blue_dolphin

Host's note: this topic has been split to reduce load on our servers; the first part is here: Cuisinart Combo Steam/Convection Over (Part 1) I've been using this machine to make myself some quick breakfast flatbreads and thought I'd share. I usually keep Trader Joes whole wheat flatbreads on hand in the freezer so this is handy for me. Top with a little smear of sauce, a bit of leftover veg, maybe some carcinogenic bacon, a little cheese, make a little well in the middle and drop in an egg. 5-6 min on steam bake at 450 and the egg is nicely cooked with a soft yolk that can be sopped up with the rest of the bread. I'm impressed how nicely the egg cooks without any sort of dry skin forming on the top. That one had a bit of TJs red pepper & artichoke tapenade (a bit wet for this purpose), bell peppers and onions and mozzarella. Here we've got collard green pesto, mushrooms and mozzarella. I tried "pre cooking" the egg in some hot water in an attempt to get the egg cooked before the cheese gets so brown but (as could have been predicted by rotuts testing up thread) this just produced an unevenly cooked egg. This overcooked specimen has the same toppings as above, along with some bacon. I wandered away and started playing with my new computer so this one sat in the hot oven a couple minutes after the bell rang. Still a perfectly tasty breakfast but a reminder to pay attention to the bell. I might try one more of these before I go back to broccoli smoothies for breakfast!

Now this is interesting and something I've never thought about. Google shows me multiple recipes, some for a quick pickle where the hot brine is poured over salted and drained or briefly cooked squash pieces and others where the squash is cooked for 20 - 40 min in the brine. All sorts of spice and herb combinations show up. Not sure I'm up for any big batches but if I find myself with some spare squash, I'm curious to give one of these methods at try. And even more curious to hear if any one has already done it!

Thanks for posting the link, huiray, I enjoyed the article. Interesting how they are doing this in a fast-food/fast casual setting. Your point of this being a fast-food version of American-Chinese cuisine is well taken. The immediate few blocks around this specific PE location isn't a hotbed of Chinese restaurants but overall, the San Gabriel Valley is home to many of the best Chinese restaurants this side of the Pacific. If anyone were looking for Chinese food (and I don't think these patrons were), the only trouble would deciding which local place to visit. I've never eaten at Panda Express and this makes me kind of curious about how a "flagship" location differs from the average store but if I find myself in the SGV at mealtime, I'll skip PE and head a mile or so to see what looks good along Garvey or Valley Blvd!

Breakfast flatbread: Trader Joe's whole wheat flatbread topped with collard green pesto, mozzarella & Parmesan, a few bits of bacon and an egg.

I think most of the folks following this thread have mastered the use of this machine but other newbs like me might find this booklet for the Wolf steam convection useful. Unlike most others I've seen, it's organized by the cycle type rather than by type of food or dish. http://www.subzero-wolf.com/~/media/files/united%20states/product%20downloads/sub-zero%20wolf/ebooks/wolf-convection-steam-oven-print.pdf Caveat: it's written for a larger oven by a different manufacturer with different features. That said, I found it useful to identify starting points for the cycle type, temp and time ranges. For example, the 7 min steam bake @ 300 F to refresh stale bread is likely a good estimate for a whole loaf. 4 min did a good job on a stale roll. I also tried the "hard boiled" eggs - 21 min on steam @ 210 F and found it to work well. The upper egg (with the little nick caused by me in peeling) was cooked per those instructions and looks good to me. I left the lower egg in the oven for a few minutes while I chilled and peeled the first one so it's a little more cooked. Such advanced culinarily delights I am sharing with you here - hard boiled eggs and stale rolls!!!

I've been doing a year-round CSA for about 4.5 years now, but I'm looking forward to going back to the farmers' markets soon. I've been throwing out too much stuff and not getting to cook what I want some of the time. More importantly, I've got more flexibility and can get to more markets, rather than racing away from work to beat closing time at the local market. I really enjoyed the CSA and the challenge of experimenting with different varieties of local seasonal produce but it's time for a change. Here's my last CSA box for a while (posting here since the most recent CSA thread is a bit dormant): Kind of an in between box with sweet corn, cucumbers from the summer and persimmons, turnips and kale from the cooler weather (which we have not had yet).

Breakfast sandwich: Black Forest ham, egg and sharp cheddar on a whole wheat roll.

Love the clickable pig on the La Quercia website and their products look wonderful, too!

Lime ginger marmalade. I used the recipe for fine-shred lime marmalade in "Saving the Season" by Kevin West. I'd use more ginger next time, but overall, it's OK. Took me a while to remove the peels and slice both fruit and peels finely: They were to sit in water overnight, boil 20 min and sit O/N again. Here they are after those steps and ready to boil again, before adding the sugar: I thought it looked awful but things got better: Made 6 half pints and 12 small 4 oz jars. There's a little bitterness but not too much. Very nice on toast with a little goat cheese: Thanks to andiesenji for the tips!

I think it said online only and it now says "sold out" The stores still exist. I haven't been to one in years though.

Nothing wrong with cinnamon toast and coffee, hummingbirdkiss! When we were little, my younger brother used to request "sparkly, buttery, cinnamon-y toast" for his breakfast. The sparkly part meant he wanted lots of butter, but all melted, no bits of cold yellow butter remaining. Sounds like your method has that covered. I had a slightly overcooked poached egg in a nest of Zuni Cafe cookbook boiled kale, some roasted sweet potatoes and a little toast on the side:

Fry's is showing a price of $229 at the moment. Free shipping. http://www.frys.com/product/8487228?source=google

Brilliant parody, indeed! Thanks for sharing the set-up, too. Very much worth the effort to listen to them first. I am now off to find or make myself a Spotify Águas de Março playlist!

Yes, it's the pan that came with the oven. It measures ~ 9 3/4 x 10 in across the top, a little smaller across the bottom. rotuts mentioned previously that the 10 x 10 in replacement pans available for the mid-sized Breville fit well in the Cusi. That's about as big as it can handle and still have space for air (and STEAM!) to circulate.This is my first time using a toaster oven so the pan seemed like something from an EasyBake oven but I'm sure I'll get used to the capacity. After all, I got it in part so I don't need to heat up the big ovens for small amounts of food. Comparison of Cusi pan with the baking sheet I'd usually use for roast veg:

I'm not sure this is adding much to the discussion but I said I was going to make this roasted fennel, red onion and orange salad so I figure I should show the results. Ready for the oven: Ready to eat: I started with 15 min steam bake and even though it didn't look like much was going on through the little window, the veggies were pretty much done - lesson learned, open the door and look carefully until you know what you are doing! Not only were they done, they were steamed - of course they were - not only did I pile too many in the little pan, I used a frigging STEAM OVEN! Gave them a stir and switched to broil but it took so long to get much browning out of those thoroughly steamed veg that the orange slices started falling apart. The end result was very tasty. I'd add a few sliced kalamata olives and a bit of parsley or fresh fennel fronds at the end but the flavors are great. I think a quick 5 min or so of steam bake at the beginning, and a properly loaded pan would get things cooking nicely and ready for a switch to bake or broil to finish cooking. I will try it again and in the meantime try to get a handle on some basic steamed vegetables to get a handle on times and temps.

Steam boy has arrived! I think I've found an OK spot. This corner held a basket that I used for RT fruit/veg storage - onions, garlic, tomatoes, winter squash, etc. I can find another spot for them. Downside is that I store my blender, processor, juicer, coffee grinder, etc in the cupboard below. With steam boy in the way, it won't be quite as easy to pull them out and plug them in. I think I can leave it as above for toast, which may be the most frequently used function, and turn it 90deg if I'm using steam, like this: Maybe pull it away from the wall a bit further, if need be. The tray looks like the original, non-Canadian, smooth version. On the outside of the box someone went through the trouble of placing little white stickers on at least 4 places to cover up the letters "WS" at the end of the model number: I made a piece of toast and ran the steam function @ 210 degF for 30 min. I'm now running steam bake @ 450 for another 30 min to see if I trip any circuit breakers. 20 min in to the cycle, we are OK. There are about 6 trucks of Edison workers replacing a power pole at the end of my driveway. If anything blows up, I'm blaming it on them! First actual recipe will be this roasted fennel, red onion and orange salad: https://food52.com/recipes/26899-molly-stevens-roasted-fennel-red-onion-and-orange-salad

It finally cooled down enough here to start thinking of fall fruits like pears and apples. I saw this on Food52 (https://food52.com/recipes/38766-the-green-is-gold ), a champagne cocktail type drink with sparkling hard cider. It's a variation on a Death & Co. Last Word variation, the Julien Sorel. Mine was yet a further variation as I used lime juice and perry instead of lemon and apple cider. The Green is Gold 1/2 oz V.S.O.P. cognac (brandy) 1/2 oz yellow chartreuse 1/2 oz Luxardo maraschino liqueur 1/2 oz fresh lemon juice (I used lime) Shake with ice, strain into a flute, top with very dry sparkling hard cider (I used Ace pear cider with some extra bubbles from Purefizz) I like the pear-lime-yellow chartreuse combo and really enjoyed this. A nice Sunday afternoon brunch drink with enough complexity to stick around for some evening conversation.

Thanks, lindag. I was hoping for a price closer to $200 but haven't seen anything like that in a while so I caved and ordered one this AM. Looking forward to some seriously good toast, among other things

I would try them in the Vietnamese iced coffee popsicles I made a while back. The caramel would probably be good in those layered bars with graham cracker crumbs, butter, chocolate chips and nuts.

I can't chop them without a big mess either. I usually put them into a zip-top bag and use a rolling pin to smash them up. Not so good for brazil nuts but works OK for many types.

I concur with your assessment. After reading Russ Parson's review in the LA Times with the accompanying list of tips and spending time with it in a bookshop the other day, I will go ahead and purchase it as well.

I tried this over the weekend with my new bottle of yellow chartreuse. Tasty and pretty: But it was really hot outside so I poured it into a tall glass over ice and topped it with some sparkling water. Tasty, pretty and refreshing:

I have not seen that episode, but since KitchenAid is a sponsor, I wonder if it is one of their products. I have a KitchenAid immersion blender that's about 18 inches tall but this one is 22 inches, close to your 2 ft estimate. Edited to say that I just looked that the episode and I think they are using this cordless model. 19 inches.

Beans on toast: Toasted whole grain bread, smashed Rancho Gordo cranberry beans topped with Trader Joe's roasted red pepper and artichoke tapenade. A little peccorino romano to go with. Beans were cooked with garlic, bay leaf and de arbor chiles so they are tasty.

I'm with you, too. Pizza is the only thing I usually have delivered. Usually a single large pie but even if I order 2 or 3, I usually tip the same $5. I've occasionally ordered tri-tip/ribs/sides for a party and they send 2 peeps to set everything up and double check all details. In such cases, I tip 15-20% but that's a little different from just handing off a box at the door. When I pick up take-out barbecue (order placed on-line) from that same place, they have a dedicated take-out counter and do a good job of checking the order and asking if extra sauce or fixings are needed but I don't tip them unless the order is very complicated or I need some last minute change.