My brother Pete is not known for his chatter. In fact, in the forty-six years that I have known him, the only time he opened his mouth unnecessarily was to get me into trouble. That is why, when on Boxing Day he phoned me and I had to finally excuse myself after forty-five minutes to go catch a ferry, it seemed a bit unusual.

The thing that had gotten him all worked up was his new George Foreman Grill, and he just had to call me and tell me how wonderful it was. Now either I don’t watch enough TV or just the wrong (or right) channels, but frankly, I had never heard of the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Machine. I know who George is (or was). I vaguely remember all of the stuff about some rumble in the jungle with Ali. And I know that he beat Joe Frazier for the heavy weight title in the seventies. What is this guy doing promoting a line of indoor grills? Well, I guess he is just darned good at it! He has gone from being “King of the Ring” to “King of the Grill.”

Peter is one of his millions of adoring fans, judging from the Boxing Day (isn’t that appropriate) phone call. We were never raised as cooking snobs. The first meal that my brother invited me and my then new beau, Jordan, to at his apartment twenty years ago started with a cheese whiz in celery stick appetizer. From there he progressed to his famous oven-baked nacho dish which I still get cravings for. I knew he was a changed man when I woke up one night at his home in Ontario to the smell of freshly baking bread that he had put on over-night in his bread machine so that we would have fresh baked bread for toast in the morning.

On one trip a few years ago, he made a gruesome detour into Toronto so that he could purchase just the right tomato sauce and the cheeses he needed to make his special spaghetti sauce and Portuguese rolls, which he made without using the bread machine. He now makes most of his breads by hand, unless time prohibits. Sorry girls, he’s married!

I never dreamed that one day, my brother and I would share an interest, and never in my wildest imaginations could I have guessed that it would be cooking.

Now he is into the indoor grill. Not to be out-done, I looked into these pans and ended up buying one for myself, although not the electric one he has. Indoor grills will never give you the flavours of cooking over coals on an outdoor BBQ. Even if you have a very expensive built-in grill, the smoke which gives the true BBQ flavour to foods has to be drawn off too quickly indoors to allow it to flavour the food. But it is still a splashy way to entertain your guests. And grilling is a great low-fat alternative to frying.

Indoor cookware range from electric to cast-iron pans. There are benefits to both and down-falls. The electric kind are often double-sided which makes for shorter cooking times, but can cause some vegetables to become soggy. It also requires counter space which I just don’t have at home. I bought the cast iron Le Creuset single-burner pan because I loved the colour (orange) and it looks great sitting on the stove. Now there’s great criteria. It is non-stick, and with usage, as with all cast-iron pans, it will become more non-stick. The difference between a grill pan and a typical fry pan is the raised grate on the bottom of the pan. This allows any fats to drip down into the wells and it prevents the food from burning as it would if you were to try cooking at high heat on a traditional flat fry pan without using oil. The fats that drip down into the wells will heat up and further flavour the food. If you need to cook larger volumes, there are cast-iron pans that will rest across two burners. I am finding that I use the pan at every meal, either for a vegetable, tofu or meat. My tofu has never looked more appetizing; I have perfected the hash-mark technique.

I wonder what my brother is going to come up with next. He has already been through the slow-cooker revival. Do you think the pressure cooker could be next?