The light brigade
Remember the episode of Fawlty Towers when the bolshie American guest arrived after chef had left for the evening and demanded to be fed? If only the kitchen had been equipped with a few choice items of light equipment capable of delivering filling snacks with the minimum of effort, poor Basil wouldn't have got into such a stew.
Such light-duty cooking equipment - which includes contact grills, microwave ovens and induction hobs, to name but a few - can be used by staff with minimal training, is relatively cheap to buy, and can deliver high profits as well as a valuable service to the customer. Especially useful in hotel room service at a time when the kitchen is not manned by chefs, it means night porters, bar staff or a duty manager can produce hot food for a guest that, in addition to customer comfort, can also add points to guidebook ratings.
A key element of light equipment is versatility - the more jobs it can perform, the more useful it is to the smaller operator. The Rutland Express range of contact grills, for example, provides versatility with the option of a flat template for items such as hamburgers and pizza or a ribbed cooking template for cooking and scarring items such as steaks, chicken fillets and paninis. And if you're wondering just how fast these double-sided contact grills can cook fresh food, a sirloin steak is done in 60 seconds, bacon is done in 30 seconds and a toasted sandwich takes just 45 seconds.
If it's an authentic Italian pizza you want to provide, then you may need more specialised equipment. Ask the Italians the best way to cook pizza and the likely answer is going to be "on stone", but stone-floored pizza ovens are definitely in the expensive, heavy-duty, prime cooking category. To get around that, Apuro is importing the Italian-built Pizza Rapid, which is a table-top circular pizza cooker with a stone base that cooks just one pizza at a time. Rather like a contact grill in the fact that it is a hinged, two-part cooker, it has a domed top half that doesn't make contact with the pizza. It runs off standard 13amp power and can cook up to a 12in pizza from frozen in four to five minutes.
But it's not just hotels that can benefit from being flexible in making food available to customers. Though many pubs now operate on all-day opening, many are geared to offering hot food only around lunch and dinner times. Those wanting to offer all-day food can face the dilemma that the deep-fat fryer has to be switched on permanently. This leads to rapid oil burnout and a risk of the offensive smell of burnt oil creeping into the bar area.
The solution for the Bishop of Norwich pub in the Moorgate area of London, part of the 44-strong Davy's Wine Bar chain, is to use a Valera Quik n' Crispy hot-air fryer to deliver snack items all day long and without the smells.
The hot-air fryer is a recent invention which is simple to use. It is similar in concept to a compact tumble dryer, but with a very high heat and the food held in baskets. Cooked or part-cooked frozen food items such as chips, spring rolls, chicken nuggets or breaded scampi have enough residual fat in their frozen coating to enable crisping as well as reheating or cooking in the hot-air fryer chamber. While cooking times are not as fast as deep-fat frying, they are still quick, and the food has a fresh-cooked taste and texture.
The compact nature of light equipment can also be useful for smaller catering operations where floor-standing space for cooking equipment is scarce. Piggy's Café in Chatham, Kent, is a typical small caf‚ with a small kitchen where every item of equipment has to justify not only its purchase cost but the space it occupies. Manager of the 35-seat café, Brian Merkett, says that although there is a floor-mounted deep-fat fryer for chips, for other occasional deep-fried items, such as sausages, chicken nuggets and breaded products, the café has installed a Parry light-duty table-top fryer which, as well as not taking up valuable floor space, leaves the main deep-fat fryer always free for chips.
One of the most common items of light equipment is the pie warmer, a fixture in almost every self-service outlet, café and take-away. Yet "pie warmer" is a misnomer, according Nick McDonald, marketing and export director of Lincat. "Food should never be warmed up in them; it should be thoroughly warmed up or cooked before going into the cabinet, for food safety reasons," he says. "A pie warmer should more correctly be called a heated food merchandiser, and it's worth remembering that it is illegal for warmed food to be kept for more than two hours in a merchandiser prior to sale."
Induction hobs
Light-duty table-top cooking is an area where induction has proved very useful for its high heat and speed. One of the most popular uses of table-top induction hobs is for front-of-house theatre-style cooking. This is not just novelty, but a very practical way of selling food prepared to order using the ingredients the customer wants.
Chris Towler, chef development director with contract caterer Eaton Group, which uses induction hobs from Induced Energy, says staff restaurants are big users of induction, because as well as offering personalised dishes cooked in front of the customer, there is no smoke or heat generated, and therefore it doesn't affect the environment of the restaurant.
"In some units we have set up the cooking point with a table-top induction wok in the middle of the restaurant, so the customers surround the chef," he says. "There is no risk to customers, because the hob doesn't get hot. We use some flat hobs, but mostly use induction woks. One of our most popular concepts is the noodle bar. Customers pick from meat or fish, five or six flavourings, and the vegetables they want. Everything is individually priced, so the customer only pays for what they want."
Towler says customers don't have a problem with waiting for the food to be cooked. "It's like having a deli-bar preparing fresh sandwiches to order as opposed to buying a ready-made boxed sandwich. Customers are happy to wait for freshly-prepared food."
Contacts
- Apuro 0121-744 0968
- Induced Energy 01280 705900
- Lincat 01522 875500
- Parry 01332 875544
- Rowlett Rutland 01372 453633
- Valera 01708 869593
