‘When I were little…’ as the phrase goes, every kitchen had a ‘gas stove’. Whether it was actually gas powered, or possibly the new-fangled, ‘electric’, was totally irrelevant. People referred to having ‘an electric gas stove’ as adherence to anachronistic nomenclature is strong, Skywalker.

Then many decades later, we had a hob. It was fab. A thing of beauty. Because when we bought it, when having a kitchen fitted, about 15 years ago, it was the only one which came with not four, but FIVE… things. Hobs? Heaters? Burners? Whatever, you’ve probably got 4 on your hob, the One-up-obsessed Conways have fucking FIVE!!!! And those people at Siemens or Bosch or whichever bunch of ex-concentration camp slave labour abusers made it, created a fabulous trapezoid shape to accommodate all those burners. Over a metre long at its widest point. Gorgeous. A ‘ceramic’ hob. Electric, innit, about an inch deep. Clever. And the granite work surface was cut to accommodate its odd shaped beautifulness.

Fast forward 15 years, two replacements (shit falls out of cupboards at times, sometimes heavy things) and a now aging, failing hob and… they’re finished. Discontinued. No parts. No nuffink. Oh. And we have this fab, metre wide, trapezoid shaped hole in our granite and once removed, we’ll have nothing to put in it. Certainly that will fill it. Oh dear. There seemed to be just two options: buy a camping ‘stove’, with its own gas canister, or re-do the entire kitchen. Because you can’t change the granite without breaking the back thing. And if you remove that, the one-piece, pink splash-back will crack. And if that goes then…

Like the spider who swallowed a fly; one thing leads to another, each one more disastrous. But then we met a genius. Who suggested that if we make the whole bigger (because you can’t make them smaller) we could put a bigger hob in that hole. But no-one (and I mean absolutely no-one) makes a 1 metre long hob. Ah, but you could put 2 smaller ones in. Oh. My. Fucking. Godddd!!!! And that’s what we did. Which I mention, not just because everyone loves a good hob story, but because we fitted a 4-burner side by side to a 2-burner. So now we have 6. Of which we may, on occasion use 3. But it can be a different 3 each time!!!

These are ‘induction’ hobs. The thing I never wanted. But after 2 weeks I am so sold on induction cooking. It’s so fast, responsive and… errrr… hot, that it’s almost like cooking with gas. Which is where we came in, so I’ll go now.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx