Panning out

(Published yesterday...)

I was in love. I stood there, staring fixedly, even as people brushed past me in the aisle and muttered. It was just what I had always been looking for, even without my knowing that I was looking for it. My first true-blue piece of cooking equipment: a cast-iron pan, almost a skillet, wide and just deep enough, with a neatly fitted lid. It was a pristine enameled white striped nattily in gold, with a black handle and a little round button to lift the cover off. I bought it ($19.99) and admired it at home for a long time before I started using it. Then I left it on the hob too long and burned a hole right through the base. A rush trip back to the store earned me another, but in a less endearing blue. I still use that pan; it is heavy, non-stick, ideal for whatever I make in it, from pancakes to bhindi-ki-sabji to broiled fish to hash browns to semiya upma.

But age catches up with us all and I need to replace my treasure. So every time I see a home store anywhere, be it in a mall or in Lohar Chawl in town, I dive in, my bloodhound instincts working overtime. So far, alas, nothing has had the same impact. To be fair, I did trawl through my own kitchen, scanning all the stuff my mother had acquired over years, to no avail. There was gorgeous flame-orange Dansk casseroles, a heavy scarlet paella pan, an oversized orange iron skillet, even a vividly red wok, along with shiny steel Revereware and brightly enameled Silit along with some Amber Visions and Cranberry Corning, but nothing that was the right weight, the right size, the right non-stick surface and (this was an optional need) the right colour.

I found some options in the Indigo deli’s selection of Le Creuset. The colour was right. The heft made it. But the surface did not. And neither did the price – I wanted to buy cookware, not a first-class air ticket to buy it! A store at Atria mall selling heavy gauge pots and pans pulled me in; the stuff was gorgeous, the prices hideous and the suitability limited – I did not, after all, feed 50 people at every meal! And plus it was not any kind of colour that fit with my kitchen, I told myself and the salesman snootily. I have since looked everywhere, from Big Bazaar to Hypercity to Home Stop to a small shop in Matunga that I cannot remember the name of. I find good Indian brands, from Prestige to Jaipan to Hawkins, all priced very affordably below Rs1000, many in a nice colour range between orange and red, with reputable and lasting surfaces, good handle attachments and enamel finish, but none with the weight I so long for. Even if I am willing to be a little less Scrooge-ish and spend more, I cannot find the heft I want.

Until that happens, or else I come across another pan of the ilk of my cast-iron non-stick buddy, I keep looking.