Get ready to scream with envy – meet the women with . . . 4 OVENS!
NEVER mind an Aga. The latest in kitchen one-upmanship is a wall-mounted bank of three or more high-tech ovens, each costing as much as €1,500. Here, four lucky women explain why they need theirs...
WE HAVE AN OVEN FOR EACH OF THE CHILDREN
TIFFANY PENNINGTON, 37, a part-time school administrator, lives with her husband and their four children aged 19, 14, eight and seven. She says: WE HAVE a bank of four Bosch ovens in our kitchen — one for each child, you could say. It’s the room where everyone ends up, whether we’re just chatting over coffee or entertaining. New friends are always eager to have a peek at our kitchen and I love showing it off. Having the ovens built into the kitchen wall in our five-bedroom home was a far more practical — and safe — choice than a low-down Aga, with all its tempting and accessible doors, with a houseful of children.
We wanted a sleek, modern look to the kitchen when we spent €28,000 renovating it three years ago. The ovens are certainly a luxury but they get a lot of use, so I consider the €6,200 we paid for them well worth it.
We’ve lived here for eight years and had two ovens before. But with four children that was never enough, particularly when we hosted extended family at Christmas.
Also, my seven-year-old son Alfie is a very fussy eater. He pretty much lives on plain chicken, but only if it has been cooked on its own, away from the smell of the lasagne or salmon I make for his siblings. Because the children are in and out doing various activities at different times, I have different meals on the go during the day using the low-temperature slow-cooker settings.
They are convection ovens but with all sorts of state-of-the-art functions accessible via the digital touchscreen on each one.
There’s no need for me to have the likes of separate steamers and slow cookers any more, as the ovens have these functions in-built. One also has the option to work as a microwave.
Each one can be programmed precisely according to what I want to cook, whether it’s a cake, a soufflé, poultry or fish. I simply select the item from the digital menu and the oven adjusts the temperature and timer accordingly, which removes all the guesswork and results in perfectly cooked and risen food.
If I’m cooking roast beef, for example, it even allows me to choose whether I’d like it rare, medium or well done.
My husband is a meticulous planner and neither of us wanted to regret any of the choices we made when we splurged on the new kitchen. We both agreed that with four ovens we would never be limited in what we could make or how many people we could cook for.
I’ve always enjoyed cooking but my four ovens have added to the joy. Best of all, I don’t have to get out rubber gloves and oven cleaner any more — I just use the touchscreen control panel to set it to the pyrolytic cleaning programme.
This heats the oven to over 400c, which cremates any grease or food spillages and turns them to ash, so all I have to do is sweep it away later. Who wouldn’t be envious of that?
BELIEVE IT OR NOT, I CAN’T EVEN COOK!
NICKY MIDGLEY, 45, is a senior administrator for a charity and lives with her husband Andrew, 50, a buyer for a bathroom company, and their daughters Eve, 12, and Amber, eight. She says: OUR swish Neff ovens have become the envy of my friends as well as a bit of a standing joke because, despite being a typical rugby-loving man, my husband does all the cooking.
We entertained last Saturday and while Andrew slaved away over the food there was lots of talk among our guests of how they’d love a bank of ovens one day, too.
Of course, I think they look gorgeous, but I should confess that I can’t do much more with them than demonstrate how the sliding doors work or shove in a tray of oven chips. I’m really no cook!
Andrew and I have been married for 15 years this year and together for 21 years, and in that time I’ve probably cooked about five meals because I find it such a bore. Fortunately, he loves it and is happy to do it, never more so than now he has three whizzy new ovens to play with.
We’ve lived in our six-bedroom detached home for about eight years and the previous cooker wasn’t even built in, so even though I don’t cook I was keen to get rid of it. We renovated the kitchen last October and knocked through to the utility room to make it bigger.
Andrew had coveted the banks of ovens we’d seen at my sister-in-law’s house and at the homes of a few friends, and he loved the idea of being able to cook for larger groups of friends and family. So he and the kitchen designer settled on three.
The two end ovens are conventional but with all sorts of high-tech settings, while the one in the middle also doubles as a microwave or grill, not that I’ve really used any of them!
Andrew will spend hours in the kitchen prepping and cooking meals. The oven on the left must be his favourite as a symbol flashed up on the digital display the other day to tell me it was ready for cleaning, the first one to do so since they
I GOT THE OVENS FOR MY 50TH BIRTHDAY
SAMEENA NAWAZ, 52, operates the distribution of an Italian tanning skincare range and a Swiss lash lift brand with her husband Abid, 55. They live with their two sons aged ten and 17. She says: WHEN people first come to our house, they usually gasp ‘You’ve got
four ovens?’ with a mixture of disbelief and envy. But I think my
bank of four wall-mounted ovens is lush. They are from the Samsung Chef collection and cost just over €5,600 in total. They have certainly proved a big talking point since we had our kitchen renovated in June 2016 at a total cost of €56,000.
Although it’s just the four of us day to day, we regularly entertain 30 people at a time, so there may be tandoori chicken in one oven, lamb in another, dishes warming in the third and a cake in the last one.
They are convection ovens but boast digital touchscreens. One of them also has a microwave function but looks the same as the others and can double as an ordinary oven. In fact, apart from preparing the food there’s not much these ovens can’t do.
They are even linked to Wi-fi, so I can control them remotely via an app on my phone when I’m out at work or at the supermarket.
For example, if I’ve got a fish pie cooking but I’ve been delayed while I’m out and need to turn the temperature down or off completely, I can do so using the app.
The ovens have intense hot grills which are great for cooking pizzas, plus a low-temperature slow-cooking setting, and there’s a steam option which converts them to steamers for vegetables, fish and sponge puddings.
All I have to do is add water to a compartment in the oven to create the steam. They even have a builtin meat probe which I just have to insert into a whole chicken, for example, when I put it in the oven and select the ‘roast chicken’ option on the touchscreen.
The probe lets me monitor the internal food temperature via updates on the digital display on the oven, and shows when the meat is thoroughly cooked, all without me having to open the oven door.
I dreamt for years of a gorgeous kitchen with ovens like this. I drove my husband nuts about it. I’m very houseproud and a keen cook, and loved the idea of having a bank of high-tech ovens at my fingertips. So, when Abid asked me what I’d like for my 50th birthday in 2016, I seized my opportunity and replied, ‘A new kitchen and four ovens, thank you very much!’
He knew he couldn’t use delay tactics any longer.
As well as looking sleek, my ovens are very practical and self-cleaning. I suffer with a bad back but because they are mounted at eye level I no longer have to bend down to put food in or take it out, or to use the controls.
They are very much my territory. My husband’s way of cooking dinner is to take me out to a restaurant. But I will allow my eldest son to use the ovens in summer, as I plan to train him to cook before he goes off to university.
OURS ARE THE TALK OF THE TOWN
CHILDREN’S nurse Janette Atkins, 50, lives with husband Nigel, also 50, an airport firefighter and property manager, and their children Alice, 18, and James, 14. She says: WE’VE become famous for our swanky bank of Neff ovens among family, friends and neighbours, who always make comments such as, ‘Wow! Are you feeding the whole street?’ and ‘Is your husband’s appetite really that big?’
The main attraction for visitors is that the doors slide underneath the ovens when you open them so that you can tend to the food inside without obstruction. People always want to have a play with those.
We’ve lived here since we got married 20 years ago and for most of that time we just had a tiny, traditional oven, which didn’t even have a see-through glass door. I had to kneel on the floor just to put food in and take it out.
Meanwhile, I’d fallen in love with the idea of a row of ovens after seeing images of them in interiors magazines. Thankfully, Nigel likes to keep up with the latest gadgetry for the home, so when he revamped the kitchen of our four-bedroom home three years ago, we both knew what we wanted.
I knew that, along with the beautiful, handmade kitchen island, the ovens would be the centrepiece of the whole house. I suspect he did have an ulterior motive though. I recall him saying: ‘Well, if any of them fails, the Sunday roast will still go ahead in our house!’
They were well worth the €1,100 each that we spent on them. We have a lovely big open plan kitchen and on a Sunday I’ll have a joint of meat and the potatoes in one oven, veg steaming in another and Yorkshire puddings rising perfectly in the third.
All three ovens are fan assisted and have digital, touch-screen control panels. The two on either end have 14 different settings, including a steam function, bread baking, a low temperature for slow cooking, a high heat grill, defrost option.
Meanwhile, the setting for intense roasting circulates heat and steam in such a way that the roast is crisp on the outside but juicy and tender on the inside.
The middle oven has 12 features, the main difference being that it can be used as a microwave, and all three have a magical self-cleaning mode.
There are no longer any panics over timings, trying to cram everything into one space, and keeping it all warm, which means that big meals such as Christmas dinner and the New Year’s and summer parties we like to throw are an absolute breeze.
I already loved cooking and entertaining, but the ovens have made both things even more pleasurable both for me and also my daughter, Alice, who’s a keen baker.
She’ll be busy baking the likes of scones and strawberry daiquiri cakes in one oven, while I’ve got various pots of food on the go in the others.
Our house is always filled with the most incredible cooking smells.
I have to confess that unwittingly, the oven on the right is my favourite and gets most use, simply because it’s nearer to the dishwasher and the fridge.