Renowned restaurateur, chef and avid home cook, Mark Best has always been of the belief that technology serves flavour and quality ingredients when preparing beautiful food.
Like many of us last year, Best cooked more meals at home than ever before. He found a silver lining; to change, adapt and reinvent his usual cooking repertoire and routine.
“2020 was obviously a great challenge for everyone, and it challenged me to rethink the way I cooked at home, the way I shopped, and be more efficient in terms of my planning,” says Best. “Cooking so many meals at home has really taught me to cook in a different way, because it’s a different environment and also it’s a different audience.”
It’s therefore unsurprising, that as our cooking routines changed, an even greater reliance has been placed on our kitchen appliances.
The ever-reliable, hard-working oven, for example, became an even more appreciated sous-chefs as we panic-baked banana bread and cooked deliveries from our favourite restaurants while in and out of lockdowns.
For Best, this year continues to be defined by reinvention – and how technology in the kitchen can elevate our at-home cooking game and effortlessly produce restaurant quality food.
AEG’s slick new Matte Black collection of appliances features an oven that does more than produce perfect roasts (although they do this quite beautifully, too). Its Steamify function, most notably, is perfect for switching up your cooking repertoire – as it takes much of the guesswork out of the cooking process, adding the optimal amount of steam to suit your dish of choice.
Using the new Matte Black steam oven from the collection, Best has created a silky Japanese savoury custard dish with fresh, plump scallops and salmon roe, perfect for easy entertaining or simply elevating your everyday menu.
Best favours delicate dishes for this particular oven. “I choose this dish just because it shows the versatility of this type of technology. Most people just use the oven for roasting but we can cook such a beautifully elegant egg custard dish like this.”
You can also substitute scallops with crab or prawns. Or, to create this dish without seafood, substitute the scallops with shiitake mushrooms or add as an optional extra.
Brought to you by National Product Review.
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