Well, my new halogen oven arrived on Monday. It is the model made by Cookworks and comes with a high and a low cooking rack, a steamer tray, a baking tray, tongs, and a large metal ring to increase the size of the oven itself. I was quite pleasantly surprised by the size of it. On TV it actually looks much larger, to me, than it does in real life. I would say that it is about the same height as my Kenwood Chef and has a footprint of about twice the size.

To test it out, I cooked a couple of simple things. The first was an individual frozen pie. I've read quite a bit about these cookers and a lot of advice seems to be to reduce both the temperature and the cooking times compared to a conventional oven. The instructions on the box for the frozen pie was to cook it at 200° (in a preheated oven) for 25 to 30 minutes, so I cooked it at 180° for 20 minutes in the halogen oven with no preheating. This didn't seem to quite cook it enough so I gave it an extra 5 minutes at 200°. This browned it on the top and cooked it through, but it was a little soggy on the bottom. When DH got home from work I tried again. This time I cooked another pie from the same box at 200° for 20 minutes. This was much better and will probably be my standard cooking time and temperature for this type of frozen item from now on. The pie was still slightly soggy on the bottom, but I don't really expect great quality from a frozen pie that cost 50p!

I then tried simple pitta bread pizzas. I took a basic, cheap, supermarket pitta bread; spread it with some cheap pasta sauce from a jar; added toppings (sliced mushroom, sliced pepperoni (well, Pepperami if I'm honest, because that's what I had in the cupboard), sliced tomato) and topped with torn up mozzarella. I then cooked this on the low rack for 10 minutes at 200°. It was nice, but a little bland. The pasta sauce itself was rather thin, so I tipped the rest of the contents of the jar into a pan and reduced it down for 15 minutes or so. I then made a second pizza using the reduced pasta sauce, the same toppings, and adding some grated cheddar to the top of the pizza - this was much nicer.

In my freezer I now have the remainder of the pasta sauce (frozen in two cleaned out spice jars), the four remaining pitta breads (frozen in pairs), and a bag with a mixture of mozarella and cheddar cheese. This means I can now whip up a simple snack in minutes.

So far I really like the oven. I love that you can see the food as it is cooking. In the pizza experiment I originally started cooking it on the high rack and realised almost immediately that the cheese would brown/burn well before the rest of the ingredients got cooked/heated through so I changed racks.

Tonight I cooked a roast chicken leg with mediterranean vegetables. I will post the full recipe, with photos and comments in the next day or two.

Awaiting my new kitchen toy

Over the weekend I ordered a halogen oven from a TV shopping channel. I've been tempted by this every time I've seen it and finally decided to take the plunge. Since ordering it I've done a bit of searching online and haven't been able to find many recipes for this particular kitchen gadget, so I decided to start creating some of my own. Although I wouldn't consider myself a great cook, I am capable of following and/or adapting a recipe created by someone else, so I've spent this evening ploughing through my bazillion cookbooks and now have a list of recipes to try once my new toy arrives.

I will then do my best to post my own versions of these recipes as cooked in the halogen oven with, I hope, photos if I remember to take them.

Most of the recipes will be designed to serve one or two people. This is because:-

1. about 99% of the cooking I do is just for myself and/or DH, due to shift working; and

2. it appears from reviews of the various models of halogen ovens that the majority of people who buy one, buy it because they don't like having to pre-heat their normal oven to cook something just for one or two people.

I probably won't be cooking anything particularly fancy. I bought this oven to cook day to day food, from ordinary ingredients easily available at the supermarket.

Julie