The Cooking Alga

The Secret of Being Happy.

A friend of mine recently suffered the misfortune of a broken boiler in her home. She is a depressive, has been for years. On top of that she’s one of life’s great complainers (one of the things I like about her) and as it was the middle of February, and bitterly cold in the mornings, I braced myself for the usual rant about bad workmanship and poor service. I asked her the usual questions about when the repairman was coming, how much it would cost etc. But as soon as I began to sound sympathetic and talk about the inconvenience of it all she perked up and said, “It’s okay of course, I’ve got the Aga.” What she meant by this was that The Aga was actually warming the house day and night.

The Aga, You might hear it mentioned at dinner parties, or at other social gatherings. It’s going to come up, it’s bound to. Most social circles will contain one or two people who either own an Aga or know someone who do. At some point in the evening someone is going to mention that they’re wonderful, and that yes, food does really taste better when you cook with them. Aga ovens take pride of place in the kitchens of those who can afford them (more on that later) and become a focal point of many people’s life. In fact, people have been known to become quite emotional when discussing their Aga. And when they’re gushing about it, it always comes with the definite article. No simple “Aga”, it’s The Aga.

At home I have a perfectly good oven that does its job even at parties. It’s hot, it cooks food of all kinds, and it has a nice transparent door, which means I can watch it got o work. I can place four saucepans on the hobs at any one time, and that is more than enough for me. Dinners get cooked, some more extravagant than others, and the family never goes hungry. Christmas comes and goes and the attendees at our seasonal soirées return year after year so the food must be okay and on time. The oven needs cleaning every now and then and it’s not hard to do. In fact, I’m pretty pleased with my oven, don’t see the need for a new one for a long time, and don’t think about it too much. It’s an oven, plain and simple.

But it’s not an Aga. If you’ve never seen one of these things they’re big and solid looking, about the size of a small kitchen in fact. Whenever I’ve seen one in a kitchen it jumps out at you immediately saying look at me I’m The Aga. They look industrial, hard-working, and quite intimidating, to be honest. The more modern versions are flat-topped, and just look like a kitchen unit made out of metal. Agas always look like Agas though, reminding you vaguely of the ovens you saw on that school trip to the museum, and leaving you half expecting to see straw poking out of the bottom of the unit. Many pre-war Agas, in fact, are still working well today. The things are impossible to break. If they get chipped, cracked, or suffer any other kinds of wear and tear, a tearful Aga owner can just take them off to a renovation company (as if they were taking out the old Bentley for a clean up) and the Aga can be restored to it’s old glory.

The inventor of The Aga, Gustav Alen, created the oven because he felt that domestic cooks needed an oven that could easily meet the demands of a busy home. He was cruelly blinded in an accident, but that didn’t stop him on his mission to make the perfect home oven. It was launched in Britain in 1929, and swiftly became a bit of a classic as regards its design. The design itself has remained pretty much the same to allow the oven to retain its strong identity; in fact the only significant change in the last seventy-eight years has been the switch to cleaner fuels.

Put simply, the huge metal castings on an Aga accumulate and store heat, hence my friend’s smugness even after her boiler incident. The ovens are well known for their ability to warm a kitchen.

There are many kinds of Aga now, but the flagship, the model that means Aga to Aga lovers, is the four oven Aga. This is the iconic model, the one that people who want to buy an Aga will consider first.

There are two hotplates. The left hand hotplate is the boiling plate. Because of the high levels of heat on this plate you can boil water on it faster than you can with an electric kettle. No worries about safety however, as both hotplates have insulated covers that are just warm to the touch when closed. The boiling hotplate is large enough o hold three saucepans. On the right hotplate there’s again room for three saucepans. This plate is used for simmering, and can also be used as a griddle. In addition to these two plates, there’s also a third warming plate on the 4-oven model, which can be sued for keeping courses warm before they go to table.

Then there are the four ovens. Alen knew what he was talking about when he expressed the desire to meet the needs of a busy home. No one needs more than four ovens of course, unless they are running a restaurant.

The top right hand oven is for roasting and baking. Sizeable, it can accommodate anything up to a 13kg turkey. There is a further oven designed exclusively for baking alone on the bottom right hand side of the Aga.

What’s really useful for those who like making casseroles, for instance, is the simmering oven, which can be found on the top left hand side of the unit. Your casseroles can literally be left overnight in this oven. It can also be used for the slow cooking of vegetables, handy while you concentrate on other cooking tasks.

The neatest trick can be found on the bottom left hand side of the Aga, where the fourth oven is located. This is the warming oven, and its function is simply that, keeping food warm without any risk of drying out. An incredibly useful kitchen function (think about Christmas dinner).

But the ovens are really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to an Aga. Once you spend a few days playing with one, you realise that it has many more uses. Obviously, having more ovens helps, but the manufacturer’s claim that you can effectively throw away a number of your old appliances because the Aga can take their place is actually quite valid.

You don’t need a toaster, because the Aga has one. Not only that, the toast that it produces is actually better than that which your old standard toaster can provide. Toasted sandwiches can be made also. All the toast that comes out of the Aga can be tweaked just how you like it.

Grilling is easy too. The roasting oven serves up perfectly grilled steaks for example. Bacon, sausages, any other meat you might throw on a charcoal grill, comes out crispy and succulent after a few minutes in the Aga.

And that’s not all; any time spent with an Aga owner soon brings forth a multitude of tips and tricks that can be performed with the appliance. Agas have been used to revive a loaf of stale bread, to clean wax from candlesticks, to loosen tight lids from preserve jars, and so on. People have even ironed clothes on them.

There are smaller models than the four oven, going all the way down to a two-oven model, but one can’t help feeling that the four oven owners look down on the twos, because it’s about the cost as well. If you are going to buy an Aga buy a four oven, they’re secretly saying, because buying a four oven Aga places you in a distinct earnings bracket. Picking up a renovated four-oven model could cost you around £5,000. Then it will need installing, which could cost around £500. Not cheap. If they need servicing or further renovating or reconditioning you’re back in the thousands of pounds market for most respectable service firms.

My friend inherited hers when she bought her cottage. It was, of course, one of the reasons why she bought the place. The value of a house has been known to increase when an estate agent discovers an Aga in a property, they sell houses like gardens and bathrooms do.

And Agas make their owners happy, very happy. When my friend has a particularly down day I have a new technique I can use to lift her mood. But you have an Aga, I say, bringing into her world the kind of happiness that no amount of pills or therapy will ever manage.