Stylish kitchen products

Canberra-based stoneware studio Bison has returned from a brief production hiatus with some highly covetable new pieces from its new Poplar series.

If you make serious amounts of pasta, Gefu’s range of crisply machined pasta tools – which includes the round and square ravioli moulds, $34.95, and the square ravioli-making set (lower right), $37.95, seen here – might be for you. Call 1800 650 601 for stockists.

Phaidon’s new Where Chefs Eat ($24.95, hbk) does what it says on the packet: its Italy section, for instance, lists Gualtiero Marchesi’s favourite Brescia osteria, Massimo Bottura’s pick of Modena’s tigelle shops, and more.

Here are some Greek plates you won’t be smashing in a hurry. Napoleon Perdis is stocking Ionia dinnerware, his favourite Greek brand of ceramics, at his Life.Style boutique.

Champagne saucers. Practical? No. Fabulous? Unquestionably. Vera Wang’s “Sequin” crystal stemware for Wedgwood gives you the choice of flutes, saucers or goblets, all $99.95 a pair.

Utopia Goods‘ prints, as seen on these napkins ($34 for two), are nothing if not striking.

The morning meal gets its most handsome tribute yet in The Breakfast Bible (Bloomsbury, hbk, $35). The authors of The London Review of Breakfasts site intersperse witty, fine-grained advice about the breakfast basics with loopy asides on porridge at sea, class warfare, Freud, Hunter S Thompson, forgotten cereals and tea. Lots about tea. It’s essential reading, especially with a cuppa.

Combining power (900W, no less) with pastels (miracle blue and yellow passion, both $699), Bosch‘s new MUM5 kitchen machine is a slicer/kneader/blender/mixer to covet.

“The Art of Black and White” has a certain literal quality, but Dinosaur Designs‘ latest collection, as this “Sunshine” salad bowl ($528) and “Temple” servers ($105) show, has been pretty aptly named.

DeLonghi‘s Icona Vintage range of toasters ($189 for the four-slice model), kettles ($149) and coffee machines ($299) takes 1950s Italy as the inspiration for its curves and palette, which includes the tan-leather models pictured here.

Geometry and velocity conspire to produce memorable designs in the new racetrack-inspired Rallye 24 collection of porcelain from Hermès.

Cold days call for hot dishes, and for something smart to spare your surfaces from scorching, look no further than the oak trivet Australian Adam Goodrum has designed for Normann Copenhagen. Along with its spare good looks, the trivet is highly practical, not least because it’s collapsible, and takes up very little drawer space when it’s taken apart. It’s $40 from Top 3 By Design.

Winter cooking calls for hearty one-pan meals. Layer up big flavours and let the oven do all the work. These roasting pans and casseroles are perfect inspiration.

Cantarella Brothers, the company perhaps best known for Vittoria coffee and Santa Vittoria mineral water, has made a bold entry into the premium tea market in a French-Australian partnership introducing La Maison du Thé. This house’s speciality is hand-torn leaves, whether it’s English breakfast, Darjeeling, Earl Grey, camomile or peppermint. The canisters of loose-leaf tea are currently only in restaurants but the bags ($6.99 for boxes of 25) are sold in providores now.

This Wattleseed fluted stoneware pie dish from Robert Gordon is made in Australia and is just waiting to be filled with quince and rhubarb, beef and mushrooms, or any other manner of wintry richness. It’s $49.95 from Domayne.

Robust, rustic or Asian, a melting pot of comforting goodness comes in many guises. A great soup deserves a stylish ladle; here’s a few of our favourites.

With sweet oak lids, Helbak’s ceramic canisters (in powder blue, green, mint, petrol and grey, from $48) are just our kind of storage solution.

Everything’s coming up edible in Kikki.K‘s stationery range, “Let’s Eat”, from recipe books and meal planners to cards, shopping lists and sticker books. The wooden stamp set pictured here is $19.95.

“What these? Oh, they’re just hammer-forged Damascus steel from Takeshi Saji’s workshop in Fukui.” We’re not sure we’re ever going to be able to manage that sort of nonchalance when we’re talking about steak knives that, depending on the handle choice, cost between $245 and $265 a pop from Chef’s Armoury, but we sure can dream. And yes, they’re very, very sharp indeed.

Our cousins in Scandinavia have had plenty of practice getting through winter’s dark with their sanity intact, and they can lay a good-looking table for the season accordingly. Capture a little of the cosy magic the Danes like to call “hygge” with richly detailed and textured wares in a range of natural materials.

A table awaiting a wintry braise or crumble from the oven warrants a handsome trivet.

Globetrotting coffee-obsessives, meet the Rok espresso maker. It’s hand-powered and easy to clean, and while it’s a bit bulkier than the Aeropress (that other best friend to the jet-setting caffiend), it’s not quite so tricky to master. Get yours for $187 from espressounplugged.com.au.

The Essential Ingredient‘s more unusual peppers (Wild Voatsiperifery, Jamaican, and Smoked White Penja, $12.95 for 70gm, among them) are striking in both variety and intensity.