HOME TRENDS Here's what's cooking today

Appliances change to fit modern lifestyles.
By ALAN J. HEAVENS
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
If your idea of a home-cooked meal is reheating leftover pizza on the hood of your car, this isn't for you.
However, if you are serious about food and want to re-create what Jamie Oliver and Emeril Lagasse turn out each week on the Food Network, you might as well look into what's new on the stove front.
Like gourmet meals, top-of-the-line kitchens are created from the best ingredients. However, you can have the trendiest fridge, the most expensive counters, one dishwasher for dishes and another for glasses, but if you skimp on the stove, you might as well leave the car engine running.
There are so many decisions involved in buying cooktops, ranges and ovens. When considering what to buy, shop. Check out the manufacturers' Web sites.
If you are planning a new kitchen, talk to a designer about finding stoves and other appliances that match your lifestyle.
Keep in mind cost, the amount of food you prepare regularly, simplicity of operation, and how much heat cooking will generate in the kitchen, especially in the summer if you don't have central air-conditioning.
WHIRLPOOL
Let's begin with the most unusual idea of recent years: Whirlpool's Polara refrigerated range.
Of course, ovens are designed to heat, but Mike Moody, the company's director of brand cooking, says that modern life demands something more out of traditional appliances.
Say you have a pan of frozen lasagna, and you are certain that it will not be thawed for dinner. Then you have to warm it through, and you are now looking at eating at 10 p.m.
"The Polara can be programmed to cool, thawing the lasagna slowly and evenly," Moody said. "Then, at a preprogrammed time, the range will switch to baking mode, making sure that the lasagna is ready when you come home."
The oven will stop baking at a preprogrammed time. If you get held up in traffic, it will kick into warming for an hour. If you get home late and decide to forgo the lasagna, the range will return to refrigeration for up to 24 hours.
The compressor for the refrigerator is in the storage drawer in the bottom of the oven, Moody said. At 30 inches wide, the stove will fit any standard space.
Price: $1,899.
Information: www.whirlpool.com.
GENERAL ELECTRIC
Manufacturers are going the whole nine yards these days to accommodate the needs of a diverse market.
Case in point: GE has introduced a "Sabbath Mode" feature on more than 65 of its models, including wall ovens and ranges, that meets the requirements of a national kosher-certifying agency, Star-K.
Most modern ranges are equipped with a safety device that shuts down the oven's power after it has been operating consecutively for 12 hours.
When the Sabbath Mode is activated, it overrides the 12-hour device, making it possible to keep cooked foods warm on the Sabbath or use the range over religious holidays for cooking and warming food.
About 30 percent of all ovens being purchased today are convection ovens, primarily because convection ovens cook faster and handle a lot of foods at once.
While conventional and convection ovens both use air heated by gas or an electric burner at the bottom of the chamber to cook food, a convection oven has a fan in the back that circulates the heat.
In this way, heat is more quickly and evenly distributed throughout the oven. Food cooks faster because it's more evenly surrounded by heat.
Say you are baking two trays of chocolate-chip cookies, and put one tray on the shelf above the burner and the second tray on the shelf above the first.
With a conventional oven, the cookies in the top tray take longer to bake because the bottom tray blocks the burner.
But because the fan in the back of a convection oven is circulating the heat, both trays will bake at the same rate. Because of this better heat circulation, convection ovens are considered superior for cooking, especially for roasting.
General Electric's "innovection" ovens include a fan that reverses direction to keep heat circulation even, instead of the cook's having to turn the direction of the pans.
Leanne Wilks of GE said the oven combined thermal, convection and microwave technology. Wilks said the speed modes of the innovection oven allowed food to be cooked five times faster than in conventional ovens.
Speed cooking has been the essence of cooktop/range technology since 1999, when GE's Advantium Speedcook Oven had its debut.
The oven, which resembles a microwave and is 30 inches wide, uses three halogen lamps to reduce cooking time, and can roast a whole chicken in 20 minutes, with no preheating.
The oven takes its cue from the microwave, which is a bit different this year.
Both Sears Kenmore (www. sears.com) and LG Electronics have come up with $129 retail versions of microwaves with sidesaddle toasters able to accommodate even bagels.
Some manufacturers offer dual-fuel ranges for chefs who prefer gas cooktops and electric ovens.
Electric ovens provide balanced heat for even browning. Jenn-Air makes a $2,000 dual-fuel oven with a dehydration feature that makes it easy to dry fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers. It also has two-speed downdraft ventilation that pulls smoke and cooking odors down and out of the kitchen (www.jennair.com).
GE's Profile dual-fuel oven, which comes with a warming drawer, costs $1,350 to $1,550 (www.ge.com).
WARMING DRAWERS
Joan McCloskey, an editor at Better Homes and Gardens who tracks trends among the magazine's readers, says those readers are demanding two warming drawers per kitchen.
The drawer gently heats foods between the time the food is cooked and served, or can be used to warm dinner rolls before the gravy congeals.
It also can be used to heat up take-out food. And because the temperature controls can be adjusted to 80 degrees Fahrenheit, you can use the warming oven to proof bread.
The drawers are designed for installation below a cooktop or wall oven, so cooked foods can be easily transferred from oven to drawer, and proofed breads from drawer to oven.
The on-off switch and temperature controls are hidden in the drawer. Temperature also can be adjusted to 140 degrees for low heat, 170 for medium heat, and a maximum of 210 degrees.
There also is a separate control that regulates the humidity level. The price of a single drawer is about $600.
COOKTOPS
There has been a long-standing debate about the advantages of gas cooktops over electric.
Todd English, author and chef-owner of Boston's Olives restaurant, said he preferred gas because, "when you have several pots on the cooktop, you can control cooking temperature just by adjusting flame height."
The answer from manufacturers has been the smooth-surface electric-induction cooktop.
The electric cooktop uses magnetic principles to heat a pot instantly, but the cooking surface remains cool to the touch and uses less energy than a standard electric stove.
The stove operates only when a pot is on the surface.
Some of the latest electric cooktops also have ways to merge the burners if you are cooking in a pan wider than a single burner -- gravy from the Thanksgiving turkey, perhaps.
The cooktops retail from $800 to $1,000, depending on the number of burners.
Electric and gas cooktops are coming with more than four burners and up to six. Six sealed gas burners provide the flexibility and versatility serious cooks demand.
Jenn-Air's six-burner gas cooktop, which retails for $1,000, has six sealed burners, with two low-output simmer burners that reduce to 850 BTUs, and a 12,000-BTU burner offers quick heat-up for boiling.
Now that's cooking with gas.