the sous-vide cistern

Like most genius ideas, this one had been born out of a restriction: just as the butterfly’s wings are formed through the process of forcing their way out of a chrysalis. Not that he was touting this idea as genius. Modesty would forbid such boldness, the epithet was for others to bestow and for him only to pretend not agree with. The restriction in this instance was space. The miniaturisation boom has started three decades or so before for the same reasons – we all want more stuff and we all have less space in which to keep it.

And so it was that fateful day as he stood in the centre of his kitchen noting ruefully that it was full. His work surfaces were a tetris of devices, utensils, foodstuffs and related necessities, his cupboards a very real potential hazard to any who tried to open them without foreknowledge of which items would fall on them and his walls over laden with hooks and brackets. He wracked his brains to imagine a potential rearrangement for the latest object of his coveting but rapidly reached the conclusion that his equations were insoluble. Impracticalities, however, could never be sufficient to quell his insatiable lust for a sous-vide waterbath. Cooking sous-vide was so trendy he could barely avoid seeing it on tv and his fervour was constantly being reignited, but where on earth could he make room in his home for a ten litre watertank.

A dubious CGI such as would be seen on early episodes of House played out in his mind’s eye as he could watch forks of energy leap across a synapse forming a connection of unique brilliance. Sat in his bathroom was a small tank of water that spent the majority of each day being under utilised: his cistern.

Nothing facilitates speedy exposition like an 80s movie themed montage sequence, so please join me in picturing one now. Imagine if you will numerous short scenes of tinkering, plan-drawing, plumbing, testing, minor setbacks, hilarious tiny moments of physical comedy, patent applications, spinning newspaper headlines and piles of money growing.

The irony, of course, was that he made so much money from inventing the sous-vide cistern that he could afford a house with a kitchen big enough to keep a normal sous-vide bath in, but millions of lower-middle-class wannabe chefs in bedsits and small terraced houses throughout the world would forever wish that they had come up with something that with hindsight was so obvious.