Meet The Hoff

Every household has an appliance that’s so temperamental it’s like dealing with an emo teenager, while withholding their eye liner. Ours is the oven.

It’s got the label ‘New World’ on it. I take this to mean Columbus discovered it while on a pleasure cruise to the Americas. I don’t know how it ended up in Australia, but if its indigenous owners want it back I completely understand. If I had a metal piece of crap that might as well be a cupboard with a glass door and handy grease stains, then I would be pretty attached to.

We call it The Hoff because it is perpetually drunk, moody and completely unpredictable (and loves running down beaches in slow motion, accompanied everywhere by a talking car). Like last night when it burnt my slow-roasted tomatoes in the time it took me to down a cup of tea, and then leisurely heated my little racks of lamb for almost 2 hours. I may have had more luck placing the tray in the sun on a particularly hot day. It doesn’t help when you’re trying to channel Martha Stewart for a dinner party of 6, but can’t provide any actual dinner until 9pm.

That’ll teach me for trying to be a grown up. Thank god for a cheese platter and three bottles of red wine.

The Hoff is my kitchen nemesis. It lulled me into a false sense of security 4 months ago when it turned out a succulent leg of lamb for a pre-Christmas feast. Though that was the last time I used it, it’s hardly the point. The point is if Machiavelli had a love child with stove top the result would be this oven-y spawn – it plots, it plans, it pretends to cook, but all it’s doing is biding its time.

People wonder why I eat so much pasta. It’s because boiled water has never let me down (and because pasta is awesome, obviously).


Painefull Out