Cooking with Gaggenau

Last week I got to spend the day at Gaggenau at their flagship showroom in London for a day to try out their brilliant appliances.

We have several Gaggenau appliances in the Markham kitchen in St. Albans which look absolutely incredible and include the Gaggenau 400 Series Oven, Induction Hob, 400 series Combination Microwave Oven, Warming Drawer and lastly the Handleless Fully integrated Vario Dishwasher. Our newly renovated showroom in Felsted, Essex will also have Gaggenau appliances on display so I will post images of those once they are all installed.

Celebrating it’s 10th anniversary this year, the Gaggenau showroom in London has a live cooking area downstairs which clients can visit and obtain more in depth technical information about the different products. There are presentations every Thursday and Saturday which prospective customers can go along to and see how Gaggenau can fit into their needs. They keep the numbers for the presentation events really small so there is plenty of time for specific questions and advice (booking is essential).

Gaggenau is one of those rare companies that is truly able to celebrate their authenticity. Everything they do is uncompromising and extraordinary and a visit to a showroom will explain this far better than words even can. One of the things that our customers love about Gaggenau is the post sale service. Their house call service, which is all completely free of charge, is undertaken by a trained home economist and Gaggenau expert who can talk you through all the different options and features of your Gaggenau appliances.

We made a variety of different dishes, using all of the available appliances, which was really a fantastic and totally hands on way of learning about the difference with using Gaggenau appliances.

The ingredients above are for the Baked Romano Peppers with Mozzarella Cheese and Parmesan. 

For these we used the 400 Series Oven set on the hot air function at 190°C. The prep time was less than 10 minutes and they were cooking for 20 minutes so a really quick option for a lunch dish with a watercress salad and hot crusty bread. They were delicious!

This is the Courgette & Goats Cheese Tarte (also delicious!) for which we used the induction cooktop and combination steam oven. We set the cooktop level to 6-7 and the combination steam to 200°C/80% humidity and while that was coming up to temperature, we fried off the onions and courgettes until they were just cooked.

After they were seasoned with salt, pepper and thyme, we removed them from the heat and lay the slices of the goats cheese on top. Then we simply rolled out the pastry out to the same size as the roaster lid! So simple.

The roaster is a really useful, high quality, hand-cast piece of cookware made from non-stick cast aluminium. It was developed specially by Gaggenau and the thick thermal conduction base guarantees even heat distribution and optimum heat retention. The lid of the roaster can also be used as a piece of cookware.

Once the tarte was cooked, we placed a large plate on the roaster lid and turned it out. 

We used the Vario Teppan Yaki 400 Series to make these spicy tiger prawns with sweet chilli sauce. Roasting and cooking, according to Japanese tradition, directly on a smooth metal plate provides greater accuracy than with a pan or grill. Temperatures up to 240°C can be controlled precisely; in addition, optimal heat distribution ensures gentle and low-fat cooking of vegetables, meat and fish.

We heated the teppan yaki to 170C and threaded the marinated prawns onto skewers. After lightly oiling the teppan yaki we cooked the prawns until they turned pink and opaque throughout which took about 2 minutes per side. 

We also made lots of other items which I didn’t get a chance to photograph but one of my favourites was the Parmesan Bread which we made using the 400 Series Oven with the Baking Stone – it even had its own setting – the Baking Stone Function which we set to 210°C. The cooking time for the bread was only 20 minutes which was amazing and it was absolutely wonderful. 

We used the Combination Steam Oven to cook rice which was something I had heard people say was a really cool feature. Needless to say, it came out absolutely perfectly. I have never seen rice cooked by steam before – it was so easy and tasted wonderful.  We simply set the oven to 100ºC / 100% humidity and popped in a dish of rice flavoured with herbs, lemon and seasoned with salt and pepper. Although it cooks by steam, because rice is super absorbent you do have to add some water to the dish before it goes in. Each individual grain is so perfectly cooked – you really do have to see it to believe it!

If you’re interested in Gaggenau appliances I would really recommend popping along to one of their presentation events in the London showroom – to book simply call 0844 892 8988.