Improvised Oven

Well, I've gone a bit food nuts recently since joining Fresh Basket. Thinking up inventive new ways to cook vegetables. There really is a limit to what you can fry, so I decided to have a go at making an improvised oven. I had a hankering for quiche.

Although the lady who rented my house made off with a mosquito net, all my knives, my books, spare keys and a frying pan, she did leave two giant silver buckets in the store house. These are usually used for cooking rice, potatoes, beans - whatever - over a charcoal stove. 

It's an old VSO trick that you can cobble together a makeshift oven if you put a small pot inside a larger one and elevate it so that it's not in direct contact with heat. I have friends who made cakes and pizza in them, but never tried it myself. 

The only other items I had to hand were two metal plates, so I put one upside down with the other - the flan tin - on top.

(I realise I'm using flan and quiche interchangeably here - a pastry dish.)

First Plate

Second Plate

I brought it inside to my gas hob, because I don't have any charcoal. 

The next challenge I faced was making pastry with ghee, as I didn't have any block butter. I'd never tried this before, so I was a bit nervous.

The pastry turned out really well - extremely silky soft to the touch. 

Not being too sure of the temperature of a makeshift oven, I decided to blind bake whilst I friend up the vegetables with a little olive oil: onions, Chinese chives, garlic, tomato and aubergine. 

The pastry looked and smelled really good after blind baking, so I filled it up with the veg and whisked a couple of eggs with some milk before popping it back in the oven. Topped it off with some fresh rosemary and basil (who thought I would ever be saying that in Kigali?).

It was hard to resist taking the top off every few minutes. When it smelled, and looked, cooked, I sliced up some cheese and let it melt whilst cooling.

How amazing does that look?

There was just one problem.

When I pulled it out, the bottom of the flan was absolutely black. I have two theories about this: firstly, that I shouldn't have bothered blind baking, and secondly, that the surface of the first plate was too broad. It was like introducing direct heat. Next time I'm going to top and tail three tin cans and use those as a stand, reducing the heated surface area.

The up side was that using ghee to make the pastry had left it crumbly to the touch. I ran a knife across the bottom and the entire burnt area just lifted off in one piece. The result didn't score high on presentation, but it was extremely edible, and my taste buds rejoiced to have something new to chomp on. 

The only issue was that my kitchen stank. I've been talking to my neighbour about sourcing charcoal. It's difficult because there's a huge push towards gas at the moment, trying to wean people off charcoal to improve air quality or something. It's not a bad plan. When my neighbour cooks on charcoal, my whole house fills up with the smoke, but if I was going to do this again, I think it needs to be outdoors. 

UPDATE 2020 - Here's a little video on how to use an improvides oven.