My colleague Dennis Howlett recently upgraded the kitchen at home in Spain. I invited him to write about some of the new technology the kitchen now boasts:
“We recently remodeled our kitchen and in the time since we completed the last renovation the appliance technology has moved on in leaps and bounds. The last time I had the use of a dishwasher was around 1993. It was a Siemens and did a fantastic job. You never needed to know when the wash cycle had finished. It stopped grumbling and groaning. The Electrolux Energy Saver is almost silent. Twice I’ve opened it in mid cycle, ending up sprayed with hot water. That was until Judith showed me the red light shining on the floor: “That’s to tell you it’s working. It will go green when it is finished.” Sheesh !!
We didn’t want a conventional extractor/hood because it would have taken up space, required ducting and spoiled the clean lines we were trying to achieve. Instead we opted for a Faber F-Light. This amazing device doubles up as a remote controlled light fitting and multi-speed extractor. I could play with the rise and fall mechanism for hours.
We’ve been through a good few conventional fan ovens but on this occasion settled for a De Dietrich DOP895B. This has 16 intelligent cooking settings. Tell it when you want the food ready, tell it the weight of whatever you are cooking and it does the rest. The first time out I tried making two Victoria Sponge cakes. This is always a challenge because the cakes have a tendency to rise unevenly. This time out the results were near perfect, just requiring a few extra minutes to get the texture we wanted.
For the hob I would have liked the Die Ditrich ‘Piano’ which introduces the concept of ‘zoneless’ induction cooking. Place a pan anywhere on the hob, the device recognizes its size. Punch in the desired temperature setting and it starts heating the pan using the induction method. Move the pan to another part of the hob and it understands what you are doing. Sadly it was a bit too costly and larger than we need. We opted for a different model that has many of the same features as the zoneless model. I like that when you take a pan off the ‘ring’ the appliance immediately shuts down that area and shows you if it is still hot. That’s a safety feature well worth having.
The microwave is a fairly standard Whirlpool device with one exception. Dial in the weight of something that needs defrosting and it does the rest, beeping if you need to turn the food. We’ve used it a few times and it does an amazing job, turning a block of frozen ground beef into usable crumble within 3 minutes.
As for the fridge. It’s another De Dietrich appliance only this one is a large larder fridge. Living in Spain we need a large fridge but the feature which sold it to Judith is the fact it only needs cleaning twice a year. How they do that is a mystery but then that speaks to the advance made in kitchen appliance technology.
The story would be incomplete if I didn’t mention the Schmidt units. Schmidt have been around more than 50 years. That was a key issue for us because kitchen makers tend to come and go. Their designs turn kitchen units into furniture that works really well in designs where you have an open kitchen diner floor plan. It’s impossible to slam a door because they use gas filled struts that pull the door shut at controlled speed. You can almost never have enough electric points but they break up the surface appearance. Schmidt incorporated a rising bank of sockets that disappear into the granite work surface when you’re finished. What amazed me is that they managed to provide us with more space with less unit structures than we had previously. Or at least that’s the effect. The store which sold us the kitchen did an amazing customer service job. There are always issues when fitting a kitchen and especially in an old house where none of the walls run true. They responded to all emails within six hours and kept the work flowing. Nothing was too much trouble. And now the job is complete, they will make a final inspection to ensure everything is as it should be. I’ll make the final payment while they are here and with pleasure.
I feel as though we have something that is not only aesthetically pleasing, but incorporates great design that carefully blends with function through technology. It saves time and makes the cooking process a pleasure. Was it expensive to complete? Yes. But since we spend a lot of time cooking it makes sense to invest for the things that give pleasure. Back to the hob !!”
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