I once got asked what was my favourite piece of cooking equipment.
A difficult question for someone to whom “cooking equipment” are the tools of ones trade.
The answer is that I have lots of things that I love to use in the kitchen but right up there in the top ten is my old black pan.

I can remember the time I bought it very clearly, it was about thirty years ago in the mid seventies, we were living in Kilkenny, broke, with me out of full time work but doing the odd outside catering job.
We did a wedding for a charming farming family outside Kilkenny (it turned out to be the first of three, God Bless Them!)
When we got paid I announced (with, I am sure, huge self importance) that it was time to put some money back into the business, so, on our next trip to Dublin, I bought this large Le Creuset black cast iron pan- this cost about £30 as far as I remember, extremely dear at that time.

It spent the first few years of its life being just a frying pan, it produced huge quantities of bacon and sausages in those heady days when the fat police allowed them.
But as it has gotten old and pock marked its role in our kitchen has changed somewhat.
Now it had become our roaster extraordinary and as such it is used far more frequently than you would expect.
It is made from extremely heavy cast iron and, consequently it is the most wonderful diffuser of heat. It has acquired a certain patina in among its pock marks with age so, although I would no longer trust fish to its venerable surface, it still does a good job with frying a piece of meat.
As a chef working in restaurants where dishes are cooked to order, one constantly needs a cooking pan where you can brown the piece of flesh or fowl all over on the top of the stove and then slap it into an oven to finish cooking before, quite likely finishing it in the same pan with its sauce before serving.
This is probably the major difference between home cooking and restaurant cooking.

My old and trusted black pan allows me to cook restaurant style at home.
Not only will it work as a pan but also, its tiny black handle allows me to pop it into the oven to continue cooking.

It is also the most perfect container in which to cook roast potatoes or parsnips or any root vegetables, likewise browning them in the pan before roasting.
It is a total joy to joint a chicken for the family, add the sauce and seasonings and then let it finish itself off quietly in the oven.

You can also put a whole chicken on it , or a joint of meat, and you can brown and roast in it then take it off the pan to rest while you use the same pan and its wonderful bits of caramelized drippings, to make the gravy.
So much easier I promise than fiddling about with a roasting tin on top of the stove.

But how, I hear you ask, are you going to survive out in France without this old and trusted friend?
Good Question.

I am not going to risk life and limb carrying this old friend backwards and forewards on Ryan Air for the future.

I have already started to train in a successor.

It comes from Ikea and is called

Favorit.

And it comes in at just under €40.
Now its handle is too long but it is oven proof, it isn’t cast iron but does have a heavy solid base. At the moment it still retains its non-stick lining.
Towards the end of the 2030’s I should be able to judge whether it is a worthy successor.