Don't Sweat the Aubergine

a
Guardian
piece on the subject, and can expect cooking times to be reduced by 10 minutes in the hour. My advice ( see here ) about roasting belly pork on the floor of an oven is redundant if your oven has a fan, which in theory will make the bottom of the oven just as hot as the top.
On the hob
    Here, too, you have to do a certain amount of fussing. Some foods need fast-boiling or steaming: pasta, rice, green vegetables (see the relevant chapters). Meat that you’re cooking quickly (a steak, for example), or that you’re browning before stewing, also needs cooking at a high heat; but be watchful. A frying pan with oil can get hotter and hotter, and the heat under it needs to be regulated if the food is not to end up blackened rather than browned.
    Stews ( see here ) should cook at a very gentle simmer, with only a few bubbles blipping at the surface: subjected to a pummelling from fiercely boiling liquid, meat dries up in protest. This low heat can be difficult to maintain on a hob, especially in a casserole with the lid on, because the build-up of steam will raise the pressure in the dish, causing the liquid to bubble more vigorously and at a higher boiling point. A heat disperser will help, as will leaving off the lid. But the liquid in an open pan will evaporate.
    Sometimes, you want evaporation: to thicken a sauce, or to concentrate its flavour. You have to adjust the heat under a pan in order to get the rate of evaporation you want; and remember, if you want less or thicker liquid in a stew, and if the gentle simmer is evaporating the liquid too slowly for your liking, you’ll have to take out the meat before you turn up the flame. If the meat endures rapid boiling, it will go tough.
    In preparing recipes that involve sauces, the trick is to have the sauce at just the right consistency at the moment you want to serve it. Good luck. If you get it wrong (if, say, your tomato sauce is as thick as you want it before you’ve started cooking the pasta), you cannot put the lid on the pan to arrest the evaporation, because the sauce will start bubbling more vigorously and will most likely stick to the pan base. You’ll just have to turn it off and warm it up again later; or, if the pasta will be ready quite soon, put the pan of sauce (or the sauce decanted into another container), covered, into the bottom of a very low oven.



 
    THIS IS NOT a comprehensive list. I don’t have very much to say about cheese graters, lemon squeezers or sharp knives, except that if you want to grate cheese, squeeze lemons or cut things up, they are, you know, just the job
.
Heat disperser
    A metal disc – they used to be made of asbestos – for inserting between a pan and the ring on a hob; it tempers the heat, and spreads it more evenly. Cost: £5 each, or less. Buy a couple.
    Of course, it’s nice to have decent, thick-bottomed saucepans. But for many jobs – boiling or steaming vegetables, boiling pasta – rubbish pans will do. If you need the pans for more delicate tasks, such as warming through mashed potatoes or other cooked vegetables, use a disperser to imitate the task – of imparting heat evenly – that a thick bottom would perform. Making a flour-thickened sauce such as béchamel in a cheap pan can be disastrous, because the pan’s base gets too hot, rapidly thickening the liquid in contact with it, and causing that liquid to stick and scorch. With the aid of a heat disperser, the pan imitates a far more expensive item.
    Hobs on cookers usually generate more heat, even in solid, expensive pans and casserole dishes, than the simmering of sauces, stocks and stews requires. Use a heat disperser.
Steaming basket
    I have a cheap one. It’s a kind of perforated trivet, with flaps at the side that enclose the contents when you put it inside a saucepan. The lids of my pans are not efficient: steam pours out of them. Nevertheless, the arrangement works fine: food in my cheap steaming basket inside my inadequately sealed saucepans cooks at least as quickly as it would if immersed in boiling water.
    Steaming preserves more nutrients than does boiling. I use my steamer – controversially, some might say – for green vegetables ( see here ) and for fish ( see here ).
Roasting pan
    You need an expensive one, I’m afraid. Cheap pans will probably do for roast potatoes and other vegetables; but if you roast meat in one, you’ll find that the juices from the meat will hit the pan, boil, and burn. These juices should have