Great! A hot, calm and sunny weekend in late January and I had two days off work so what better time than to give my Sunflair solar oven a good workout. I had blackcurrants to pick and lots of grass to cut so didn't want to spend too much time preparing food. I decided to do sundried tomatoes and apple rings on the Saturday - dead simple to prepare and in no time I had them in the unzipped, upside-down oven so that the moisture could evaporate easily. The apple rings were about 3mm thick and brushed with lemon juice but I made the tomato slices thinner and sprinkled liberally with herbs and pepper.
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| The Sunflair is used upside-down when drying |
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| Versatile pegs to keep the flap open for the moisture to escape |
The booklet says that the optimal drying temperature is between 55-60°C - if it gets over 77°C then the food 'cooks' instead of dries. Any condensation on the plastic needs to be wiped away as it makes the temperature drop and I found that I had to tilt the oven upwards to keep the racks toward the rear of the oven. The peg arrangement above didn't work once the plastic softened in the sun but they still came in handy to hold the aluminium rod in place.
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| Rat traps come in handy to tilt the oven at an angle! |
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| Drying nicely at 70°C |
The oven was put out about 9.30am and the fruit looked dry around 3pm. The apple slices were a nice leathery texture and too yummy to store so were eaten for afternoon tea. The tomato slices were put in a jar with olive oil and are now stored in the fridge waiting for the taste test.
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| Apple rings and tomato slices after a day in the Sunflair oven |
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| The finished product |
Next time I'll cut the tomatoes thicker; ideally a meaty tomato with fewer pips would probably give better results. I'm keen to try more drying - the booklet suggests apricots, bananas, berries and herbs.
The following day was a scorcher and perfect for trying a venison curry. I'd been given a large chunk of venison which was too large to fit in the slow-cooker so diced half of it and followed the recipe on the back of Wattie's Indian Creations korma curry sauce. It went into the oven at 10.30am and every hour or so I moved the oven to follow the sun's path and I stirred it once around lunchtime. At 3.30pm I went out with friends so had to move the oven in anticipation of where the sun would be and came home at 6pm to a yummy piping hot curry courtesy of Mr Sunshine and Sunflair!
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| About 115°C and cooking well |
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| Solar-cooked venison curry with brown rice |
