&roid

A bit more progress this week, kitchen units are all nearly prepped and ready to be fixed in place. We had a delay of a couple of days while the plasterers finished off the skylight reveals. And the thing which has made the most difference to the feel of the place is that the decorator has done a first coat of paint to all the walls and the ceiling. It’s transformed a building site into something which is starting to feel like the space it will become. Second fix electrics start on Tuesday so we may even have some light at night time soon! The blue protective film on the window stops the camera getting a decent read on the wall colour but we’ve gone for Hague Blue by farrow and ball. It’s a very deep colour but there’s so much glass in the room that it can probably take it.

Beautiful, @blue_dolphin They look great now. How many coats did you end up doing? I’ve seen mention of six, ten even? More?? Have you cooked with them yet?

eek, that's a shame 😬 How are they coming along now?

So actually that sounds a good option. I’m going to try that next time - I bet mortadella melts a lot better than a dry cured ham.

Is it powdered black onion seeds (nigella seeds)? If so I love them and can’t get enough. Not sure I’ve seen them in powdered form before but can’t think why not.

Just had a good look through this thread, loving the results Weinoo. How are you finding the Wolf range? We are getting one of their rangetops in our kitchen renovation, I can't wait to get my hands on it - particularly as I've been cooking on a useless plug in induction plate for the past twelve weeks 😫

I think this is a great idea - some friends of ours who are originally from Pakistan have exactly this setup in their new house. I'll definitely be looking at the idea for our next place but with this one space has dictated that we stick with the one big space - thankfully we have a good extractor 😀 I love the skylight already, it was our architect's idea and I'm really pleased we went with such a dramatic size (it's about 10' x 5'). When we are all finished the new dining table will sit under this skylight, looking out into the garden. Not too long now I hope!

😂 I wondered as I typed that how well it would cross the Atlantic It means to make or fix something, specifically I think it came from trimming bits off pottery or cast metal. In this case they are needing to add new rails for the handleless doors of the old kitchen so are having to rout out some extra material from each cabinet.

The track for the large glazed wall went In today, just got everything crossed that the glass for it will be delivered on time - if not our Christmas party on the 15th might be a bit chilly! The guys obviously had to board it all up again once they’d finished but it was great to see out into the garden again properly. Kitchen fitter arrived this afternoon to start putting things back together again, we’re keeping a lot of the old units so they are roughly in place, ready to be fettled and fixed over the next week or so.

I'd like the 35 paella if possible - will check that 1.9" against my current favourite roasting dish to see if it will cut the mustard. Does anyone know how much this pan weighs?

Ok, so I've just read through the whole twelve pages of this thread and I'm convinced I need a couple of these pans in my life. I'm thinking a 25 or 27 sauté and a big paella. I'd probably look at using the latter as a roasting pan, would that work? How heavy are the larger models?

In a glorious year like the one we’ve just had I’d be able to get out there a lot... it’ll probably be another ten years before that happens again mind! Despite the weather I do find we use the Kamado Joe a fair bit. The thing I’m always wishing I had a bit more of is some workspace around the grill. So while we have builders on site it seemed a good idea to add a bit of countertop and somewhere to keep my bbq bits.

Here's the first draft of a layout for the outdoor kitchen:

We have an acer in the garden which is spectacular in autumn. The window which has just gone in looks out right onto it - I was convinced it was going to drop all its leaves the day before the glass went in but we just made it:

It really feels like we’re startjng to make some progress now. Some of the glass went in yesterday - the fixed window and the large skylight. Just got to wait a couple of weeks for the sliding unit now. Big day tomorrow, the kitchen finally starts getting installed We’re also starting to make some plans for an outdoor cooking area to house the Kamado grill we got a year or two ago. I’ll post some SketchUp drawings later. Here’s the space with a bit of light at last:

My kitchen is in the middle of a renovation at the moment but, all being well, I should get it back around the second week of December. If it runs to plan I’ll be making some smoked salmon (both hot and cold smoked) to take down to my parents for Christmas. While we’re down there we’ll be doing turkey (SV legs, roast crowns) and some slow roast rib of beef to cover everyone’s tastes. My son, brother and I will be making 3 or 4 canapés to eat as a stand up starter for the big meal, so far the short list is: - Espresso cups of celeriac and chestnut soup with fried sage - filo parcels with curried meat filling - watermelon poke (my son found this one, looks nice and light and a good contrast to the roast meats to come) - some sort of tartlet Any ideas for a good way to serve the poke as ginger food? Maybe lettuce cups?

We did SV legs last Christmas. 70C (158F) for 24 hours worked really well. This is a lot more than I’d like breast cooked to but gives a nice texture on the dark meat. If you have a reasonable amount of time to prepare it’s no harder to do the different cuts at different temps. FWIW we aren’t bothering with SV for the crowns this year, simply roasting these as I’ve found little benefit from the water bath and it’s pretty easy to cook them evenly when detached from the legs. Edited to add: the reason we went for 70C on the legs was that previous tries with a lower temp had all turned out quite rubbery, not a nice texture at all. 70C seemed to give a result like a super juicy version of roast meat.

That’s why my Pol Roger and cigar stashes keep disappearing

And here’s our site foreman keeping an eye on the work:

While this most recent phase has been going on I’ve had to move all my cooking from my temporary (but really quite spacious) bench into our small utility room. What you see see below is now the only countertop space I have left - I can either chop or cook, but not both! I’ll be so happy to get back into a proper kitchen but it’s actually been quite fun - I’ve had to be a lot more disciplined about how I prepare food... maybe some good habits will stick... but more than likely I’ll just be so delighted to have space again I’ll spread out to fill it all with mess

So we’ve finally opened up the space into the extension, the ceiling was skimmed yesterday and things are starting to move again. Were still waiting on the glazing but im reliably informed we’ll be ready to start getting a kitchen back in by two weeks’ time... No less than thirty five fiddly recessed plaster-in downlights and I think my electrician and plasterer are ready to kill me

Better control? That’s interesting... genuinely intrigued to know more. How many steps from min min to max does it take for induction to get close to the controllability of gas? All the units I’ve used (even the expensive ones) have had 1-10 settings which is a really struggle. Does yours have more? What’s needed? 1-20? 1-50? More? What does your range have in terms of automatic functions? Does it turn down or off when it thinks it should or can you keep it cranked up till you burn and destroy things? I ask all this just because I’d be really interested in an induction unit which let me do what I want, is there such a thing??

What convinced you otherwise?

This is something that really grates on me - such a waste to not actually cook in a decent kitchen. When we went stone shopping we were asked if we wanted a worktop to just look good or if we might use it... nothing useless can be truly beautiful and all that.

Ha! No that’s just my small prep sink - basically a place to scrape all my veg mess into a waste disposal. The main sink is in the run of units just behind the camera and is about 4-500mm square. That said, the prep sink will be a bit bigger in the new kitchen - it’s just slightly too small as it is. The pic was taken with the panorama mode on my iPhone - not perfect but an easy way of getting some lateral extension when standing further away isn’t an option.