Adventures in Electric Cookery
Even though I have more than a few gadgets in my kitchen, I always come back to my old standbys: the gas oven and stove. I’ve always cooked using gas at home and when I worked in kitchens. I love the convenience of toaster ovens and induction burners saved my butt when I was working as a confectioner and needed to make a small batch of caramel or temper chocolate when the stove was in use. However, you can’t beat the high temperatures you get with a stove when you want to sear meat or get some crisp on some tender veggies. I love making milk bread on Sunday mornings and making cookies after dinner. My stove and oven aren’t anything special, but I’ve made some really wonderful meals with them. After living in this apartment for eight years, I got to know and love my appliances.
Then…disaster.
At the end of March, National Grid casually came through and turned off the gas for a bunch of apartments in our building - including ours. Long story short: there was a longstanding leak in the gas system that had been discovered and the management company would have to hire contractors to fix it. This is what they handed out to tide us over in the meantime:
These were a far cry from the induction burners that I was used to using.
I was beset by the doldrums immediately, but I still had to be grateful. In addition to the hotplates, I already owned some electric gadgets that I hadn’t used much. I promised myself that I would keep cooking and carry on as normal, and even though there were some learning curves, I think I’m doing pretty damn well!
With the hot plates, even though there are two burners, the temperature control is wild if I try to use them both at the same time. So, I started relying on a lot of one pot meals. Illyanna Maisonet’s Diasporican has some fantastic one pot rice dishes in it, and her Arroz con Longaniza is a big fave. When I can’t get my hands on longaniza (a pork sausage that has a red orange tint from annatto seeds), I’ve successfully swapped it out - usually with Raven & Boar Black Bean and Plantain Sausage. R&B started vending at the farmers market near me and their sausages are so good! I have to heat the pan for about 5-10 minutes before I start cooking the meat to get the amount of brown crispy goodness that I want, but from then, it’s smooth sailing.
The combination of the meat, sofrito (which I always have in my freezer now), and the double hit of the sazon and adobo is a flavor powerhouse. It all comes together in about 40 minutes and with a big green salad on the side, dinner is done.
Last year, I picked up an air fryer lid for my Instant Pot from a local store that was going out of business. Was I terribly interested in air frying anything? Not really, but it was very cheap, so why not? The lid is HUGE, and it looks like a spaceship so I ended up hiding it in the office. I told myself, “You don’t have the room to keep it in the kitchen right now, but you’ll definitely use it at some point!” Well, now was its time to shine!
I took it for a spin using Kiley O’Donnell’s recipe for Garlic Parmesan Chicken Tenders, because who doesn’t love chicky nuggs?? The recipe is broken up into seasoning the chicken, seasoning the crushed cornflake breading, and mixing up a creamy roasted garlic parm sauce. I made the sauce earlier that day (roasting the garlic in the air fryer first) to give myself one less thing to do. Prepping ingredients in advance when I can is a habit I’ve kept from my kitchen days, and it really comes in clutch for this type of cooking.
I was a little skeptical about how the tenders would brown with only a bit of oil sprayed on them, but holy wow, they came out golden brown and so crunchy! In the recipe, O’Donnell tosses them in the sauce, but I elected to dip as to not compromise the crispy crust. I served it with a green goddess dressed salad and some Trader Joe’s Tomato Burrata Ravioli tossed in extra virgin olive oil, salt, and pepper.
I have to admit, I’m proud of myself for staying patient and working with what I had during such a weird time. Cooking isn’t just another chore for me, it’s a huge part of personality. The kitchen is my office and it’s also the place I go to meditate when the world starts to get a little too much. To lose my stove and oven all at once was a big change to deal with, not to mention how worried I was for our neighbors. I’m happy to report though, workmen have been in the building for the past two weeks and I’ve got high hopes that we’ll have our gas back soon. It’s been way too long since my apartment's smelled like cookies and I’ve got to make up for lost time.