It's finally here

Following 7 months of cooking with only the hob top featured in an earlier post, our Aga finally arrived. We had expectations of seeing it coming over the hill, pulled by corgi's and trumpeted in by The Queen's Guards. Unfortunately it arrived in a transit van driven by Monsieur Bresson the grumpy French engineer. C'est la vie.

The separate pieces are made to order by hand, then boxed up and shipped to be assembled on site. The bulk of it is enameled cast iron

We were loving the graphically correct organisation of the parts

Also how chunky and industrial everything looks. This is old divers helmet is actually the part that pushes out all the heat

At this point we were frothing with excitement

After assembly the cavities are filled with vermiculite to store heat and help it run efficiently

And here she is (with a hint of our new kitchen in the background, more to follow on that in a couple of weeks). Cooking with it is a new experience and the food tastes amazing because it creates radiant heat (versus convection heat, which can dry out food, apparently). Even a cuppa tea tastes more succulent