Whatever You Do, Don't Fondue

And when the food has finally been chopped and sliced, cubed and diced, it's time to light the fondue burner. It was at this point, I believe, that our fondue evening began to veer, ever so slightly, off the rails.

Perhaps I was a trifle heavy-handed with the methylated spirit. Whatever the reason, when I applied a light to the fondue burner, it produced a blast of flame capable, not only of converting hydrogen into helium, but of converting the helium back to hydrogen again. Fortunately, the effect was short-lived, and it wasn't long before it was safe to resume our places around the table. And to be honest, the dining room ceiling was already in need of a fresh coat of paint.

The next snag we hit was an inexplicable lack of functional fondue forks, without which we had no option but to use ordinary table forks. And one problem with ordinary table forks is that the handles get extremely hot when the forks are dipped in simmering liquid for any length of time. The result was that conversation around the dinner table was punctuated with anguished cries as members of the family attempted to retrieve their food from the cauldron.

And there was another problem with the table forks. Because they were all identical, it was impossible to keep track of which forks belonged to each of us. Consequently, whenever anything remotely edible was fished from the murky depths of the fondue, arguments raged over the ownership of the morsel. It didn't help that, for some strange reason, most of the meat either took an eternity to cook or emerged from the fondue resembling something the cat coughed up on the doormat.

When we discussed the experiment afterwards, we were all agreed that the best place for the fondue set was undoubtedly on top of the kitchen cupboard. And we had plenty of time to discuss it. The queue at the take away was extremely long.

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