Today’s the last-but-one day of annual leave that I’ll ever take as a librarian. (The day before my 66th birthday will be the absolutely final librarian’s annual leave day.) After that, I’ll be semi-retired, not a librarian, and any annual leave will be as a researcher.
As you know, I’ve been thinking about healthy eating and more home cooking – although, since I’m not passionate about cookery, the less time I spend on it, the better. Tidying the lounge, I found the book I’d bought during the worst of the energy crisis. I had recently bought my first air-fryer – an appliance that a colleague assured me was the best invention ever. Less time means less energy, too.
Hannah Patterson, The UK Brand New Air Fryer Cookbook. 2023 edition. First published by the author in 2022. ISBN 9798360567448
Whilst enjoying my mini-holiday loafing around at home (getting things done, in a leisurely, unstructured way), I used the slow-cooker to cook some chicken. And then pork chops, which were very tasty but looked over-done. Surely, I reasoned, there must be more to it than this!
There is, however, a problem. As Patterson explains, there are different kinds of air-fryers. I knew mine was a small one – I thought it would do for three people – but along with being small, it’s also unsophisticated. I didn’t know, until I opened her book at the beginning, that what I have is a Cylindrical Basket Air Fryer. As Patterson says,
‘Aside from the noise and the size, another downside is the functionality, as it only has one function.’
Mine isn’t noisy, but I was beginning to see what the problem was. Reading on, I discovered – as I had suspected from the recipes – that ‘basket’ means different things in different air-fryers. Mine is not open like a chip-frying basket. It’s basically a non-stick deep tin. And although there’s a ‘crisper’ – or whatever you call the round removable component that keeps the food off the bottom of the tin/basket – if you put the food on the crisper, it stays dry, but if you remove the crisper, everything is in the bottom and I’d worry about it burning the bottom of the tin.
And it got worse. Many of the recipes needed a baking tray or metal bowl that would actually go in the air-fryer. There isn’t room for either, in my wee machine. (Why did Russell Hobbs make a machine with so many limitations? Can I really only cook chicken or chips?!) Some recipes could be halved in quantity, but I still doubted that the food would fit with room for the air to circulate.
Sometimes, I fear people think I’m terribly negative. I prefer ‘cautious’ or ‘realistic’. Anyway, since I am at home reviewing a cookery book, I thought I’d just go with the flow and be myself. I went through EVERY recipe, and marked the index with whether it was technically feasible in my wee air-fryer. I honestly only marked a very few more that would need too many new ingredients, ingredients I would struggle to source, or that wouldn’t suit the tastes of my slightly conservative family. I haven’t done a statistical calculation, but it’s pretty clear that I’ve ruled out easily half the book – and possibly more than that.
It’s a pity – the book is good value, and the food looks tasty. Perhaps much of it is not in our usual repertoire, but that’s not a bad thing. With some meals, I suspected that the preparation would be longer than I usually spend, partly due to unfamiliarity, or the faff of stuffing or rolling stuff into flattened chicken breasts or steaks.
Anyone got a book of recipes for a small, cylindrical air-fryer with minimal functionality? Until then, I’m off to make a quiche. In the oven.
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 