Lovin' From The Oven (Home on the Range)

I live in an enormous apartment which I share with J, my lovely and considerate roommate and we each have our own suites with attached baths and balconies and the walls are so thick that late night entries and movie watching are inaudible.

Though my new digs have the square footage that my old ones did not--the range, in particular, was a bit of a challenge. But first, I must mention traditionally Thais cooked outside with coals in clay pots (you still see this frequently) and now are generally okay with a combination stove top, camp stove, (electric---shudder) hot plate type set up at home, since they eat out or buy food outside and well, it's a tropical country. Who in their right mind needs an oven?

Enter the spolied farang: me. I did have an oven, which is more than most people have or feel like they need in these parts. But this range was a real antique. Italian in origin--it read "Fratelli Onofri" in faded black on the front, I believe it may have dated from the Mussolini era (though I have no chance to take it Antiques Roadshow and prove that). It exuded an gassy smell which was oh-so-unappetizing and the burners left lots to be desired. And the oven--it worked, but there was no discernible way to control the temperature so you could attempt to bake, but would have to be super vigilant or things would turn to blackened crisp before you could say deus ex machina.

The building manager whisked Mussolini away to an undisclosed location, after I had requested a new range, and promised to rehabilitate him. But there is no solution for a hardened despot made of steel. He came back polished yet still inefficient.

In January, my mother and aunt showed up and were appalled by Mussolini's lack of BTU cooking power. Indian ladies are serious about their cookers--oh they may use a pan that came free with a box of Bisquick or a bent knife bought as a present by a romance-challenged husband, but you better believe they insist on their firepower. And frankly, men from my culture are so fussy about their food (Woe betide the new bride who tries to use Minute Rice in the name of expediency instead of Basmati!) that one bad meal later, an order would be quickly put in to Sears for something state of the art and guaranteed not to scorch the daal.

So unaware of the first attempt to scare Mussolini straight, my mother and aunt promptly fired off a few choice words at the building manager (who is also Indian, thereby invoking the Indian lady god-given right to yell at the culturally same) saying that the burners were so weak that it was impossible to even make TEA. And if there is no TEA, you see, well....um it's actually impossible to say what would happen because there has always been and always will be TEA. You may just as well serve everyone purple Kool-Aid and elope.

None of the consternation solved the problem though and I went around Bangkok searching for a range. I need to roast birds and vegetables. I need to indulge my inner Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms. Everyone I know knows I go through this phase every once in a while, doing things like reading biographies of Emily Dickinson and making fruit crisps. I promise to not get that severe.

But the real thing is that roasting things in an oven is a way to guarantee yourself a really nice tasty dinner with essentially minimum effort (beat up the meat, season and grease, slam in roasting pan, cook) while you yourself have a lot of free time.

Ranges here are hard to come by and expensive, but that great boon of the Internet--craigslist-- proved serendipitous with a posting for my new but secondhand gloriously powerful stainless range which I snapped up as soon as I could.

Incidentally, this range is also an Italian, though I am loath to sully it by comparing it another Italian politician. They simply aren't as reliable. And besides which, the Elba is clearly a woman-- strong, powerful and easy on the eyes, don't you think?