Showing posts with label planning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label planning. Show all posts

Thursday, 14 February 2019

Fancy a Banquette?

Fanny Cradock is in the mood for a spot of remodelling. In the kitchen that is, where else? And there is simply no-one that she would trust with the job apart from her good self, and Johnnie, to a lesser extent. She would especially not trust an architect or designer, who very probably cannot even fry an egg, to possibly know what is in her mind. How would they understand what she wanted from a kitchen? It's not like she could tell them or anything... Oh...

Fanny Cradock Kitchen Planning

Fanny feels that her thoughts, working patterns and culinary life are simply beyond the comprehension of mere designers. Having worked 'alongside' Fanny for all these years, I may be inclined to agree. Fanny's pet peeve are kitchens with work surfaces which face the wall. They mean that lighting is inevitably poor, and to cook is wearisome - relying on our experience and 'Housewives Braille'. Presumably housewives would be unable to read the partwork with ease as they prepare dish after dish. That will never do. And don't even think about getting Fanny started on cluttered-up cupboards...

Fanny Cradock Kitchen Planning

Fannys aim is to ensure that the kitchen is the absolute hub of the home - after all we all spend so much time in there. It should be a place that visitors realise is not simply the room from where 'the grub' comes, or indeed the room where family or friends are inevitably drawn. Fanny thinks her job, in her kitchen, is to keep people out of it, not woo them in. Of course, this may be to avoid the social embarrassment of visitors realising that there are a small army of cheery weary assistants busy preparing all the food that Fanny passes of as her own...

Fanny Cradock Kitchen Planning

Fanny knows that readers must work within the limits of their incomes, and could not possibly hope to have a kitchen just like her own. However she feels by showing you a DREAM kitchen (as hers is, without question) she can inspire readers to achieve similar things in the much 'smaller units' that they no doubt have. I mean, who needs FOUR cookers like Fanny? Fanny knows that we are all 'suckers' who would like to submit ourselves to collecting useless exhibition type gadgets. They are a menace, and should be scrapped from any kitchen if not used once in any given calendar year. The exception are items purchased directly from Fanny herself, available at a very reasonable cost to readers of the partwork, to help them in their hour of need to set up a DREAM kitchen like Fannys. Also, never (unless you are Fanny) install a seventeenth century knife grinder in your kitchen merely for decoration. A menace.

Fanny Cradock Kitchen Planning

Fanny provides drawings and plans for an ideal kitchen - in no way 'architect-like' or as if she were herself, or had consulted, a designer. No. Fanny provides inspiration through little touches and flourishes that Johnnie has made himself. Once all the work is done though, you will need an area, should you be fortunate enough to have space, to settle down and enjoy a well-deserved coffee. The must-have for a dreamy DREAM kitchen is naturally a banquette area, complete with 'copper effect' curtains and psychedelic hallucinogenic-inducing accessories. Look how pleased Fanny is with the final results. You too could be like Fanny. Just on a more moderate budget in line with your own income, naturally.

Fanny Cradock Kitchen Planning

Thursday, 24 July 2014

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

I get excited about Christmas - I love sharing food with friends and family, I love parties and I love Christmas movies... But even for me, July is way too early to be thinking about it. In this partwork though, Fanny just wants to ensure that we are well and truly ready for The Day. Her aim is to free us all from the 'No.1 Slave Labour Session of the year for home-makers' by learning the professional way to plan, prepare and present the perfect Christmas. I can't help but think that the best way to free us all from the pressures of feeling like we are involved in unwelcome imprisoning in the kitchen would be NOT to start a panic planning session months in advance, but clearly Fanny doesn't agree.


Fanny is well known for her ideas for Christmas, not least because her weird and wonderful TV series of Christmas specials are shown on TV (at least in the UK) without fail each year. However, I'm not entirely convinced that Fanny actually likes the festive season as much as we all imagine. The booklet accompanying the TV series is of course essential reading, especially if you fancy trying the infamous mincemeat omelette, but the tone of her descriptions elsewhere do leave you feeling it's all an unwelcome chore. Her first Christmas book was lovingly called 'Coping with Christmas' which doesn't really ooze positivity as a title. Fanny details her way of coping as planning of course, and outlines her master plan which starts really in January and continues at pace throughout the year!


Fanny condenses her plans in this partwork, but maintains her slightly disparaging tone about the whole thing, providing a selection of menus for almost every occasion, with matching wines from Johnnie too. Most of the recipes feature in future parts of the Cradock Cookery Programme leading up to Christmas, so I am sure I'll be making them then! For now though it's plan, plan, plan! Hang on though, Fanny says that she's giving us these menus so that we can dispense with at least one bit of planning, so maybe I can just sit back and relax for a few months...


No such luck. Fanny wants me to save my precious pennies for The Day so gives lots of crafty ideas for decorating my home. They mainly seem to revolve around making faux feather boas from tissue paper to trim the tablecloth and hang round door frames, and endless ideas involving swans. No idea why,just because Fanny likes them I guess.nFanny says it's important to have 'ideas not money' to make your home a festive sensation, no matter who pops round. I'll need to stock up on tissue paper and spend the next six months cutting out little squares, threading them together and scrunching them up to make the boas. That'll certainly keep me busy and clearly impress my Christmas guests.


There are a couple of recipes included, but only a few. They mostly involve cheats ideas for The Day - things like using the ingredients from a classic Christmas pudding to make a frozen cream dessert, or using a Swiss Roll formed into a ring as a Garland Cake - invented by Fanny herself for those that hate plum pudding. Fanny urges us to make our a Brandy Butter now and store it wrapped in cellophane in our ordinary domestic refrigeration. I'll pass. Fanny also shows us how to make little Petits Fours and chocolate truffles - using Canache as she calls it, we know it as Ganache - that we can give as presents. Fanny reminds us that is absolutely essential to 'keep the friendship of tradespeople' at this time of year. So, the table and decorations are covered, plans are in place, recipes will be coming and I'm feeling calm. But hang on, Fanny gives no clues whatsoever how to dress oneself impressively to wait nonchalantly at the door for guests to arrive. Panic! What the heck will I wear?