Sumptuous Sunday 6

I see that I haven't written about cooking for some time. Over the weekend I cooked five different meals -

• Friday lunch - grilled fish and vegetables
• Friday dinner - roast chicken pieces, chipped potatoes, vegetables
• Saturday lunch - grilled St Peters Fish, mashed potatoes, vegetables
• Saturday evening - spaghetti with tomato sauce and grated cheese
• For the coming week - chicken breast and vegetables

I wrote some months ago that I was making antipasti: dicing vegetables then placing them on a tray and baking them in the oven. Apart from the fact that this takes some time (30-35 minutes in a hot oven), it also uses electricity (to heat the oven). This isn't always a problem - for example, I cooked the chipped potatoes and chicken pieces in the oven at the same time on Friday evening - but sometimes it seems like a waste.

In order to avoid using the oven, I've been using a new technique for the past few weeks: using a ceramic pot which is called a 'garlic oven' in Hebrew.

 

One simply cuts the vegetables into little pieces then places them in the dish. I've discovered that it's easiest to take the bell part of the pot, invert it and then put the cut vegetables directly into the bell, instead of using another dish. When I've finished cutting, I put the base on the top of the pot and invert it again. 10 minutes in the microwave is the required cooking time!

I've had this pot for a few months after friends raved about it. At first, I was disappointed for I thought that the pot would give the vegetables a special taste, but after a while, I realised that this was a very quick and simple way to cook vegetables without losing any nutritional values. Regular steaming in the microwave requires a little water which probably leaches some vitamins B and C, but here there's no water at all.

Here's a picture of my grilled fish, along with the varicoloured vegetables and some mashed potato. To decorate the plate even more, I served the fish with a slice of lemon.

 

Due to the parsley which I sprinkled on the fish and the potatoes, it may be a bit difficult to tell them apart: the fish is on the right hand side of the plate whereas the mash is at the bottom.