My Nuclear Oven

I spent the majority of my 20’s moving from city to city, following a career that I liked but did not love, but one that allowed me to make a more than decent wage and do a fair amount of traveling. I had moving down to a science, although in my ripe old age of 34, the thought of moving now fills me with dread. There were a few habits I developed to get me comfortable in a new place, whether it be a corporate apartment I was staying in for three months or a condo I would be living in for three years. One of the first things I would do after the movers left was to make my bed. And the second thing I would do was go to the grocery store, buy ingredients for dinner and test out the new oven. If there is one thing I learned from moving so much, it’s that every oven is different. Stove top cooking remains relatively similar from stove to stove (except the difference between electric and gas!) but every oven cooks different, looks different, smells different. Over the years, I have adjusted to eight new ovens. And all eight ovens were different – some took an hour to preheat, some cooked beautifully, some were tiny apartment ovens, some were convection ovens (still a mystery to me) and now I have the Nuclear Oven.

The Nuclear Oven that I am living with now is a constant culinary challenge. It is an apartment-sized stove from (I’m estimating) the 1960’s. I have dealt with perfectly normal apartment-sized stoves before, but they broke the mold when they made this oven! The Nuclear Oven got its name because it cooks so incredibly hot – I started burning anything and everything I put in that oven. Cookies, cakes, pork loin, vegetables. But the kicker was the day I put in a Pillsbury french bread loaf. It was one of those refrigerated, slightly terrifying pop-open cans of dough. The directions said it would cook for 20 minutes. After about 5 minutes I started smelling a heavenly bread smell in my kitchen. I opened the Nuclear Oven door to find the loaf was beautifully browned on the outside. Oh crap, I thought, now it’s cooked on the outside and will be raw in the middle! I said some really nasty curse words as I took the bread from the oven. Trying to prove my theory right, I sliced open the middle of the bread. I could not believe my eyes, it was completely cooked inside! So my Nuclear Oven had taken the bake time down from 20 minutes to FIVE MINUTES.  I called everyone I knew to tell them.

Since this discovery, I have been trying to find the right ratio to adjust recipes and reduce the risk of over cooking and destroying everything that goes into the oven. For instance, if the recipe calls for 30 minutes at 375 degrees- I might skip the preheating, set the oven to 350 degrees and start checking the food at 15 minutes. It’s a crazy, mad world I live in with the Nuclear Oven! Even more challenging is writing recipes for you on the Truly Appetizing website! What may take 10 minutes in the Nuclear Oven can take 20 minutes in your normal oven. So, honestly, I estimate to the best of my abilities what the cooking temperature and time should be. Most of the time, I research similar recipes on the web and post the average time and temperature I find out there. But it leads me to two important lessons I have learned from the nuclear oven and I want you to learn too:

1) Adapt, adapt, adapt! Like a new oven, life throws you curve-balls from time to time. Accept this fact, try to adjust your thinking and your actions. You will happier in the long run and more versatile, too. For instance, I know that I can walk into any kitchen now and adapt a recipe to that oven.

2) Recipes are not the law. You have to adjust all recipes to fit your taste, your lifestyle and your equipment (including your oven). Do not follow a recipe to the letter and then get mad because it’s something you do not like. I like to think of recipes as suggestions. Now, if you’re baking, that’s a whole different story. You need to get the measurements correct or it will be an utter failure (this is the main reason why I’m a horrible baker). But for everything else, get creative. Or at least be careful and check your food while cooking. What may be good for the writer’s oven may not work in your oven. What may be good for the writer’s palate may not be good for yours. Experiment and play and never be afraid to fail.

My family and friends keep trying to convince me to get rid of the Nuclear Oven and get a “normal” oven. But I’ve become used to the Nuclear Oven for the most part. It’s a constant challenge to me as a cook. And someday I will have my dream kitchen with my dream appliances and I will look back with fond memories of the Nuclear Oven, because it has definitely made me a better cook.

The photo above is not the actual Nuclear Oven, but a great photo I found on Flickr. Visit the photographer’s photo stream on Flickr (mutbka).