Iron In The Soul

Whilst I don't think Jean-Paul Sartre had kitchen utensils exactly in mind when writing the third volume to his "Roads to Freedom" trilogy, I think there is indeed 'soul' in a carefully tended piece of ironware in the kitchen. It wears all the food it has ever cooked  in its patina: the above pictured pan was rescued from a cowshed thirty years ago, and has since served me well over the years since. It is a small, eight or nine inch diameter pan of pressed mild steel of good quality, with a well-rivetted handle of like metal. A good quality piece of professional kitchen equipment that took me a good twenty years to season and bring up to its present state of grace. All that it requires after use is a good rinse and a wipe over with kitchen paper before hanging it back on its hook.

Every time I clean this thing after use, I'm minded of a wonderful cast iron skillet that I used to own, which I bought back in the very early 1980s from Bangor market as one of a set of three pans for a fiver. the other two pans disappeared fairly quickly, but the twelve-inch skillet lasted me for decades. My mom, God rest her soul, tried to 'clean' it after a meal, which resulted in near apoplexy on my behalf. I had to explain that it had taken me over a quarter of a century to get the thing into condition. Having survived the assault of mom's Brillo pad, sadly, the pan was dropped and broken a few years later, despite my previous care of it. This one, being steel, would fare rather better and should easily outlast the two of us and probably the next generation or two, if looked after...