mashed potato, pushing the potatoes down on to the disc and working the turning device over them; for soup; and for tomato sauce made with whole, chopped-up tomatoes. The mill leaves the unwanted tomato skin on the disc.
    I prefer the taste – perhaps I mean the consistency – of food that has been worked manually rather than blitzed in an electric machine. Putting potatoes into a food processor, for example, is disastrous ( see here ). Soup, I think, is more interesting after manual pulping than after electric blending.
    Here’s what else I don’t use food processors or blenders for:
    Mayonnaise: food-processed mayonnaise does not have the liveliness of flavour of one turned or whisked by hand.
    Chopping and slicing: the chopping and slicing blades of food processors do much more damage to the cells of vegetables than do carefully wielded knives; you’ll find that electrically sliced onions and potatoes, in particular, have moist and slightly slimy surfaces.
Pestle and mortar
    Don’t use a garlic crusher. It produces an unpleasantly strong, bitter purée. Instead, cut the garlic