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how to use your oven
handy Hints and Tips
Pizza
To ovoid having cheese and tomato sauce dripping in the oven, place the
pizza on a sheet of baking parchment directly on the shelf.
Flans / Quiches:
Metal trays are better than glass or porcelain, which are often too thick and
food takes longer to cook. Metal also gives a crisper finish to the pastry.
When cooking fruit tarts, to prevent the juice soaking into the pastry and
leaving it soggy, sprinkle the base with some semolina, crushed biscuits,
grounds almonds or tapioca to absorb the excess. When cooking savoury
flans with vegetables containing a high-water content (leaks, spinach brocco
li or tomatoes) or frozen, sprinkle with a tablespoon of cornflour.
Fish
:
Check when buying that the fish has a pleasant smell and if it is a sea
fish, with a faint salty tang. The fish should be firm and solid and the
scales well attached to the skin. The eyes should be shiny and raised
and the gills bright and moist.
Beef
/
Pork / Lamb
Always remove meat from the fridge well in advance of cooking. The sudden
change in temperature from cold to hot can toughen meat. Ideally beef
should be well browned on the outside, red in the middle but hot throu
ghout. Do not sprinkle with salt before cooking as this draws out the blood
and dries out the meat. Try to turn meat using spoons rather than a fork to
keep the blood in the joint. Always leave the cooked joint for 5 to 15 minu
tes after cooking to recover. Wrap it in kitchen foil and leave in the open
warm oven. During this time the juices, which were drawn out, can soak
back into the meat.
Use earthenware dishes to roast joints; glass ones tend to make the meat spit.
Do not use the enamel grill tray for roasting.
Do not pierce the leg of lamb with garlic cloves or else it will lose its blood.
Instead, slide the garlic in between the flesh and the bone or cook the
cloves of garlic next to the leg of lamb and crush them at the end of
cooking to flavour the sauce. This should be sieved and serve hot in a
sauce boat.
