I’ve been saying for so long that I’d be so good at writing a biweekly home cooking column, that I thought I’d better just do it myself instead of waiting to get hired. It might help me to a job one day, or I could collect them together into a self published volume.
Raking over the themes I could adopt for a column, I kept running up against the limits of my kitchen, the only one I have access to now. I don’t have an oven or stovetop. I cook everyday for two with only an electric countertop air fryer oven, and a pressure cooker, both from the Instant company. To keep a biweekly column engaging and not weighted down with conversions and explanations and dragging talk about contemporary versus conventional appliances, I’d need to write either a raw food column, or one only about cooking exclusively with appliances.
Vortex Plus Air Fryer Oven
Instant Pot
I was quite drawn to a raw food column. There really are a lot of interesting things that can be done there, especially with modern blenders and dehydrators. I didn’t have either of those but more importantly, I didn’t want to go into a cold winter with an obligation to eat raw and mostly cold food however many times a week or day it took to put out a biweekly column. The only hope for any discipline would be found in producing a column about cooking with a countertop air fryer oven. Am I setting out to become the foremost The Instant™ Vortex™ Plus Air Fryer Oven chef. Who can tell.
Little Oven 1
I apologize for an exclusively beefy beginning but there’s nothing to be done. To go without a meal, however little is in my fridge, is not something I would willingly do. It was late at night and I was very hungry. All that was in there was a new loaf of sliced dark rye bread from the bakery-cafe on my block, a few condiments, milk, dark rum, and an inside round roast of beef. It had been years I think, since I’d eaten a steak sandwich.
The inside round of beef I seasoned all over well with kosher salt and then pronged with the oven’s rotisserie spit.
It’s very common to be advised to cook meat by weight but this is all nonsense. I never use weight as a time guide for cooking meat. The only true science in cookery is precision baking. The rest is an art, even if a technical one. I guessed that I would need to allow 15 mins for my 0.7 kg beefsteak to rotisserie cook in my little oven.
They’ve taken a deep, deep hit from burgers in recent decades but steak sandwiches are still sacred in my hometown. I was raised vegetarian and never ate one until I was at least 25 but I understood very well how dear they were held. Traditionally and when good, a Perth steak sandwich is made up with toasted and buttered white bread, shredded lettuce and sliced tomato, filled with good quality, seasoned, medium-done steak slices, and served with horseradish, Australian tomato sauce and wafting hot salty chips or fries.
This is much the same all over Australia. There’s an unfortunate tendency for the chips to not be as piping hot as they must be to be worth eating, and for the bread to be thin to parsimony. To be treacherous, I prefer the Canadian coffee shop custom of serving soup or salad with a sandwich instead of fries. The last time I visited Perth I ate one of the nicest steak sandwiches I’ve had, in a plant-filled cafe in my mother’s neighborhood. They used a lettuce mix with bitter and peppery bite in the sandwich.
I’d set the oven to Airfry 400F and the beef was perfectly done to just barely medium after 15 minutes on the rotisserie spit. I let the meat rest for some idle sammie prepping. As it is, I don’t really like sandwich bread toasted but the dark, perfumed rye I had on hand was so fresh and spongy that I didn’t want to toast any dryness into it. Of the fridge condiments, only the bottle of chimichurri mayo could add something to the savory beef rather than distracting from it. I spread it on two slices of rye and added to them only a drop on each of a glowing bright-red hot sauce, for accent.
With two slices of beef, my sandwich was complete and luscious. Over two days, the beef filled three more sandwiches split between the two of us, eaten with milked and brown-sugared coffees spiked with rum. So wintry.
Next column I’ll have investigated what is looking good at the neighborhood fruit and veg shop, and how I can supply the hole left from not having access to the winter farmers market this year. Maybe it’s time to revisit the Granville Island markets while I’m limited to where I can get by foot. Coming up will be hot sweet chili pork loin chops, photos, footage and probably, regrettable art.
Ok, I've got a question. I bought my true love a little FryDaddy deep fat fryer specifically to make 3 deep fried cauliflower dishes we've encountered. Can air fryers like yours produce reasonable (but much lower cal) facsimiles of deep fried dishes? Or just normal fried dishes?