INTRODUCING: THE FRIDGE DOOR
A Monthly Kitchen Bulletin
Hello! A new strand to the newsletter this month: an update/round-up of kitchen related news. My research on and around kitchens has always encompassed many different disciplines and fields of interest. This seems like an interesting way to keep track of how these different things interact with each other. Hope you enjoy reading! Is there something you’d particularly like to read about here? Feedback very welcome.
The Ideal Home Show 2026: Ugly Hobs
I made my now regular annual visit to the Ideal Home Show a couple of weeks back. I actually visited, as I did last year, with Eli Davies, partly to record an episode of Lecker to coincide with her forthcoming book The Spinster Kitchen (out soon!). It’s quite a fun undertaking, I’ve found, to parse through the brand deals and try and understand whether any of it is actually innovative or led by consumer behaviour. For the most part, I would say….no.
In both the ‘Smart Home’ section and the ‘Dream Home’ the kitchens had an induction hob by the brand Nispero which had an inbuilt extractor. They call it a “venting hob”. I’ve seen downdraft extractors, which sit behind the hob, in action before and I do find them impressive at least in theory, but this was actually a part of the hob itself. Honestly…I found it very ugly! The concentric plastic rings sitting in the middle of the glass ceramic top feel incongruous and aesthetically remind me a lot of radiant electric hobs, which just seems a strange design choice.
One advantage pointed out by both brand reps we spoke to in the two kitchens (although one of them worked for Hexclad rather than the appliance itself) is that you don’t have to install a hood above your hob to provide extraction. Both men also proceeded to make the same joke completely independently about hitting their heads on those, which went somewhat over the heads (ironically) of us, two women under 5’7”.
I remember reading a Lloyd Alter piece for Treehugger a few years ago which was specifically looking at recirculating hoods in the context of Passivhaus building, and from what I could gather, coming to the conclusion that recirculating hoods don’t provide as high air quality as exterior exhaust systems. One of the main selling points given by the men talking to us about this inbuilt extractor hob was that you don’t need to connect it to an outside vent, making it much better for people living in flats etc. Food for thought!
Simply the Bin! Food waste and loathing in East Sussex
Where I live in St Leonards just introduced food waste bins and residents are losing their shit. I find the vehement negative reaction to the idea from some people really bizarre, especially as it’s now a national requirement to collect food waste in this way. It definitely feels like there’s an ideological element to the pushing back, particularly in light of the imminent local elections. Silly! You’re putting these things in your bin anyway! Now they can just go in a different bin which makes the main bin less gross.
I also enjoyed watching this soothing but somehow unsettling video about how the scraps are processed and wondered about a question someone asked in the Facebook thread I linked above: how much will councils profit from this compost? I’ve also overheard several conversations between people moaning that they “don’t have food waste” because they “don’t waste food”. Which does make me wonder if the messaging of the service is somewhat misleading, because what they’re intending for people to put in there – as well as, obviously, some spoiled waste food – is the bits of food that don’t get eaten: peels, cores, bones, skin etc. Or maybe people just love to moan!
The new bins aren’t a huge change of habit for me anyway; when I moved here from London three years ago I knew I couldn’t go back to putting scraps in the general waste. In fact I actually illegally transported my Lewisham kitchen waste bin down here, so I could cart it up the hill to one of the Hastings Compost Community hubs. Is this a form of frictionmaxxxxing?? Although when my parents moved 10 minutes down the road and installed a compost bin in their garden I started often just chucking it in the car when I went round and putting it in there…much less friction. Now I can empty it in the (so far) seagull-proof wheely bins behind my apartment building.
The latest update is that people are putting general waste and recycling in these bins (wilfully? Accidentally? Who knows), and the council are refusing to collect them. But then no-one can get into them to take out the plastic. Are they just rotting in the street forever? Stay tuned.
Ps. If you’ve known me since I got a wormery for my balcony….don’t ask about what happened to the worms.
No dosa today: India’s cooking gas crisis
This piece in the FT(£) was an interesting read, on how a shortage of gas to fill canisters used for stoves in India is affecting food businesses and households alike. Restaurants, bakeries and food stalls are being forced to curtail their output, change their products or close altogether.
When I made episode 5 of the Kitchens series, which was about how cooking fuels have shaped both individual experiences of food and also a broader heritage in the UK [LISTEN!], I closed the episode with this:
“For the sake of the environment we do have to stop relying on fossil fuels to heat our homes and feed us, and, for example, electric and induction hobs allow flexibility for their power to come from more sustainable sources. But coal is still used as a cooking fuel by people in many parts of the world, and while a global shift towards cleaner more sustainable sources of energy and heat is crucial, I think it’s also really important to handle this sensitively and preserve the traditions somehow, or else risk the entire systems built around this way of cooking being lost forever.”
Gas isn’t the same as coal in terms of how it pollutes air quality, but it is a finite resource that many countries import from elsewhere. India imports 90% of its LPG from the Middle East, relying heavily on shipments travelling through the blockaded Strait of Hormuz. Also, as the article points out, India is rich in solar and coal, so it feels like this could go either way in terms of a more determined move towards reliance on electricity rather than gas, or using coal as a cooking fuel instead.
I was thinking about whether we’ll see a knock-on effect of this here too, aside from the price rises we’re already experiencing and read that the UK gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Norway and the US, and more commonly uses mains gas rather than LPG canisters. The UK government are sitting positively on this topic at the moment, although gas bills are likely to continue to rise. The idea of delinking gas and electricity prices Rachel Reeves mentions in this article is interesting…we’ll see what happens with that.
Pantry Periodical
Usually, kitchen organisation content is a real bugbear of mine; so much of it ties into this narrative constantly peddled that we’re “living wrong”. Why must things be arranged for maximum efficiency, if you like it another way? Although I will say that things have come to a head in my own kitchen, where one of my cupboards, clearly making a point about its capacity being pushed to the limits, this week ejected an unopened jar of mango chutney, which then smashed on the floor. Maybe that’s why this post from Sohla hit different, or maybe it’s because Sohla could probably tell me to do anything and I would do it. Genuinely useful, realistic, non-judgemental kitchen organisation advice. Though she probably would judge me if she saw inside the cupboard the mango chutney was previously in.
ASPIRATIONAL KITCHENS OF THE WEEK
This gorgeous house just up the road from me in St Leonards has a Johnny Grey-esque curved kitchen island! You so rarely see an island without sharp edges.
Little Florence Farm (also in East Sussex) has gone for a reclaimed science bench (and some interesting rugged looking dark wood) in the kitchen. I like the all stainless steel unit too.
This Suffolk home is heavy on the barn, light on the conversion…the (stainless, again!) kitchen is swimming in this massive space.
OK that’s it for this month! Hope you enjoyed some kitchen news. Back next time.
Great reads! I have a sink waste disposal unit for food waste (grew up with one, could never do without) not sure whether to switch to the council’s caddies now. The reaction and behaviour change resistance around it is indeed very interesting.