I'm using my hands.

But when my stick blender carked it half way through reducing some praline into an elegant garnishing powder for my oeufs á la neige, I was at an utter loss as to what to do next. My posh dinner party was at a critical point; the Grant Burge reds and the conversation were both teetering on exhaustion and an energising sugar bomb washed down with a few liters of Sauternes was the only thing that could possibly retrieve the situation. As I attempted CPR on my beloved appliance, those perfectly-plated serves of meringue quenelles and vanilla-bean creme anglaise were rising rapidly to Sydney summer-time room temperature and their oozing amalgamation was discouraging to watch.

In my heart I knew I'd been asking too much of the mini food processor attachment with praline; you really need a combine harvester to effectively crunch that stuff up.

First the little motor whimpered pitifully. Then it moaned in full agony and sent a few puffs of smoke up the extractor fan. After that it simply ground to an abrupt halt and I swear I saw its' soul depart through the kitchen window and swoop heavenward to that great Land Fill in the sky. Precious seconds were slipping by and the table talk from the dining room next door was waxing eerily expectant. For dessert. Meanwhile back at Mission Control it was becoming clear to me that not only was it all over for the blender, but the dessert was past resuscitation as well. So it gets turfed and I improvise, trying to imagine what Ferran Adria himself might do in such nerve-wracking circumstances. Inspired by the master, I grab large over-sized white plates out of the scullery and wittily set each with 3 small spoons. Into the first goes a neat heap of the half-mulched praline and in the second a similar arrangement of charred, well-aged bread crumbs scooped from a generous accumulation in the base of the toaster. Thinking entirely on the fly here I fill the third with natty tufts of vivid pink candy floss fished from the murky recesses of my child's' school bag then a shot glass of condensed milk finishes the whole arrangement off with aplomb. Expanding on the El Bulli theme I present dessert as an intellectual sensory evaluation game entitled "guess which one isn't sweet" and everyone looks at me as if I've completely lost my marbles. Which I have. Grief can do that to a person.

I was so sickened by the demise of my beloved device that I couldn't quite think straight for a number of days. I've loved stick blenders since they first appeared 20-odd years ago. In commercial kitchens we used enormous catering-grade ones that could reduce 50 litres of pumpkin mush to soup in 5 minutes flat, whizz up a gallon or two of mayo in a similar time frame or amputate your arm if you engaged with the thing in entirely the wrong position. At home my 250 watt Braun had become my right-hand man in the kitchen; I'd grasp it lovingly and together we'd whip, puree, whisk, crumb, mix, mingle, jumble and emulsify our way through many a satisfying culinary romp. I couldn't imagine life without it so naturally my first instinct was to present myself at the nearest kitchen appliance counter and purchase a new one.

To be honest, I'm not really a fan of electrical gadgetry. Now I know there are some appliances a girl is miserable without and here I'm thinking mostly, but not entirely, of my canary yellow Kitchen Aid, my Cuisinart food processor and my hand held electric beaters which come in ever so handy for certain light baking duties. Every now and then I get the urge to make twee ribbon sandwiches filled with the likes of cucumber, horseradish and smoked salmon and when that happens I'll fire up the electric carving knife to trim annoying crusts. Along with brandishing it fully powered at blue-tongued lizards this is really the only sensible use for the thing. It then shreds my sammies into slim, anally precise rectangles and would no doubt do the same to troublesome reptile flesh if used with sufficient exertion; that theory has yet to be put to the test. The only other piece of plug-in wizardry I willingly abide is my ice-cream maker- truly, it's a pain to freeze ice-cream to the right fluffy consistency without one no matter how much phaffing with forks you do. Oh, OK, so I own a couple of coffee grinders too- one for the beans and the other for whole spices. I've already alluded to the toaster and naturally we have an electric kettle- I'm not yet SO Australian that I brew billy tea in the paved courtyard over open fire but I'd never rule that out as a future eccentricity.

A close family member gave me a rice cooker once for my birthday and the gesture didn't go down too well. I quickly grew to resent it's bulky ugliness on my bench and wished it were a night at Tetsuya's or a pile of expensive silk lingerie or a half litre of Annick Goutal's Ambre Fetiche instead of something that efficiently steamed rice. I could already manage that myself using a saucepan, a lid and a little water. Recently I needed a slow cooker to develop recipes for a book I worked on and now that the job is over, the thing is languishing in the bowels of my pantry and hordes of returning Daddy Longlegs are starting to roost in it. It's been used 5 times and if anyone Out There wants it, it's yours for the cost of the postage; I don't see the point of it really. As for pancake makers, pie cookers, doughnut fryers, vegetable steamers, electric can openers, pop corn poppers, cup cake bakers and, the biggest travesty of all, the contraption that toasts bread at one end while simultaneously cooking an egg at the other (I'm not making this up), these all sound to me like something out of Woody Allen's 1973 masterpiece Sleeper. Although in that movie the wacky machines (Orgasmatrons and Orbs) reliably produce sensations of deep physical pleasure in those who use them and on that basis alone seemed like hugely useful things. I can't say using Tefal's Toaster-Egg Cooker combo, despite it's warming tray for pre-cooked meats, removable crumb tray and extra wide, deep slots, would really send me into any state of wild agitation except one that involved ripping out my hair and screaming in total frustration.

All this has got me pondering the merits of doing things manually. The old fashioned way. Using nothing more sophisticated than a knife, a chopping board, a few pots and my hands. Like they did in our grandmothers' day- or as they still do in certain parts of the world where they actually have a food culture and aren't preoccupied with finding shortcuts. Such as Thailand, for example. I last went to Bangkok about 18 months ago on a food adventure with the fabulous chaps from Sailor's Thai restaurant here in Sydney ( http://www.sailorsthai.com.au) and, grown men that they are, they were like irrepressible kids in a candy store for the entire trip. We prowled streets and markets lurching from one curbside food experience to another, gorging on the likes of kanom krok (little cakes made from rice flour and coconut cream), fermented pork sausages, delicious miang (herbs, chillies, coconut, dried shrimp, peanuts and lime parcelled up in betel leaves and eaten out of hand), stewed and sticky pork hocks and, a personal favourite of mine, som tam (green papaya salad). Everywhere we'd hear the rhythmic sound of pastes, sauces and salads getting mooshed in mortars, batters being whisked in huge bowls, cleavers on boards whacking roast pork or whole cooked birds into neat slices and machete-like knives reducing green mangoes and vegetables into impossibly neat shards. Ty Bellingham, the Sailor's Thai chef, told me not to even think of making a curry paste in a machine. "There are at least 12 ingredients in that" he said, pointing to a red blob destined for a batch of hor mok plaa (steamed fish curry). "There's complexity in there and you can only get that by pounding all those things to smoothness in a mortar using a pestle" he went on, and at that point I knew it was all over between me and the Mae Ploy stuff I'd been buying in cans. When he told me I should really be extracting my own coconut milk for superior flavour I was thinking I'd need to import a Balinese house girl to deal with the true demands of from-scratch South East Asian cooking and then I read David Thompson's new book with slight relief. 'Thai Street Food" (Penguin Lantern, Australia, 2009) is a monumental work in every sense- physically it is a massive thing the size of a Hinuera paving stone and about as heavy. Not only is it bursting with recipes from David (who researches fastidiously from sources such as home cooks and old recipe books in Thailand) but also functions as a gritty photo essay par excellence from one of my favourite shooters of all time- the peerless Earl Carter. On the subject of coconut milk David at least allows for the intervention of a blender. "The taste of fresh coconut milk is incomparably luscious ...with a depth of flavour that, I think, justifies the effort required to produce it. ..I have found success with a blender...." Phew. That's one gadget I can tolerate. He writes about food the same way he talks about it- with humour and great depth. "Always extract the cream...through muslin", he says, pressing on it "murderously.... therapeutically to obtain as much of the creamy goodness as possible'. Personally I wish more food writers used words like 'murderously' and 'therapeutically' but alas most of us are far too tame for that.

I adore good Thai tucker and this book, which I predict will become a classic, evokes the cuisine and the country in a unique and tangible way. This is food full of punch and verve and colour and David has collated recipes you'd just not find anywhere else. Jungle curry of minced quail....taro pudding......pork ribs steamed with bitter melon....glass noodles with mushrooms and fermented bean curd...sticky rice with duck-egg custard; that sort of thing. And Earls' images perfectly capture the vibe in a refreshingly un-sanitised way. The shots show chaotic streets and ramshackle stalls where people are using their hands to cook, serve and sell. Mincing, stir-frying, wok-tossing, pancake flipping, banana-leaf parcelling, satay skewering , salad construction, the shaping of fishy goo into fish cakes......it's all happening here, as it does in Thai real time, amidst traffic fumes and crazy congestion and the occasional crawling insect. Call me twisted but I find something incredibly sexy in this linking of bodies, sweat and food; hands all over it, in it and through it. This is down-and-dirty stuff where the cook connects intimately with all the processes and learns by feel when mixtures are sufficiently smooth, sticky, firm or generally worked to the right frenzy. The only elements missing (the sounds, pungent smells and that fug-like tropical steaminess of the place) are easily imagined thanks to Earl's in-your-face interpretation of Thai street life. In this age of prettified food celebs and inoffensively pleasant food styling, I find the notion of cooking with my hands (with all the resultant messiness and immediacy involved) alluring. Intimate. Bonding. As I sit at my kitchen bench, trying to decide what to make from Davids' book, I become side tracked by thoughts of how intoxicating all the ingredients- raw pork, stinky fish paste, lemongrass, hissing wok oil, durian, fragrant herbs, vengefully hot chillies- would look, smell and feel. Before I know it I'm on the edge of what the Victorian English called 'female hysteria' and, as if I've actually stalked Bangkoks' Or Tor Kor market on a torrid afternoon, I need a cold shower. Yep... Thai Street Food really is that good. Better than you-know-what. Sigh. Goodness. Wow. Oh dear.

Once calmed, I decide I need to buy a new piece of equipment after all but this one doesn't require voltage. It's a massive stone mortar and pestle from Chinatown and it's essential for making David's som tam which I adore inhaling with another of my all-time favourite foods, steamed glutinous rice. In Thailand they use a lighter terracotta mortar and a wooden pestle for the purpose but I can't get one here so I'm heeding Davids' advice to go gently with the cherry tomatoes in my heavier duty set-up. Using the right touch with the pestle I can amalgamate but not decimate- and I'd never be able to give that job to a machine. As I pound in the palm sugar, fish sauce, lime and tamarind, those classic spicy-sweet-sour-salty flavours mingle and rise straight up my nasal passages and I can feel another out-of-body experience coming on. I haven't been so excited by cooking in ages and I've completely forgotten I ever had a stick blender. The Cuisineart is a bit miffed it's not getting so many work-outs these days too but it'll have to get over itself. I'm cooking unplugged, baby, and I'm in good company; here's what the great D.T. had to say to me on the subject of culinary gadgetry. "I'm a bit of a culinary Luddite" he confessed. "Give me a knife, a board, a pestle and mortar and maybe pots and pans and I'm happy. And it's not because I'm easily pleased, it's because I know I can do most things using my hands." And you have to love a person who can use their hands to good effect. Use yours. It's liberating.

Click the link for this and previous recipes - GREEN PAPAYA SALAD from Thai Street Food by David Thompson