What's happening in the kitchen

I bought a new frying pan on Friday. I have noticed that whenever I have tried to duplicate some of Jamie Oliver's recipes which include frying, the results are somewhat different. One of the differences would seem to be the pan, so I bought a 28cm non-stick pan which is very heavy. As it happens, I bought it in a shop where my wife is in their membership program; as her birthday falls at the end of this month, I received a 30% discount on the pan, which made the price very attractive.

When I arrived home, I began to prepare lunch, and as it was Friday, I was to prepare grilled fish. I turned on the grill in the oven - and nothing happened; the little red light did not come on. To be honest, I was not totally surprised as the oven has been making noises for at least  three months and this time it made no noise; we had called a technician a few months earlier and he said that there was nothing to do - as long as the oven works, it works, and when it stops working, we should buy a new one. How was I to cook the fish? In the new frying pan, of course! I covered the fish with flour, salt, pepper and parsley, put a tablespoon of olive oil in the pan and began frying. In ten minutes (as opposed to fifteen in the grill), I had two lovely pieces of fish. I think that normally I use more than a tablespoon of oil when grilling (to prevent the fish from sticking to the aluminium paper) so in frying, I actually used less oil than normal.

My wife was looking forward (once again) to roast chicken and roast potatoes for dinner. Fortunately, it would be just the two of us eating, as none of the children are home this weekend. There would be no problem in cooking the chicken - put it in the slow cooker for five hours, along with the potatoes. Although the food was not roasted, it was still cooked to perfection.

On Saturday, I wanted to try a recipe of Jamie's which involved frying deboned chicken thighs. He covered the meat with some mixture of spices which don't seem to be available here, so I used 'mixed cajun spices'. Towards the end of the cooking process, Jamie poured sweet chili sauce on the meat - so that it would caramelise - along with sesame seeds. I did this too but the sauce didn't caramelise. The chicken was very tasty but the cajun spices were a big mistake. I will have to consider which spices to use when I try this again - probably salt, pepper, cumin and cinnamon. I may marinade the meat in the chili sauce.

The next task is to replace the oven.