A play-date at Miele Experience Centre

A week or two ago, I spent a very merry day at the Miele Experience Centre, trying out their kitchen equipment. We've got a little light kitchen remodelling to do here, and I've been humming and hawing about it for months. Not any more. I've got it all sorted. Nearly.

The Experience Centre is unique amongst white goods manufacturers: anyone can go (by appointment) and play with the full range, everything is "live" - ie plugged and plumbed in. You can even take your washing. But mostly, people go there to cook, guided by Miele's home economist Elspeth.















You might think that a cooker is a cooker is a cooker. But you'd be wrong. (Well, I was wrong.) The test kitchen has four work stations, and each of them is equipped slightly differently: a hob, ovens, plus one item which might be described as a novelty. There was a barbecue grill, a salamander (which is a fancy, space age sort of a grill that rises up out of the worktop), a tepanyaki hotplate, and a built-in wok. All good fun, if in total contrast to my Esse woodburning stove, and the Aga that I have cooked on for over 20 years.

Someone commented that this was scientific cooking ... all that programming is not the thing for an instinctive cook. On the other hand, here's something worth having - the whole range is integrated, so that all the trays and racks fit everything .... you can prepare food ahead, put it on a metal tray which slots into your fridge and later will go straight into your oven. Every last little detail has been thought about - top class design and engineering.

I'm not a great one for gadgets, but the built-in coffee maker is a dream. We won't need a microwave any more, as we only ever use it to heat up milk for hot chocolate. And we'll have a heated drawer, which will primarily be used for proving bread, although we'll never have an excuse for cold plates any more, and we'll be able to keep supper warm for late-comers.

Miele are kindly going to lend me a steam oven to play with .... people who have them say that they are the best; I just wonder if it's too scientific for me, if it would end up as the world's most expensive egg boiler.















Anyone can spend the day at the Experience Centre, for which there's no charge (that's real confidence in your product), although my day there was specially arranged for a group of bloggers. I cooked with Sam, the Cycling Cook, whose post explains what we made. Also there were Alex from The Princess and the Recipe, Joy of Almanzo's Belly and Alex at Just Cook It. A great day out ... made perfect by Anna, the washing-up fairy, who made it possible for one fabulous day to cook without having to bother about clearing up.















Beware though, you may end up, like me, thinking that there's really no alternative ...