On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 13:35:28 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:



Thats it basically. If you want lightly seared tuna steaks on a bed of
couscous with roquette salad and a balsamic drizzled garnish, an aga is of
very little use to you.

I disagree. I can sear oily fish very well on the griddle. I don't
bother with the couscous and limit the balsamico.



If you want roast pork, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, red cabbage and
apple simmered for seveal hours in the bottom oven, hot plates and a place
to stand the Rioja to warm it, frankly an aga is unbeatable.

As ar as strir frying goes, even an electric hob is a real struggle. Only
gas really carries the hot gases up around the curved sides and heats a wok
properly, although I have had a fair successes on an openb charcoal fire.
We actually find that the best a;lternatie is to roast vegetables at the
top of the oven after tossng in a coating of oil.

Steaming is easy - put your puddings ins a 'bain marie' in the bottom
oven..

Scrambled eggs? again I use the microwave..it is far less likley to
separate the millk. Its also fantastic for CRISPY bacon..suaages and bacon
may be fried, but I tend to use the oven instead. Chips - REAL chips - are
done in a wok on te hot hob...whilst fried eggs are dne on teh cooler one

Pasta and sauces - its perfect. Garlic bread in the oven, sauce made on the
cooler hob, and the pasta boils on the hot hob.

The biggest danger of te aga - and its reputatin for gghahstly food - comes
from stupid housewives who have discocvered that the warming oven means
never having to time your meals properly..meat that gest cooked too early,
and just about anything else, goes in there to wait for te veg to be ready.
Result is soggy and disgusting.

Unnecessary as well. Timing is pretty easy.




"To take one small example, let us say that you want to cook a
traditional Sunday lunch for a group of eight: roast meat, roast
potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, carrots, greens of some variety, gravy
and a nice treacle tart. That's not unreasonable is it?

Well, you can forget about the Yorkshire pudding and the treacle tart
for a start. You see, when you start opening and shutting those
boiling plates and simmering plates (to cook the veg and make the
gravy), you immediately start reducing the heat in the ovens (which
is being reduced anyway because you are cooking the meat in one of
them and continually opening the others as you try to keep things
warm or cook them). If you're lucky, you will just about get the fat
hot enough to roast the potatoes, but you'll have to make the treacle
tart the day before and nothing, but nothing, will save the Yorkshire
puddings. They will be as flabby as an old man's dewlap. My mother
was unable to make a decent Yorkshire pudding in the 30 years she
cooked on an Aga. Of course, you could sacrifice the roast potatoes,
but that isn't a serious option in our house.

This is just rotten technique.

We use roasting dishes with covers that can be removed to adjust teh heat,
make sure the oven is hot to start with, and te majority of te roasting is
done BEFIRE teh vegetables are set to boil.

.... or they can be refreshed instead.



The treacle tart goes in just as the main course is removed, at the top of
te hot oven, which will be down from its 210C to about 180C - just right
for te tart. By the time the main course is finsihed, the tart will be
perfect.

The yiorkshire puds go in late, on te oven top, when te meat has been put
in te bottom oven to alow the temperature to stabilise. Its better than
'tresting it' as the outside cools off less.

The gravy and te veg are all doen last of all on the top whils the roast
potatoes are still roasting and the puds are baking.





Other cooks have remarked similarly:-

"it does have a major drawback - it is most certainly not an accurate
cooking tool that can maintain a uniform temperature without
fluctuation. Leave one of the lids up and the temperature drops;
leave both lids up and it drops even more; open the oven door and it
plummets dramatically. We discovered this flaw while trying to cook a
piece of pork shoulder at 70C for 12 hours. At such a low
temperature, a 10C drop meant that the meat would not cook. In fact,
we soon worked out that the temperature fluctuations were up to 25%
in either direction, and when my wife telephoned Aga to inquire about
this, she was told that it was quite normal."

"depending on what we were making, we had to make sure that nothing
else was being cooked on top, to open and close the oven door to cool
it down, to leave the oven door open for a few minutes or switch the
meat from one oven to another."


I have never found it that bad.

You do get an imediate drop on opening te doors, but it son goes away - the
air mass is trivial compared to the mass of the cast iron.

Using tehobs does reduce oven temperarres - but not by 25%. I see about a
30 deg C variation on 200-210 C on tehe maoin oven, and a lot less on te
cool oven - noramlly from around 105C down to 95C or so.

The chap who wrote that probably came under your heading of "are
unable to cook", his name is Hester Blumenthal.


Yep. a nouvae ****** undoubtedly.

Runs a restaurant in Bray which isn't bad, although he does specialise
in scrambled egg flavoured ice cream.





--

..andy