Cheap Czech (Kavalier Simax Round Glass Casserole)

Member Name: MALU

Product:	Kavalier Simax Round Glass Casserole
Date:	10/09/08 (395 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good-looking glass pot

Disadvantages: according to the producer not to be used *on* the stove

I've always had a pot made of glass among my kitchen pots, not so much so that I can see 'what's cooking', but because without the lid it looks like a bowl (Please look at the top of this site) and I can put it directly onto the table and serve out of it. Last week my glass pot gave up the ghost, I detected a crack and threw it in the bin.

I went to Woolworth's for a new one, the kitchen products there are of good quality and not expensive. They only had one specimen, but just of the size I needed, namely 205 x 93 mm (8.07 x 3.66''), 1.5 litres. The brand name SIMAX meant nothing to me, but when I saw that the firm offers a guarantee of 10 years (from 300° C + to 40°C -) I thought it couldn't be bad. The price struck me dumb, 5.99 Euro (4.80 GBP). Only?! I had estimated and was prepared to pay twice, if not three times as much.

At home I had a close look at the writing on the cardboard protecting pot and lid, I was told in 14 languages "Do not use on a kitchen stove." My back bottom! Why hadn't I read this already in the shop? I don't want to use the glass pot *in* the stove, but *on* it, on open gas flames.

The following day I went to a shop specialised in kitchen utensils, much more expensive than Woolworth but with shop-assistants that know their jobs. (The shop-assistants at Woolworth's - in case you find any - know nothing). I learnt that one should never use a glass pot on a stove, when I said that I had done so with my old one all the time, the shop-assistant looked at me as if I was suicidal. "Of course, you can do what you like, but it's your own responsibility." "I'll take it upon me", I answered bravely. I'm sure that my old glass pot hadn't cracked because of its exposure to open gas flames but because it was tired after about forty faithful years of service.

The woman had unsettled me a bit, though, and so I bought a flat mat made of wire netting (like a sieve), my mother always put such a thingy under her glass pots. To be honest, I don't know what for, maybe the heat is distributed more evenly with it. Anyway, it gives me a good feeling.

I washed the new glass pot and prepared a tomato sauce of fresh tomatoes; this needs a lot of stirring for which I had to lift the lid repeatedly, not a convenient thing, because the lid has no knob, I always had to use both hands and pot holders to lift the lid at the two integrated handles. The reason why the lid has no knob is that you can use it also as a pan, I did that later when my tomato sauce was done. I put some into it and cut open an egg which I placed in the middle of the sauce, the dish is an Italian one, called 'Ox's (Oxonian?) Eye'. The egg must become firm which only happens when you cover the pan with a lid. As my pan was the lid, I needed another one, fortunately I've got two glass lids for pots (with knobs) of the same diameter, i.e. 20 cm (7.87''), so there was no problem.

I didn't stir my sauce often enough and/or the temperature of the gas was a bit too high so that some sauce stuck to the bottom of the pot, cleaning was no problem, though, I got it off with the hard side of a kitchen sponge. "Do not use abrasive cleaners", the instruction tells me, I didn't.

If I also follow the other hints, "When the pan is hot, do not put it on cold and wet surfaces. Do not pour cold liquids into the pan when it is hot", the SIMAX glass pot will surely be as long-living as my last and will outlive me. Why are the SIMAX people so careful and don't want the consumers to put the glass pans on the stove? I really don't know, maybe they just want to avoid compensation claims.

SIMAX products come from the Czech firm Kavalier Glass Works which dates from the 1930s, it "disposes of a complex know-how of glass melting technology", the main products are glass tubes, pressed and hollow boiling glassware products for households and laboratory and technical glassware. If you're interested, but your Czech is a bit rusty, you can read the English version of their homepage www.simax.cz.

Summary: a cheap Czech glass pot