I don’t want to waste the residual heat from my cooling oven. What can I cook or bake in there?
Kay, Sheffield
“Kay could use her cooling oven to preserve many things,” says Mark Birchall, chef-patron of Moor Hall in Lancashire. Herbs that are past their best (“or those in need of cutting back, like rosemary, for instance”) can be dried on an oven rack, then stuffed into a roast chicken, say, while bread that’s on its way out can also be dried (cut the crusts off first) in a cooling oven and blitzed into breadcrumbs.
Alternatively, turn tomatoes into future treasures, says Sam Grainger, chef-owner of Belzan in Liverpool. “Halve them, add salt and a little oil [so they don’t stick], and put in a cast-iron skillet or pan. Leave them in the hot oven until it’s cool, and they’ll get better and better the longer they’re in there.” He adds his oven-dried tomatoes to salads and ramen, or turns them into soup or sauce, though for the latter two, he recommends peeling them first: “The skin doesn’t blend, so everything will be bitty otherwise.”
