A toffee hammer!

AKA the world's most specific kitchen utensil.

It could have other uses - bashing out miniature fillet steaks, crushing up walnuts, or if your tool box gets robbed.

Whatever happens, the user must have to really like bonfire toffee.

Aldi, Lidl: take note

Those of us with tastebuds have long suspected that there is a big difference between a dirt cheap wine (less than £3) and a cheap win (£4 or so). Here's why.

Duty on wine is based on volume, while VAT is based on price. This means that whether you have a bottle of Chateau Lafite, or a bottle of Lambrusco, you pay the same duty. A pound extra on wine will actually go towards the quality. Imagine what £10 must do.

This is from another (but welcome!) cookbook given as a birthday present, The Cook's Pocket Bible by Roni Jay.

A note on knives

What is the difference between chefs and the rest of us?

Knifes. Hulking great knives.

A good chef knows knives intimately. The chefs I’ve been able to chat to closely could give me 20 minutes on the relative merits of Victorinox and Global.

I’d go for Global, if only because they are based on samurai swords.

I have an Sheffield Steel cook's knife, it suits me well. Knives need to be looked after, which means handwashing, not leaving them to soak for several hours, and certainly not cutting directly onto metal, the cardinal sin of knife use.

Whenever I’m in someone else’s kitchen, quietly judging their cooking skills, I am often dismayed by the low standard blades used for cooking. A good knife is safer to use than a bad one; it is also much easier.

At a kitchen I worked in recently, one of the other temporary workers was a trained chef, and it showed. He turned a cucumber into uniform slices in well under a minute. All I heard was machine gun like tapping. This is a proper, pro-skill; not something your average domestic chef will ever master. It may look like showing off, but in a busy kitchen it is an essential skill.

I felt very mortal – I must get practicing.