The Pan

I was reading Granny Buttons’ blog the other day and was interested by the entry on the boat-friendly food processor. Well, we have another very boat friendly bit of kitchen kit that was given to us as a wedding present last year. We admired The Pan, used it once or twice like any other pan, but mainly kept it in its box so as not to damage it. It is after all a very nice looking pan, and our kitchen cupboards are a bit of a mess, well a lot of a mess really. You open them, lob something in, and shut them quickly before something else falls out.

Then, whilst kitting out Muriel, we decided to give The Pan a nice home in a well ordered kitchen (or should I say galley) where we could put it to good use. And good use it was put to. In fact we used it for every single meal of our trip.

So, what is so special about The Pan? Well, it is constructed so that it will keep food hot for up to 2 hours. We had been told this, and read it in the accompanying bumf, but hadn’t really used the pan enough to test it out. And, as we usually just cook and eat, this particular facility didn’t seem overly useful. Then, as the major chef of the house/boat-hold, Simon used The Pan’s thermal properties in a slightly different way. He would for example, briefly fry up some veggies in The Pan for about 5 mins, then take it off the heat, sit it on the base plate for 20 mins, and hey presto, perfectly cooked, hot veg. Worked just as well for pasta, spuds and rice. This would obviously be an equally valuable technique in a house to reduce your energy bills and carbon footprint, but is even more important when all the gas you have is in a bottle, which could run out (which is particularly true for us as we have yet to buy a second bottle).

When we stopped off at Napton Junction, Gloria & Derek our live-aboard friends came for dinner. Well they actually brought dinner with them in the form of a rather nice spaghetti bolognaise. The sauce was ready, and we used The Pan for the spaghetti. They were suitably impressed, and are now in the market for one.

There is however one problem. You can’t actually buy The Pan in the UK. It was a present from our friend Mary who lives in Switzerland, and she brought it over with her.  It’s made by Kuhn Rikon, and the only pans I’ve been able to find here that are made by them are pressure cookers. If I was an entrepreneur, I’d think about starting an import business. As it is, I’ll be talking very nicely to Mary before her next visit to see if she can squeeze another one into her rucksack.

Although Simon independently invented the ‘blast it & wait’ cooking method, since arriving home I’ve discovered the Kuhn Rikon website, which I’m sure wasn’t there before! They have a section on the ‘hot pan’, which looks different to ours but obviously has the same basic construction. It includes a demo video, where they use Simon’s technique!

http://www.kuhnrikon.co.uk/products-hotpan.asp