Happenings today have served to remind me that I have not kept the Air-fryer adventures up to date. Make no mistake, I use it and I use it often – all but daily, in fact. It is certainly not a case of it having been a novelty that wore off.
I am not sure why I stopped listing what I had been making in it but, from looking at the date of the last entry, I think that our time in Spain, eating out cheaply and living off salad at home in the main, I had simply lost the habit of posting about it by the time that we arrived home in February. Soon after arriving home we were away again, to the UK for a family crisis. There was very little cooking being done at that time. Certainly by the time that we arrived home in France again, I had clearly forgotten that I was ever documenting those culinary adventures.
There have been changes in our lifestyle since coming home from Spain. There are no more chips! By which I mean that there are no more potato chips. We have adopted a low-carb dietary regime in pursuit of better health and weight loss. Spuds are out of the equation.
As the Low-carb diet calls for High Fat content, you might think that the Air-fryer has become redundant but this is not the case at all. I continued to use the Air-fryer on an almost daily basis, though in the last few weeks of too-hot weather, it has been seeing rather less use as we gradually turn into rabbits…
The fryer continues to be useful in heating up Duck Confit legs. They really are superb done in the Air-fryer. I also make Celeriac Chips in it. It sees duty in refreshing the special low-carb “bread rolls” that I make and freeze and is often used to toast nuts for Apéro. One astoundingly good thing that I have been using it for is for browning Halloumi. Bacon-wrapped Halloumi does very well in the Air-fryer indeed!
Halloumi fries straight, brown and crispy, and ready to dunk in a dip, are also very good
Another low-carb bread substitute is Cloud Bread. I bake this in the oven but it toasts up beautifully in the Air Fryer and I made a really good Cheese and Ham Toastie in it one day when left to my own devices…
On our last trip away in the van (my birthday trip) we did very little cooking. It was hot in the South of France and when we were not eating out we drifted into salads. We did have a difficult few days when stranded in Viviers (a cat had gone missing) and supplies were stretched thin. I baked some mushrooms in cream and garlic, topped with cheese.
It is true to say that due to the diet and also the heat, the Air-fryer is not being used quite so much for meal-making at the moment. It does still earn its keep in turning out the little things very quickly and without adding to the heat in the kitchen. I still love it and I still find it useful, even if most of the recipes that I cook right now are done in a saucepan or sauté pan. We are even considering buying a second fryer in order to keep one in the van and one in the kitchen.
To be honest, the arrival of this little piece of kit probably has some bearing on how frequently or infrequently I make a meal in the Air-fryer:
.I will add some of these adventures to the spreadsheet at some point.
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