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More on ovensPaul
2008-11-13 15:45:00 UTC

It seems that the secret cabal that control our supermarkets has been reading my last post. I was in Tesco’s today, and now they advertise that all of their party-themed finger food is designed to be cooked at 190°. So you can mix-and-match different types of party food and put them all in the same oven. This is good.

As long as you’re having a party. If what you’re trying to do instead is cook a meal, then you’re still screwed.

I cover ovens in this week’s episode, with the help of the lovely Jehane, Kamikaze Cookery’s Consultant Archaeologist. Archaeology, I’m reliably informed (by archaeologists, it must be said) is a science, and at Kamikaze Cookery we do cooking with science. So it’s entirely reasonable for a cookery show to have a consultant archaeologist. Also, she was easy to get hold of, if I do say so myself. If anyone knows of someone willing to be the Kamikaze Cookery Consultant Chemist, or Consultant Physicist, or similar, who’ll work for me as cheaply as Jehane does, then feel free to get in touch. Being gorgeous like Jehane would be a bonus.

All of this talk of ovens is largely useless to me at present, since I managed to shatter the glass door of my own oven last night. The entire door assembly has now been taken off and taken to some magical place where landlords look at them and determine if replacements can be found. I’m an hotelier and, occasionally, an actor and/or cookery show presenter: this stuff is beyond me, which is why I pay someone else to do it. In the meantime, I’m currently in possession of a doorless oven which might theoretically serve as a somewhat inefficient method of heating the flat. And I’m eating a lot of takeaways, because any excuse will do.

There’s been some talk in the comments about Agas. Louise “louisedennis” Dennis has waxed lyrical about this in the comments on my own blog in the past. I’m disappointed to hear that they’re, apparently, pretty useless. I still want one, but that’s more because I’m old-fashioned.

One thing we’ve been talking about at Kamikaze Cookery Towers is the halogen oven (warning: horrible javascript website). It sits on your countertop and allegedly it can do a whole chicken in thirty minutes. Some of the reviews seem to suggest otherwise, though. Anybody have any experience with one of these?


Comments

Louise Dennis | 2008-11-13 16:06:11 UTC

To be completely fair AGAs have their advantages

1) No pre-heating required
2) A range of temperatures (so long as you don’t want 180C)
3) Potential for jury-rigging to heat other bits of your house
4) The whole heat from all sides thing.
5) Allegedly good for drop scones.
6) Lots of fun-looking but expensive gadgets and pans.

Bear in mind though that

1) You need something else to cook on in Summer
2) They “only” cost about £1-£2 per day to operate (and recall they take 24 hours to heat up so you can’t exactly switch’em off when you’re out) at 2006 prices.
3) Even the AGA Magazine presents its recipes in terms of oven temperatures not oven locations – demonstrating, presumably, that most of the readers of AGA Magazine use conventional ovens.

Honestly, if you are not trying to run a working farm kitchen, they’re that whole middle-class fantasy lifestyle choice thing you so dislike.


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