1 hour ago, Anna N said:So some further play time with my new toy.
I had some green beans that needed using up, half a chub of kielbasa, and I knew I had seen a can of cherry tomatoes and a tetra pack of Pomi tomatoes in the pantry. With those I thought I could pull together a meal.
Using the ceramic dish I sautéed some onions and some sliced kielbasa.
I added the can of cherry tomatoes and was about to add the can of Pomi tomatoes when the best-before-date caught my eye. Hmmm. May 2017. But what the heck. They were in a tetra pack. They should be safe to eat. I opened the package carefully and poured out some of the contents into a saucer. Glad I took this precaution. They no longer resembled tomatoes. They were almost the colour of dark chocolate. A tiny taste convinced me that they were not going in anything that I wanted to eat. Had this been a can of evaporated milk I would’ve had a lovely supply of dulce de leche!
But this left me somewhat short on liquid. So I quickly supplemented with some Better Than Bouillon vegetable stock and water.
I added the green beans put the lid on and let whole thing come to a boil before turning it down to a slow simmer and letting it do its thing for about an hour.
Made a perfectly satisfactory dinner with some orzo and a piece of garlic naan.
I had to be careful and eat around the tomatoes as they are currently having a quite unpleasant effect on my system. (For those who don’t know they are a natural diuretic.)
This morning, while checking all the various news outlets that I follow on my iPad, I found a grilled cheese sandwich recipe offered by the Washington Post. I am not generally a grilled cheese fan. But this one offered miso butter and caramelized onions. That is my language they are speaking. The Washington Post is behind a pay wall that didn’t stop me finding the recipe! Anyway I could’ve figured it out all by myself if I was so inclined.
While I attended to my morning chores (that would be the ones that should’ve been done last evening), I caramelized two small onions in a mix of oil and butter on the plain grill plate of the A4 box.
I made up the spread which was a mix of miso, grainy mustard and butter and spread it on some rye bread. Then I assembled the sandwich with cheese and onions. The outer side of the bread was spread with plain butter as the miso would certainly burn.
As luck would have it my bacon press fits my new toy like a glove. (So I have a panini press as well as all the other functionality of the A4 Box.)
Grilled cheese sandwich with Seriously Sharp Cheddar, caramelized onions and miso-mustard butter. The rest of you can dip your grilled cheese sandwich in ketchup if that’s what you want, mine was dipped in mango chutney.
One thing to think about when using the box is that’s the lid is going to be dripping condensation so you need a parking spot for it.
I think I’m going to find this toy much more than a toy. So far it has proved capable of meeting my requirements.
I am guessing there are some things I can bake in it but at the moment I’m not quite sure how to approach that. Any thoughts anybody?
I know I had a Dutch Oven cookbook at one point - it had stovetop baking in it
