Happy New Year

I wish you all the best for 2015.

2014 has been excellent for me. I've been abroad twice, I met a woman, and my acoustic guitar playing has improved noticeably.

The last few days of the year, however, have been dominated by anger at ovenware.

This happens all too often, I ordered pie and chips in a pub, and was instead served a shallow casserole wearing a pastry hat. That's not a pie, a pie has a top crust and a bottom crust, and the gravy is rich and thick from the pastry it has dissolved.

As well as the great pie fraud, I'm furious that cookware is regressing to ironage and stoneage technology

I'm not a great fan of Le Creuset ovenware, it's too heavy and too expensive for practical use, but it is very sturdy. The sheer price of it has lead the pretentious and the fashion concious to associate it with fine dining, and they will happily put a bright orange stove-enamelled cast-iron pot on their otherwise luxurious table. The garish iron peddlers have smelled the money and now sell little items intended for the table. The least practical and most offensive is a heart shaped ramekin. A cast iron, non-circular ramekin FFS.

Worse still: I'm indifferent to a lamb casserole, but if you want to make one, that's fine with me. If you want to use Moroccan spices, be my guest. You can't seriously convince me that it tastes better, or is somehow enhanced for having been cooked in an earthenware dish with a conical chimney stack. Or that bringing its giant scalding chimney to the table is a good idea.

Richard "Rage Against the Tagine" B