I watched as the KitchenAid four-litre Artisan food processor chopped and sliced and grated. But not chopping and slicing and grating as I’m used to. Precision chopping and slicing and grating. Its clever ExactSlice system slices cucumber, say, at six widths from 1mm to 6mm. And it does this without having to turn the darned thing off and choose a different blade. A slide of a lever is all it takes. Oh to have had this when I was on the Cordon Bleu Certificate Course way back in 1977 and expected to produce paper-thin see-through cucumber slices, placed along the back of a poached salmon to simulate fishy scales.
Then there’s the dicing kit. I quite often dice in my kitchen – a couple, maybe four, banana shallots. Any more and the recipe becomes a chore. Sometimes a slice of finger slivers into the dice. And a lot of blood. Start again. Not with the clever KitchenAid dicing disc – and it’s even cleverer snap in and out cleaning tool that pushes the stuck bits through the dice holes saving hours of exasperated poking and jabbing. It made swift easy work of dicing kilos of potatoes to produce Jansson’s Temptation, a wonderfully creamy, decadent potato dish made by Liz Moore who was busy in the kitchen using all these new products to cook for we hungry writers. A professional cook in Northern Ireland, Liz’s culinary history takes in working with Michel Roux Senior. Perhaps that’s why Michel Roux Junior popped into the launch?
I can see the point of a cordless blender. No awkward untwirling of leads that have turned rigid. No repeated bending down to pick up spoons or ingredients – or stopping to mop up hot stock – swished off or over the worktop while trying to stretch the lead from the socket to the saucepan to give the soup a whizz. The KitchenAid Artisan cordless blender comes in two versions: just the blender or the blender with accessories including two blending arms, one short (20cm) and one longer (33cm). Both come with rechargeable batteries and charger. Shame to keep it in a drawer, it looks so good.
The kettle is already available in John Lewis and Selfridges; the others will be in leading department stores and independent cook shops very soon. Your only decision is which colour to buy. Candy Apple (red) for me, please.
Prices: Artisan 4-litre food processor: RRP £389; Artisan cordless hand blender: RRP £139 (blender) and £199 (blender with accessories); Artisan 1.5 litre kettle: RRP £119; Artisan toaster: RRP £169 (two slice) and £269 (four slice). If you can’t stretch to one of these magical machines, treat yourself to a KitchenAid kitchen gadget. The can opener, with its especially smooth movement, is especially desirable.