The Cottage Smallholder

Photo: Andrew our Halogen oven

“What do you think of breakfast?”
“It’s not nearly as good as yesterday. Are they the same sausages? They taste cheap.”
We’ve had Andrew around for a few weeks now. He always makes us weekend brunch with delicious results. This morning he was busy defrosting a chicken so I had to use the conventional grill (broiler) on our old oven to prepare the sausages and homemade bacon. It was a palaver – I had to keep on pulling out the grill tray to turn the sausages – in Andrew you can see what’s going on in the giant glass bowl, so nothing gets overcooked by mistake.

Using the same brand of sausages and the same home cured bacon as yesterday, I produced a brunch that was OK but nothing like the tastiness of brunch cooked in Andrew. This proved to us once and for all that the method that Andrew uses to cook food really brings out the flavour. As he uses a fan system the food cooks from above and below so there’s only the need to turn the sausages once. Even the cardboardy frozen hash browns that D likes become golden, and almost edible, in Andrew.

We are trying to use Andrew as much as we can and are planning to develop a series of recipes for halogen ovens as soon as possible. Meanwhile here are the timings for a brunch with frozen hash browns, mushrooms, tomatoes, well cooked sausages and bacon.

Andrew’s halogen oven brunch for two

Ingredients:
4 frozen hash browns
4 good quality breakfast sausages
4 rashers of bacon
4 mushrooms sliced fine
Small knob of butter
2 large tomatoes (halved)
4 eggs

Method:

No need to preheat oven.
Place the sliced mushroom in a small oven proof dish or foil saucer with the knob of butter. Put the dish on the lowest wire tray. Put the hash browns directly over the mushrooms on the taller tray. Set the oven to 225c/437f for 5 minutes.
Turn over the hash browns. Put in the sausages, and the tomatoes. Turn the temperature down to 200c/390f for 10 minutes. When the time is up turn the sausages and add the bacon. Set the oven timer for a further 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, make the toast and fry the eggs in the noraml way on the stove top, timing them to be ready at the same time as Andrew. I’m now going to try cooking the eggs in Andrew as well but I need to experiment a bit with that.