There is a great gulf between dog and man. We can't understand why they pee on the carpet. They ca...
There is a great gulf between dog and man. We can't understand why they pee on the carpet. They can't understand why we pee in their water bowl.
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I’m cleaning the oven at the moment so it seems like the right time to tell you what I think about Marlene (as she’s affectionately known) now that she’s lived with us for eight months.
I’d better begin at the beginning, hadn’t I? Why did I choose Marlene? Well, last year I had my kitchen done. Actually, it was a bit more than ‘done’; it was the sort of transformation that involves knocking walls down and having builders living with us for ages, so when it came to equipping the kitchen I was determined that everything was going to be just what I needed. After all, we weren’t going to be doing this again in a hurry.
I’d had a free-standingcooker before, but it had two major shortcomings from my point of view. I have a back problem. Too many orthopaedic surgeons have used my spine for target practice. Bending down with a casserole was painful and there had been a few occasions I’d ended up on the floor along with the food. I needed an oven at working-surface height. I’ve also had problems with my left hand (different surgeon, different target practice) and I could no longer cope with an itsy-bitsy handle that I had to tuck my fingers under and pull. I wanted something with good, grabbable handles.
There were lots of other things that I wanted too, but those were the two things I couldn’t compromise on. I wanted two ovens because I like to be able to warm plates, or keep food warm in one whilst I’m cooking in the other. I wanted, too, to be able to grill and cook
at the same time and to have the grill at a height where I could see into the grill to check progress without having to kneel or climb on a stool. I wanted an electric oven because that’s what I’ve been used to and I didn’t want the expense of putting gas piping into the kitchen. Put like that it doesn’t seem like very much, but eventually it was a choice between a few of the De Dietrich models and I opted for this one because it seemed the simplest.
The oven fits into a standard-size oven unit from most of the suppliers of fitted kitchens. You’ll find all the dimensions in the catalogue or on the website, so I won’t bore you with them here. In simple terms the top oven will cope with a large turkey and the bottom oven happily does a meal for two people.
Due to circumstances beyond my control (otherwise known as workmen) my kitchen wasn’t ‘finished’ (this is a technical term meaning that it’s useable if not pretty) until Christmas Eve and the first thing my oven had to cook was the Christmas cake, rapidly followed by all the other excesses which are absolutely essential for an uncivilised Christmas.
The first surprise that I had was that the temperature control on the main oven is stepped not in 20 degree leaps (which I was used to) but in 25 degree leaps, so my 160 degrees centigrade for the cake didn’t exist. Marlene came, though, with a conversion chart, which supplied a guide to the temperature you should use, the shelf position and whether you should use conventional cooking, fan cooking or a combination of the two. My Christmas cake recipe is one that I’ve used for many years. It’s best described as a vast quantity of alcohol and dried fruit thinly held together with a mixture of eggs, butter, sugar and flour. It has never turned out better than it did that day. It was cooked to perfection.
I’ve developed a love-hate relationship with these charts. The solution for the cake was perfect. On Boxing Day I did a cheese soufflé and it was slightly sadder than my usual soufflé, but I’ve since experimented and made some minor adjustments and I can produce a more-than-satisfactory soufflé. There’s also a De Dietrich help line if you need advice about how best to cook something that isn’t covered by the charts. This isn’t really an oven for someone who is new to cooking as you do really need to have the confidence to experiment with the type of cooking you’re going to use, the temperature and the length of cooking.
In addition to being a fan oven, a conventional oven or a combination of the two the top oven also houses a grill. Even here, there’s a choice. You can, if you wish, boost the normal grill function to Turbo Grill and this does grill very quickly indeed. The grill runs the full width of the oven and the grill pan and rack are the sturdiest I have encountered; none of those flimsy wire racks here!
There is no temperature control for the grill and initially I found this rather worrying, but the heat control works by moving the food closer to, or further away from the grill. After my initial doubts I wouldn’t want to go back to regularly using a system where the heat itself was reduced.
There’s a useful defrost function but one of the main joys of this oven for me is the fact that it cleans itself. All you need to do is decide how dirty it is – ‘a bit grubby’, ‘don’t look’ and ‘I wouldn’t dare put food in there’ seems to sum up the choices and then you turn the oven control to your choice. The oven is heated to a very high temperature and remains extremely hot (and locked!) for between an hour and a half and two hours. Once it has cooled down you use a damp cloth to wipe away the white ash that’s all that’s left of the grease and food splashes. It really does work, I promise you and it’s said to cost no more than the price of a stamp. I haven’t used anything other than this system to clean the oven, including the glass door, for the last nine months and it looks little different to the day it was fitted. Do be aware though that the exterior of the oven can get very hot during cleaning and it is advisable to ensure that children are kept well away. This doesn’t happen in normal cooking.
The lower oven doesn’t clean itself, so I’ve tended to restrict my cooking in there to the sort of food which doesn’t splash, so a quick wipe round is all that’s needed. There’s also another grill in here and with this grill you can adjust the level of temperature from 20% to 100% although it’s most efficient towards the higher levels. I tend to use it for toast when I need more than the toaster can happily cope with.
This oven isn’t a fan or combination oven but I find it excellent for doing a lunch-time pizza or a pie for just the two of us.
There’s the usual clock and timers, which are reasonably easy to set and use. Actually, that says quite a bit as it’s taken me sixteen years to not quite be able to master using the video!
Overall I’m very happy with the oven, but there are one or two minor niggles.
~ When the upper oven is turned on the fan expels (with some force) the cold air inside the oven. If you happen to use a working surface opposite the oven this can mean that you get a very uncomfortable draught on your back for five minutes or so. If you decide on this oven it might be worth considering how it, or the working surface, is placed.
~ The controls for the ovens are black cylinders which protrude slightly from the front surface of the oven. The white indicators which tell you which programme or temperature you have selected are on the sides of the cylinder which means that you have to go up to the oven and peer at the edge of the cylinder to check settings. I’ve got round this by sticking some of those eyes that you find on cheap toys (you know, the ones where the eyeball moves around in a plastic dome!) onto the front of the controls so that the settings can be seen at a glance. This can be slightly unnerving as Marlene does seem as though she’s watching what you do and has occasionally been called ‘four eyes’.
~ I’ve already had to replace the light bulb in the main oven. It may be that it was just bad luck that I got one that went so quickly, but I do wonder if the very high temperatures used in the cleaning process might affect the bulb.
I’m afraid I can’t help you with the price as my kitchen was an ‘all-in’ deal, and the website is unable to supply prices. I suspect, though, that it was not cheap.
Right, the cooker’s clean and I’m going to give it a quick wipe out. I do like to get chores out of the way so that I can relax!
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Aug 22nd, 2002
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