We are cooking with gas in my house lately, lots and lots of it.;) We purchased a 36 inch Bertazzoni range at an appliance sample sale way way back in July. The thing is gorgeous, I spied it as soon as we got into the showroom and had the salesman put a SOLD sign on it immediately. It is black enamel with a stainless top, they had a red one as well but that wasn’t working with my kitchen vision.;)

If you think it looks a bit like a race car you are right… the ‘exclusive three-layer, hand applied process’ is done in the same factory as Ferrari. Bellissimo! The Bertazzoni company is 125 years old, yet they only started exporting their ranges to the US in the last 20 years or so.

When we first installed it, I was so excited as we had been cooking in our temporary dining room kitchen with the microwave and crock pot for months. My dish of choice to christen the Bertazzoni was PASTA! I fired up the gas and 45 minutes later the water, she no boil. Well THAT was anti-climactic. Then the oven wouldn’t light, the thing sparked and there was definitely gas, but no flame. Molto male. Service guy came out only to tell me ‘lady, this is a PROPANE range’ to which I pulled out multiple pages of internet research (you know cause I am an expert at everything with the internet at my fingers) to go on for 10 minutes educating him on how to convert the Italian beast to natural gas. He let me go on and on, standing there expressionless then finally said ‘yeah, but lady, that is not covered by warranty.’ Che cosa?

Finally the expert Bertazzoni guy for the west coast, the head guy who trains all the other guys, came out and converted the stove lickety split. He had just come from Reno where they had a Berta that no one could figure out because the owners had no need to fire it up prior to Thanksgiving when they hired a personal chef to come make them a meal and the chef said ‘the oven, she no light.’ Who installs one of these things and never uses it? It is like having a race car in your garage and never driving it! Non capisco! I’m no Mario Batalli, but MAN can I cook on this thing! So we are now cooking with gas over here and on the menu for this evening we have rigatoni con fungi. Buon appetito!