Quality time in the kitchen

Hubby and the kids casually drop French and Italian cuisine words in our conversations. They actually know how to spell Crème fraîche. It’s getting weird. But it’s also fun. We challenge each other to make the most mouth-watering dishes, and eat healthier, too (sometimes).

The kitchen has become a sort of shared battleground/workshop. And I love it. I’ve always thought of the kitchen as the true heart of the house. If ’we are what we eat’, then the kitchen is where we decide who we are going to be.

Our kitchen is part of Indesit’s built-in Aria range. It looks fantastic: each cooking appliance perfectly complements the other, and has this clean, modern look that I really love. This will sound cheesy, but it’s like our family: we’re all different, but we’re made for each other (Yes, I warned you it was going to be cheesy).

My husband can cook a hearty roast in the oven, while my daughter and I are preparing a uber-healthy, low-fat stir-fry on the hob. In the meantime, my son can experiment with the microwave.

The Aria range makes this easy. Take the hob, for instance: it’s an induction hob. I adore the versatility it provides, allowing us to use pots and pans of all shapes and sizes. And cleaning up after cooking is a breeze.

Turn&Cook is one of them. It does exactly that—you turn a knob, and you get ridiculously tasty dishes in under an hour. We used to fight over who had to clean out the oven, but this one has a lot of clever little design enhancements that makes it real easy, like the tilting grill, or the removable front glass panel.

We made fun of our boy when he wanted to try and make chef-level dishes in the microwave. But we’ve had to recant... his meals are simply exquisite. The Aria microwave has a special system that ensures the ingredients are thoroughly cooked (our old microwave produced half-frozen, half-burned meals all the time).

 But it’s also the best room in the house—the one in which we’re closest :)