I've had a Le Creuset kettle dangling off a hook outside my door for a while now. It dates back to when I favoured a stove-top kettle, back in the 90s, having come off years of a cheap electric kettle that tasted increasingly of burned plastic. At around this time I saw the movie Shopping, which was about ram-raiding. In one of the scenes, while clearing out a shop with an equally young Sadie Frost, a very young Jude Law yells "99 quid for a kettle!" and tosses it across the shop. Later, in a scene where Law's caravan gets torched (sorry, spoilers -though it's really more of a mood piece), the kettle is the only thing pulled from a wreckage. You can see it here, briefly, being improbably brought to the boil over an open fire in Sadie's rather nice squat:
It's the Alessi birdwhistle Kettle, a design classic. That's not immediately obvious from that shot, as it's lost the whistle. (You don't need to watch the rest of the video - Shopping was an early film by the director of the Resident Evil films, so there are quite a lot of videos of confused/amused Resident Evil fans watching the film, and giving it good marks despite the lack of good action scenes.) But to me it was a revelation. I had had no idea that people still made metal kettles you could heat up on a stovetop. I went to our local everything store, located and bought a cheap aluminium stovetop kettle.
I burned through them rather fast, as it turned out, so a housemate bought a Le Creuset one "for the household" that wouldn't die even if I boiled it dry. It looked a little incongruous on our crappy rental gas stoves - like it was pining for an Aga. But it did last (mostly - I managed to melt the whistle) and when he went to America, it stayed behind. I've had it ever since, though it's long since retired from the kitchen, had its bottom drilled, been filled with soil and set to guard the doorway.
It makes a pretty good hanging basket. This year it overwintered a petunia!
It's the Alessi birdwhistle Kettle, a design classic. That's not immediately obvious from that shot, as it's lost the whistle. (You don't need to watch the rest of the video - Shopping was an early film by the director of the Resident Evil films, so there are quite a lot of videos of confused/amused Resident Evil fans watching the film, and giving it good marks despite the lack of good action scenes.) But to me it was a revelation. I had had no idea that people still made metal kettles you could heat up on a stovetop. I went to our local everything store, located and bought a cheap aluminium stovetop kettle.
I burned through them rather fast, as it turned out, so a housemate bought a Le Creuset one "for the household" that wouldn't die even if I boiled it dry. It looked a little incongruous on our crappy rental gas stoves - like it was pining for an Aga. But it did last (mostly - I managed to melt the whistle) and when he went to America, it stayed behind. I've had it ever since, though it's long since retired from the kitchen, had its bottom drilled, been filled with soil and set to guard the doorway.
It makes a pretty good hanging basket. This year it overwintered a petunia!
No comments:
Post a Comment