In the pub five of us, all men, are talking gadgets. Cooks' gadgets. The connection between men, foodyism and kitchen toys is so obvious that it's amazing there aren't niche publications cashing in: a Guns & Ammo for amateur male chefs with credit cards to flex. Blowtorches & Liquid Nitrogen, perhaps.

Instead, there are catering-trade catalogues such as Nisbets, a lovely loo read if you're tempted by “canteen-capacity toasters”, where the toast goes around on a conveyor belt, like in a hotel.

There are blokes who go industrial with their cooking tech, just as some buy trucks rather than cars: my friend Callum has a proper butcher's circular slicer beside his chip shop-grade deep-fat fryer.

Other boys are more homely. Richard - who is probably the best cook among us - doesn't really go for electronic gadgets. What he loves is his old friend, the heavy bottomed, high-sided 12-inch frying pan his mother-in-law gave him. And, of course, his best knives - a cleaver from Global and a Sabatier serrated.

Bill has just installed a new gas-combi Aga that I would kill for. (I'm hoping that when the slump really kicks in you'll be able to pick up this sort of thing on eBay, only slightly soiled, pre-owned by a former banker.) But the gadget that Bill was boasting about in the pub was the potato peeler that attaches to his finger.

We nodded - we like low-tech too - and the talk turned to surgical steel cheese graters. Bored, the one non-cook round the table tried to initiate a conversation about Barack Obama, but it wouldn't take. Though I bet the President-elect cooks - he's man enough.

I know what you're thinking, but we hobby chefs aren't utterly simple-minded. To excite our shopping glands a gadget needs to be more than merely cool: it must combine the professional and the pragmatic with the aesthetically pleasing. In other words, if it comes in brushed steel and Blumenthal or Bourdain say they can't work without one, we'll have it.

We're suckers for brand names too - North European, principally. So you won't catch us buying Innovations catalogue gimmicks: the toaster that plugs into a USB slot on your computer, or the football that makes ice-cream while you play with it. But as for those £70 Soehnle three-legged digital scales in glass and anodised aluminium, well, hello Father Christmas!

Women cooks don't do this, I've found. The most complex kitchen machine they get excited about is bread-makers, and they don't seem to care about the finish on the casing at all. Personally, I like mixer-blenders. A lot. I like the old-fashioned, geared double egg whisk, because it's just so neat; I like my massive dualmotored multi-appliance Moulinex (so long as I don't have to wash it up). I want a proper, classic KitchenAid.

I love wands - hand blenders - especially since I read that the two things that agency chefs carry with them from kitchen to kitchen are their knives and their wand. I've got two, a light one for play and a six-speed, 600-watt one made by one of those German companies that are more famous for heavy artillery. It is powerful enough to decorate the ceiling with soup fragments. And I've got a hand-wand that I found in Rwanda: it's a wooden stick with a star-shaped base that you twiddle between your palms. It can purée, slowly, but it's more useful as a kitchen roll holder.

Christmas is coming. I've got a lovely roasting probe thermometer for my wife's stocking. (So I'm a romantic fool.) What I want is a sous vide machine: the vacuum-sealing device that allows you to slow-cook anything and retain every single molecule of flavour.

Sous vide is the next big innovation that will migrate from the professional kitchen to that of the serious amateur. The main British suppliers, Clifton, tell me that they are already getting orders from surgeons and scientists and other super-geeks with a couple of thousand to spend.

But, in these hard times, I suspect that the gadget of the year is that fantastic, self-powering device that turns kitchen food waste into delicious, chef-ready protein in a handy capsule. It's the chicken. Less than £10 for a good layer, lives in the garden, great talking point. I wonder if my wife would like a couple of those.

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