SAVOUR & S I P
Pot Luck A CAST-IRON FAVOURITE IN CHEF ALEX RUSHMER’S KITCHEN STIRS UP MEMORIES OF MEALS GONE BY CHEF’S TABLE
t the time it felt like an outrageous purchase. My girlfriend and I were in the process of buying a house,
with me relocating to Cambridge from the north-west. I’d left my job and didn’t have anything lined up work-wise, but was flush with excitement at the prospect of becoming a homeowner, and beginning a new life in a place I became enamoured with as a student, a few years previously. I had collected a fair amount of culinary equipment, the majority from the cookware shop where I worked for a year while living in London (to clarify, these were purchased at a discount, rather than acquired through duplicitous means). But there were also some glaring omissions that I knew to be absolute essentials for a functioning (albeit tiny) kitchen. A trip to an outlet centre proved an opportunity to rectify this and, knowing that the next two-and-a-bit decades of my life would be taken up with mortgage payments, it seemed like a good opportunity to go on a final spree. I’d already loaded up a basket at the Le Creuset shop with spatulas, spoons and other seemingly essential items, and was about to leave when I saw the clearance section. Among the salt pigs, teapots and bright orange kettles were several classic, cast-iron cooking pots
LETTING IT STEW Alex’s Le Creuset pots have provided years of stove-top service – and now they have fresh appeal
cheap cuts of meat, pulses and vegetables into tasty meals. Gradually though, as time grew short, cooking became a career as well as a hobby, and my interest expanded into a broader view of global cuisines – the heavy blue pots fell out of use. They migrated from their permanent home atop the hobs and were relegated to the cupboard, along with a vintage jelly mould and tiny butter churner. More recently, though, they have once again become a reliably constant presence. Their slightly stained and chipped pale blue might look discordant against the red stove, but within those heavy, cast-iron pots is the memory of everything that has been cooked in them before. Their function has evolved from solely practical to something more Proustian. They speak of cold evenings and richly nourishing meals that warm body and soul. Now it is getting cooler, I can’t wait to lift the lid on the first cassoulet of the year.
were indestructible design classics that would last a lifetime, no matter how many delicious stews, curries, braises, tagines, casseroles, soups, cassoulets or one-pot- wonders were cooked in them. I didn’t end up buying just one. Instead, I picked two off the
in colours I could only presume had been discontinued (with good reason in some cases). Although reduced in price, they still represented a significant purchase – especially for someone newly jobless and whose entire savings had recently been handed over to a bank. Unfortunately, 12
RICHLY NOURISHING MEALS THAT WARM BODY AND SOUL
shelf, both pale blue in colour but one small and round (for when just the two of us were eating, of course), and one oval-shaped and much larger (for when batch cooking was
required, or we were having guests round) – and took them over to the till. During the first few years they were used with great regularity. Assemblages of ingredients would burble away during the day – alchemical reactions taking place under the snugly fitting lid, transforming
months selling the very same pots to the wealthy folk of west London had nestled the sales patter deep into my subconscious. Within just a few seconds, it appeared I had used identical tactics on myself. They
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