I’m about two years late but I’m a convert to the spiralize bandwagon. I mentioned recently how I’ve got into spiralizing a courgette or carrot and then microwaving with salmon or chicken for a quick lunch. Also mixing courgetti with sweetcorn and pesto for a superfast dinner.
Which is a neat entry in the spiralizing market. It has three blades, for ribbons, thick spirals and thin spirals – pretty much all you’ll need. I’ve tested it on beetroot, carrot, apple and as you can see from this recipe, potato. It does a great job with all of them. It features four suction feet so it sticks firm to your countertop, and has darned sharp prongs to hold that veg in place. Due to those features it has no problem waffling through even really tough veg. You can watch the spirals cascade down to the counter, which puts me in mind of those old Play-Doh sets.
The whole thing pleasingly gets slung in the dishwasher for cleaning. If it has a downside, it’s storage. The blades slide nicely into the under compartment, but the whole thing has sticky-out bits that make it a bit of a pain to store. I can’t help thinking of Lakeland’s tremendous model which has storage designed up front. Other than that it’s a good, sturdy model that does the job.
So of course when I get on board the trendy, healthy craze what do I do? Deep fry it. Take a raw sausage, wrap it in potato and get frying! Serve with a spicy ketchup and it’d make a fun item at a buffet. I’ve listed the recipe for 4 sausages which takes about 1 potato, so it scales up really nicely.
1baking potatoe.g. Maris Piper, King Edward. Something starchy
Instructions
Preheat your fryer to 170C.
Spiralize the potato. You need to do this just before frying as the potato will start to oxidize and blacken in the air. Wrap the sausages as tightly with potato as you can.
Deep fry for six minutes to ensure the sausages are cooked through. Drain on kitchen roll and serve on skewers.
There’s been lots of little bits and pieces going on lately. Here’s a quick roundup of what I’ve been playing around with lately!
Chop Bloc Steak House, Chelmsford
I’ve written about this steak house before. Chop Bloc opened earlier this year in the heart of Essex, and I loved it. I recently returned as a paying customer, and it was still outstanding.
I had the rib-eye and it’s just to die for. The best I’d ever eaten. They care about the meat deeply, and have an expert on their Josper grill. If you’re in the area, give it a try.
Saltwater Kitchen Cookbook
This cookbook is full of the joys of Cornwall. Now I haven’t spent much time in the South West, not since about a dozen of us used to cram into a borrowed VW camper van in about 1985! But the food on display here is cracking, like fried fish burritos and stick toffee apple cheesecake. I made a masoor daal and it was sensational. Not what you associate with Cornwall but it was sublime. Buy Saltwater Kitchen Cookbook from Amazon
Sugru
I’m bowled over by this invention. It’s kinda like putty but once moulded stays firm yet flexible. It can deal with temperatures from -50C to +180C so is pretty durable!
I’ve been playing about with it, and have made a bunch of “kitchen hacks”, including making little pegs to hold my tablet in place in the kitchen while I cook, fixing an annoying freezer drawer and secure a few pesky cables in place. These are just a few ideas, check the Sugru website for more info.
Chicago Town Pizzas
They’re a guilty pleasure but I like a Chicago Town pizza. A crisp base, gooey cheese, tangy tomato… And what could make it better than by winning a toy dinosaur with your pizza! Check the website for more details.
Silver Spoon Quick and Easy
The original Silver Spoon cookbook is an institution. There’s now a new volume out dealing with quick and easy recipes. To be honest I was a little underwhelmed. The recipes are quick and easy, but quite predictable. There’s plenty to get your teeth into but they’re so traditional as to be well-worn. That said, if you haven’t got a good book covering some Italian basics like saltimbocca, risotto and zabaglione then this is a good base.
Hope and Glory Coffee have got some great new gifts for Christmas. They sent me a couple to try: the fruity and chocolatey Wonderland espresso, and the spicy Honduras blend. Both were excellent.
Sous vide is the process where food is vacuum sealed and cooked in a water bath. It’s used by professional chefs, mass caterers and is gradually making it’s way into the domestic kitchen. I’m no stranger to sous vide. I’ve been writing about it for many years, and have been lucky enough to own a full size sous vide machine for a while. But the size and cost of these gadgets can be prohibitive. This is where the Codlo sous vide gadget comes in.
Really, what do you need for sous vide? Water at a constant temperature. Not inordinately difficult with a thermometer and an insulated container (such as a cool box) but plenty of faff. Codlo us essentially a thermometer, timer and resistor all in one. By using a kitchen appliance you possibly already have, such as a slow cooker or rice cooker, the Codlo converts it into a sous vide machine.
How does it work?
Plug your gadget into the Codlo, then plug this into your socket. Then drape the probe into the water. Set your temperature and timer, and press go. Off it goes! The probe measures the temperature of the water, cuts off power to your slow cooker if it’s too hot, and lets it back on to warm it up again. It merrily ticks away like this and the timer bleeps when it’s done. Simple.
It’s a very, very pretty device. The smooth curves, smart LCD screen and cool packaging scream of a well-designed product. It’s immaculate. And because all you’re doing is dipping the probe into water there’s no cleaning up to do.
I tried a bunch of things in it to give it a proper road test. The first thing the instructions ask you to try are eggs, so I did exactly that – but scotch eggs. I’m not a huge fan of the super runny egg, so 45 minutes at 66C, followed by a brisk deep frying and a gentle bake brings them out just the way I like them – set like jelly!
Chicken on the BBQ can be hit and miss between anaemic raw meat and leathery charcoal. Pre-cooking avoids this and sous vide is the perfect way to ensure your meat is fully cooked before finishing them on the BBQ for that smoky edge. I tried some chicken kebabs, and then flamed them on the barbecue.
It comes out gloriously juicy as it hasn’t spent ages drying out over the coals. I also cooked a bunch of mixed fish for a Heston fish pie. It was pretty epic.
Top tip: fill the cooker with slightly hotter water than you think you need and let it come down to temperature rather than come up. It takes much longer to warm the water than it does to cool it down (you can leave the lid open or add an ice cube to chivvy things along). I find about two thirds boiling water from a kettle and a third water straight from the cold tap is a good starting point.
The Verdict
The results are identical to cooking in a more expensive machine. I cannot tell any difference. With that in mind I give it my strongest recommendation. If you have a water cooking gadget already such as a slow cooker and would like to try sous vide then you must give it a go.
One thing is that you will need a vacuum sealer – such as such as this one. But whether you buy a Codlo or larger unit, you’ll have to buy this anyway. The Codlo unit itself is £119, versus ~£350 for a SousVide Supreme.
And why should you sous vide? For me it’s the perfect medium for cooking many things – once you’ve tried a steak in a sous vide you won’t want it any other way. The melting middle is just what you’re after. Chicken wings and thighs also go perfectly in it. And while some may sneer at boiling an egg for 45 minutes, the margin of error in the traditional method is so narrow – I’m sure we’ve all left eggs 30 seconds too long when soft boiling – sous vide is no extra effort. And sous vide is great at cooking larger quantities too.
I’ve reviewed a couple of the items in the Sage by Heston range: the deep fat fryer and Kitchen Wizz Pro (twice). There are features common to all of them: they are presented in a brushed chrome finish with matt black details, packed with features & modes and very solidly made. They do also share a high price tag to match. How does this Grill and Press sit in the lineup?
It’s obviously trying to muscle in on the George Foreman grill territory (did you know it could have been the Hulk Hogan grill?), simultaneously offering sandwich pressing into the mix. I’ve had a George Foreman for a couple of years and use it fairly regularly so I have a good idea of what it’s capable of (I’ve made a whole roast on one before!). The key advantages of this type of appliance is having heat from both plates to speed up cooking, plus the slant of the device encourages excess fat to drain away into the fat tray.
What can you cook with it?
I tried a few different things with it. First up was a sausage muffin – pretty straight forward. I used the SEAR setting to cook the sausages in about 7 minutes (pretty fast!), then split them and put them back into a muffin before grilling the lot on the SANDWICH setting.
My second experiment was similar, roast beef and mustard in a poppy seed roll again squidged and toasted. Both came out as a tasty as a pressed sandwich should do. I then tried burgers, butterflied chicken breasts and other meats and all came out cooked very well. Despite the fat draining the fast cooking time leads to succulent, tender meat as it doesn’t cook long enough to start leaking juices. In that regard it works exactly as it should and cooks meat and bread very well.
It’s also dead-easy to clean. As it has a non-stick coating it’s easy to wipe down with kitchen towel and it’s good to go. If there’s anything stubborn on it I trickle boiling water on it and that shifts the rest.
The downside
I have a couple of niggles with the device. The instructions are unusually poor, lacking crucial detail. For example, there’s a dial on the top where you point it towards SANDWICH or SEAR. And there are some dots in between them to indicate some gradation between them. But what’s the difference between them? The manual doesn’t make this clear. And what if you’re not cooking a sandwich of a chicken breast? How do you cook a piece of bacon? Further experimentation reveals that SANDWICH is effectively a cooler setting, while SEAR is the hottest. This is not explained anywhere in the manual, and would make such a difference in exploring how to use it. As another example of the manual’s shortcomings, there are some feet under the grill to stabilise it when you want the food to be level as opposed to slanted. But it doesn’t explain how they pop out. I’d already turned the grill on to get warm so trying to fish around underneath was a tricky. It’s not difficult, but a little diagram here would make all the difference.
There’s a disappointing amount of recipes too. Whilst I wouldn’t slavishly make each one of them, they do give you avenues of inspiration to showcase the tool’s talents. They can push you towards trying something new especially when you think of the device as only capable of certain things.
On a practical level I have a couple of reservations. Because of the large black handle, the device pivots very high. I can only fit it in one place in my kitchen, and not in my usual countertop places – it simply won’t open when underneath my wall-mounted cupboards. This limits what I can do with it. Also – and this is a bit of a silly one – the plastic mould on the plug isn’t deep enough. I can’t get enough purchase on the plug to pull it out of the wall confidently. I have to wiggle the plug and lever it cautiously until the pins ease free.
Most of these are trivial and personal details, but we are talking about a gadget that costs just shy of £100 and has many, many competitors on the market at all different price points and feature sets. At the price they are charging every feature of it should be refined to perfection.
Verdict
It’s a great type of gadget to have around, especially if you are limited in hob space or don’t have a grill. It’s also a great way to control your fat intake as you have a lot of visibility on what oil or butter you’re using and how much drains away.
While I can recommend others in the Sage by Heston range despite the price – the Kitchen Wizz Pro is the best in its class – I wouldn’t plonk down the money on this one. There are many similar items available riffling through the Argos catalogue that offer much better value for money. What it does it does extremely well, but not at this price. If you can pick it up on offer or with vouchers, go for it. I don’t think it’s worth paying full price for.
