It’s great to know that people are reading this blog, and also great to receive feedback and questions from readers. Here’s one.

Buddyboy wrote:

Here’s a poser for you, Not Delia. If you have soup served to you in any restaurant, it is invariably served with a proper soup spoon. Not to be confused with the usual tablespoon, the soup spoon, sometimes called a bouillon spoon, is circular rather than oval, deep rather than shallow. So, if that is the correct spoon to eat soup with, why are such spoons never included as standard in cutlery sets? (Never may be an overstatement but I have yet to see them included.) Not only that, try buying these spoons anywhere. Short of tracking them down at restaurant supply stores which are not really retail establishments, you can’t even find them in kitchen-type stores that sell just about everything. This may be a quirk of where we live, Canada, but perhaps not. Hmmmm.

Gosh. That really is a poser. Good question! I have almost every piece of kitchen kit you could imagine – even a lot of professional kitchen equipment in my tiny home kitchen – but there’s not a soup spoon in the house. And you know what? I’d never even noticed it until now. Our canteen of cutlery came with complete table settings (even fish knives and forks), plus various bits and bobs for serving food at the table – but NO SOUP SPOONS!

Well, we do have the Chinese-style soup spoons but that’s altogether a different thing.

So, how do we eat soup? Not with a fork! Probably like lots of other people, we use a tablespoon. (The dessert spoon is the same shape but smaller.) Why should this be so? I don’t know, maybe it’s fashion and people dine more informally at home these days whilst restaurants still do things the ‘proper’, more traditional, way.

I checked out some of the High Street stores online and you’re right – it’s very rare for the canteens of cutlery to include soup spoons, although a few of the very expensive ones do. As you say too, though, catering equipment and restaurant supplies companies do supply soup spoons – and they’re not always expensive either. My preference is to use a catering supplier whenever possible as you tend to get good quality kit at very reasonable prices.

As usual, I recommend Nisbets to our readers in the UK. Despite it being primarily a catering equipment company, you don’t have to buy in bulk. It’s good for the home cook too, I’ve bought heaps of stuff from them over the years and have always been pleased with the goods and service. Why not have a browse around their cutlery department? They sell soup spoons in packets of 12. (Sorry, Buddyboy, you’ll need to find an equivalent of Nisbets in Canada.)

Whilst in Penang recently, I had the privilege and pleasure of meeting Michael Saxon on behalf of A Luxury Travel Blog. Mike is the General Manager of the Eastern & Oriental Hotel. His career spans over 30 years in the industry in several countries – first as a trainee chef in Yorkshire to his current position as the top man of one of Asia’s most prestigious hotels. He has a blog called Michael Saxon’s Musings (which I’ve added to my blogroll).

Mike has recently offered a completely free question-and-answer service on his blog, so if you’re a budding cook or chef and you have a question about cooking, Mike’s your man. Mike says:

I would like to share my knowledge to anyone who would like to learn basic cooking skills so that they can learn how to cook gourmet meals themselves at home. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to inspire but one person to cook themselves or their loved ones a home cooked meal.

So, what are you waiting for? If you’ve been bamboozled by batter, stymied by steak, or perplexed by pastry, worry no more! Mike is ready and waiting to help you.
Chef’s Tales: Private online Chef – Fantastic and Professional cooking tips entirely free

Michael Saxon’s autobiography Chef’s Tales has been updated and republished by Melrose Books and is available from Amazon.

Chef’s Tales

Michael Saxon
Hardback, 224 pages
2008, Melrose Books
ISBN 1906050740
RRP: £12.99

A friend of mine runs the website of a volunteer fire group in Nova Scotia. There’s lots of useful and interesting information on the website and, naturally, I was drawn to the page about kitchen fires. Whilst there, I was shocked to discover:

Statistics indicate that 48 percent of household fires and 4 percent of fire caused fatalities are cooking related.

Wow! That’s pretty strong stuff. I’d not realised the huge importance of the subject so I decided to do a bit of digging to see what I could find out. There’s lots of information available as well as many free resources.

The UK Fire Service website has a whole section on fire safety in the home with plenty of advice. They say:

Most fires in the home can be prevented by taking some basic and common-sense precautions. This section will help you to inspect your home for anything that could cause a fire. You can then take the necessary actions to protect your home and the people who live in it.

They offer a free booklet called FIRE SAFETY IN THE HOME, which is available as a PDF (370 kb). This contains lots of useful information, presented in a very clear way, including a bed time checklist and lots of other things you can do to help prevent fires in the home.

They also offer free Home Fire Risk Assessments:

Many people are not aware that the Fire and Rescue Service will come and visit your home, completely free of charge, at a time that suits you. We will advise you on any aspect of fire safety within your home and help you devise an escape plan, if you do not already have one.

And by the way, they seem to roughly agree with the Canadian statistic above which shocked me. In their free booklet they say, “Over half of all home fires are caused by cooking accidents.” I would highly recommend you pay a visit to the Fire Service website. There’s so much good stuff in there. They even have a page all about chip pans – which cause one fifth of accidental fires in the home. I urge you to read this page.

The direct.govt.uk website also provides some information and a rather boring ‘game’ as well as interactive stuff for kids which takes forever to load and doesn’t seem to work very well. Maybe I’m just not technically minded enough for it. Bah!