House of Annie

What the Heck?

I rooted out the cabbage in the veggie bin and also saw some tomatoes left over from the braised pork belly dish she made last week, plus a bell pepper and a carrot. What the heck can I make with that? We don’t have any potatoes, so I can’t make colcannon (besides, there’s no corned beef to enjoy it with!).

On top of that, I wanted to make something fast, and I wanted to make something that didn’t require a lot of cooking implements. Life as a bachelor means a lot of eating in front of the tv or computer, and a lot of unwashed dishes in the sink. If I could minimize the amount of dishes to wash and maximize my time out of the kitchen, all the better. So I got the brilliant idea to cook everything together in the microwave.

Unfortunately, Google is no help in finding recipes for cooking cabbage in a microwave. But there is an Indian recipe site, run by my friend Srivalli of Cooking 4 All Seasons, that talks about easy microwave cooking. And surfing her site brought me to Veggie Platter, which sparked an idea that I could actually toast spices like cumin, coriander, and mustard seed in the microwave, and use that to cook my veggies with.

I thought I’d give it a shot. I’m no gourmet chef. I am barely passable with a knife. But I’m only cooking for myself, so who’s it gonna hurt?

I started off by shredding the cabbage. Then I julienned the bell pepper, then thinly sliced the carrot. Finally I cut the tomatoes into chunks.

Hey, that didn’t take long at all!

In a large glass bowl, I heated a couple of tablespoons of oil on high for 2 minutes in the microwave. Meanwhile, I ground up some coriander seeds, cumin seeds, and white peppercorns in our mortar and pestle. When the oil was done heating, I tossed the spices in. Back in the microwave for 2 minutes on high, give it a quick stir, and two more minutes.

Then, I dumped all the chopped veggies into the bowl, sprinkled on a little curry powder, added a cup of water, and put it back in the microwave for 2 and a half minutes. I took it back out, tossed and turned the veggies, then cooked it for another 2 and a half minutes. When it was done, I tossed the veggies once more and gave it a taste.

Needs salt.

I could have gone for the kosher salt, but since this was an “Indian-ish” dish, I thought I try sprinkling on some Indian Kala Namak salt that we got from our friend Tammy the Spice Hound. This salt is a finishing salt with a high sulfur content, so it tastes strongly of eggs. A little dash’ll do ya!

Here’s the final product.

How’d it taste?

I’m not going to say it was the best thing I ever put in my mouth. I thought it was lacking something, maybe garlic or onions or soy sauce. But it was edible. And I was hungry. So I ate it. In front of the computer. As I’m writing this post. And you know what?

It’s all gone. AND I only have one dish to wash!

Aloha, Nate

Annie will be back to the House soon, cooking legitimately good dishes. So subscribe to our site and receive all our latest posts to your RSS reader or to your Inbox.

I'm entering this post in the October edition of the "Microwave Easy Cooking" roundup, created by Srivalli of Cooking 4 All Seasons and hosted by Suma of Veggie Platter.

Wanna read about more of my cooking experiments? Click below:

Leftover Turkey Omurice

Mushroom and Gruyere Omelette, Banana-Nut-illa

Evolution of Dinner: Grilled Pork Tenderloin

Evolution of Dinner: Grilled Halibut

Evolution of Dessert: Sake-Poached Asian Pears with Ume and Li Hing Sauce

Huh? Wuzzat?

Readers of this blog know that Annie loves to use the oven. Back in San Jose, we had an electric range with a large oven underneath. With it, she could bake scones and layer cakes, roast lamb shanks, braise chicken, broil salmon collars…the list goes on. (Just check out all the items under the “Baked” category on the sidebar!)

In our kitchen here in Kuching, the house does not come with a built-in oven. It only has a gas stove (two burners) and this countertop combination microwave / convection oven. We plugged it in, and found that it still turned on. (Of course, there was no instruction manual to be found)

We managed to figure out the microwave part of it and have used it to reheat our leftover food. But what has us stumped is the convection oven part.

Toshiba Combi Microwave / Convection Oven

How exactly does “Combi” work? Why are there Convec.1 and Convec. 2 settings? Can we actually use this to cook some of our favorite oven recipes? Is it even worth keeping?

Toshiba Combi Microwave Convection Oven

All these questions, but no one we’ve asked here in Kuching has offered a straight answer.

Help!

So we need some help from you, dear reader. Can you tell us how to work this combination microwave convection oven? Please, leave a comment!

If you don’t know, maybe someone you know has the answer. Would you Stumble, Tweet, or share this post on Facebook or any online forum you are active on?

‘Cause we really want to get baking again.

Aloha, Nate and Annie.

I’m sure people out there can help us get baking again, and once we do, we’ll continue posting our baking recipes. Don’t miss a thing! So subscribe to our blog now to receive all our latest posts to your RSS reader or to your Inbox!