Advantage: Advantium

The third appliance category that impressed me at GE Monogram last week is their Advantium oven. Since GE Monogram's in Louisville, KY; the home of Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby, I'll use a horse racing analogy to rank my top three picks from GE Monogram. The Pro 48 is the win, the Monogram induction cooktop is the place and the Advantium's the show. If there were a catchy word for a fourth place, it would go to some of the innovations they've been adding to their dishwashers. Dishwashers however, are a topic for another day. Today belongs to the Advantium.

GE invented and developed the Advantium in 1998 and introduced it in 1999. It's been tweaked a bit in the years since, but this new model year added a fourth dimension that took an already good cooking appliance and made it great.

For anyone who doesn't know what an Advantium oven is, here's what one looks like.

It looks like a microwave oven from the outside and if you didn't know better, you'd swear it was a microwave when you opened one. It's not a microwave though, although it can be if you ask it to be one.

What it is really is a speed cooker that uses halogen light, microwave energy, a convection coil and fan as well as a radiant heat source to cook food. Advantiums are smart in the sense that they come pre-programmed to handle 175 every day foods. You can also add your own settings to the pre-sets or you can also use it in manual mode. When it's not actively defrosting or boiling something, it lays off the microwaves and instead uses its other energy sources to do everything from proofing bread dough to roasting a chicken.

What's even cooler is that it performs these tasks at incredible speed while using less energy than a conventional oven. So if you were to set out to roast a four pound chicken, it would take just about two hours in a conventional oven. In an Advantium however, that bird would be roasted golden brown in 25 minutes. As marvelous as the Advantium's speed is, what's truly remarkable is that it smells, looks and most importantly tastes exactly as if it were roasted conventionally.

Trust me, I did not go to GE Monogram with the expectation that I would come away from three days of boot camp extolling the virtues of GE. I'm telling you though, that experience shook up my preconceptions and threw my brand loyalties into disarray. GE Monogram makes some quality appliances that actually work. What can I say? They made a believer out of me and that is no small task.

Stop motion Sunday

My newest friend on Facebook is a Portland, Oregon-based artist, sculptor and designer Patrick Gracewood. Patrick writes a blog called Shadows on Stone and I've been going over his archives over the last few days.

Patrick has some real finds on his blog and these two stop motion animation videos are downright enchanting. The first is a wedding invitation and the second is a music video. Each is as beautiful as it is delightful. If you need a shot of art today, spend some time with Patrick Gracewood and his Shadows on Stone.

Induction cooking rules the universe

OK, so I spent the beginning of the week this week In Louisville, KY as a guest of GE Monogram appliances. While I was at GE I was not only treated like a prince, I was assigned a cooking station in GE's Monogram test kitchen. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the other designers who attended this appliance summit and I prepared most of our own meals under the expert tutelage of GE's chefs.

The bottom line was that I had a kitchen with $20,000 in appliances at my disposal and I was in heaven. I spent most of my time falling in love with the GE Monogram Pro 48" range I wrote about the other day. But the bulk of the actual cooking I did was on a GE Monogram 36" induction cooktop.

I have been on the induction bandwagon since my first hands-on experience with induction cooking at a Wolf seminar about four years ago.

I wrote a description of how induction cooktops work back in January, give it a look if you need a primer.

Induction cookers are highly efficient and they work with unusual speed. For example, an induction cooktop can boil six quarts of water 400 percent faster than natural gas can. I'm a bit of an efficiency nerd and despite my former preference for cooking with gas, I conceded that preference to induction years ago. Get this, from the energy expended from a gas burner, 62% of that energy gets lost and does nothing more than heat up a room. Only 38% of that energy gets delivered to the food being cooked. That lousy efficiency is why gas cooktops have to be vented. Old school radiant electric cookery is more efficient from an energy perspective. In this case, 72% of the energy expended goes toward heating the food and 27% is lost. In induction, 84% off the energy expended goes to the food being cooked and only 16% is lost.

This is the actual electromagnet and circuitry inside an induction cooktop

Anyhow, I've played around with induction at a variety of training seminars I've attended over the years, but I've never actually cooked with it. Until this week that is.

On Tuesday afternoon I browned chicken and made a red curry on an induction cooktop and I was really impressed. The process of browning chicken was faster, but it wasn't due to my using higher cooking temperatures. It was faster because the skillet got to the correct temperature in seconds. It was amazing, actually.

On Wednesday, I made pasta with a sauce of bacon, pine nuts, feta and mascarpone. I made the sauce in a sautee pan. I was always concerned about how well induction would fare with sauces, but my concerns were unfounded. My pasta sauce turned out perfectly. Ditto a caramel sauce I whipped up later. The butter, brown sugar and cream blended flawlessly at a medium heat and then stayed warm on simmer until it was time to eat. Best of all, when I cleaned out the pot later, there was nothing scorched on the bottom.

So, even though I've been responsible for getting induction cooktops into a bunch of peoples' houses in the last few years, I'd never cooked on one until recently. After having done so, all I can say is that induction cookery exceeded even my lofty expectations. So I guess the next step is to get one for me. Hmmm.

Christopher Peacock's back

Many thanks to Gina Milne, the super sleuth who writes the great blog Willow Decor. Thanks to Gina's eagle eye, I am happy to report that the darkness is lifting.

Christopher Peacock, the man who has single handedly saved us from the dreaded Tuscan kitchen is making a comeback. In September, 2008; Peacock sold his namesake cabinetry and home decor line to the British company Smallbone. Smallbone hit the skids of the global recession shortly thereafter, leaving the fate and future of Christopher Peacock, the brand, in limbo. Well, Peacock just bought his company back from the flaming wreckage of Smallbone and just rehired his employees. Bravo Christopher Peacock! Here's the press release:

July 7, 2009 -- Greenwich, CT – Christopher Peacock is best known for his cabinetry. For more than 15 years his work has included many private estates and residences throughout the United States, France, Australia, the United Kingdom, Russia, Bermuda, Ireland and Puerto Rico. His clientele have come to know Mr. Peacock as the benchmark of quality and exceptional service where all of his cabinetry is produced in the United States. The privately held Corporation had its best year ever in 2008, with gross sales of $20M.

Riding on this success, Mr. Peacock successfully sold his company in September 2008 to Smallbone PLC – a publicly traded UK holding company who already owned a collection of high-end luxury brands. These included Smallbone of Devizes, Mark Wilkinson Furniture, Paris Ceramics and Hopton Works. Sadly, the PLC Group, which was primarily based in the United Kingdom, hit hard times due to the global economic collapse. This turn of events provided Mr. Peacock the opportunity to return to his roots and now re-start the brand that bears his name.

“I couldn’t be more thrilled to be a part of and lead this dynamic group of designers and craftsman who are all dedicated to excellence once again. We still have so much to offer. In my heart I’m an entrepreneur, and the significant demand for our products and our way of doing business could not be ignored. I felt I had no choice but to continue onward with the brand and the reputation for being the best. By launching a home products collection I will continue to offer well-designed and well built products to designers, architects, builders and consumers alike” said Peacock.

He is a busy man. Along with the five Peacock Home showrooms across the country, he owns Christopher Peacock Paint, and Peacock Manufacturing Company (his workshop in West Virginia). Additionally, he co-owns Peacock & Beale – a fabulous home furnishings store in Greenwich, Connecticut with the renowned designer Connie Beale. “When Christopher Peacock Cabinetry was forced to close down, it left many clients and staff in a very bad place. I was determined to do everything in my power to honor those commitments to the company, and now with the start up complete we have been able to do so. I am happy to say that we have been able to honor all of the client deposits lost to the old entity and everybody is getting the products that they had hoped for.”

The new company plans to introduce many new products for the home, beginning in the kitchen. His MOTRA™ Collection will be the first. This new Collection of high quality, well-designed and affordable cabinetry will be debuted this fall. Under the MOTRA™ label will be a modern line and a traditional line where a typical kitchen from this new Collection will begin at $45,000. “Obviously, the world has changed. To continue to lead our industry we must evolve. Frankly, many lesser brands and mill shops haven’t made it. I believe we are responding to a need in the marketplace and listening to our potential clientele. We are going to be aggressive and fight hard for market share in this multi-billion dollar industry.” said Peacock.

In March 2009, Peacock introduced his Contemporary Collection of fitted and free-standing furniture. The Collection includes beautiful new contemporary hardware designed by Mr. Peacock, many new choices of interiors of cabinetry for clients to choose from as well as new wood, stain and paint choices to compliment the new Collection. The new Collection can be seen in several Christopher Peacock Home showrooms in kitchen, dressing room and bath displays.

Welcome back Christopher Peacock, the brand and the man. US design needs you desperately.

Home again home again jiggety jig

I started this in the airport in Louisville last night, but alas, nothing ever got written. I'm back now and I have actual, paying work that needs to be done today. I'll write more later and I'll probably be back on my regular writing schedule by tomorrow or Saturday. Today though, all there is is a few photographs of unexpectedly lovely Louisville. Boy it's good to be home.