Solar Cooking

The Netherlands, where I am currently working, is unusually sunny and warm. Spain, where I live, is 'famous' for its 'more than 300 days of sunshine a year'. This year I think a rebate is required as there has been little sunshine at all and while I bask in the 27C sunshine my better half is taking cold remedies like they are going out of fashion. There has been a string of bad weather with continual rain (although of course not the 'right' rain as it simply runs off the ground and into the waterways with little benefit to the ground).

For those of you planning your retirement in the 'Florida' of Europe, think again. Resources are already making creaking and moaning sounds as the population increase makes huge demands on limited supplies. The village where we live has seen a major demographic shift in the average age of the population, as well as a major leap in the number of permanent residents over the age of 60/65. Think again about how you wish to live the sunset years of your life.

There are only so many ambulances and hospital places available. Our village has one ambulance and the trip to the nearest hospital is via a windy and steep 16km (10 mile) trip to the nearest major road. To the hospital it is about 35 minutes on a good day and I am not sure what would happen if you get taken ill while the ambulance is taking someone else to the coast and the only people with the skills to treat you are halfway down the mountain.

With that happy thought and relating back to a previous post I made about global warming, I recently spent a wonderful weekend with my friend G in Arnhem. He had asked me to help him with the jigsaw puzzle of a glass house that he had recently purchased and I gladly went along to assist. The night before he was somewhat animated about his latest fun project of solar cooking and he asked me to prepare a meal to be cooked in this way. With the unpredictability of the Dutch weather and the concept of low temperature cooking I opted for a variant of an Indian curry in a chicken dopiaza (do=double/two, piaza=onion) and one of my favourite recipes that I have mentioned before on the blog, Butter Chicken. All this with the knowledge that the onions would cook easily and the chicken could be cut into appropriate sizes to allow adequate time to cook at the lower anticipated temperature. The only real problem I believed would be the tomatoes which can be very slow to cook. So, the night before I marinated the chicken in the spices.

The morning began with a rather unpromising start of an overcast day. Still, projects were lined up and activities planned for the day so we went ahead regardless. I think the pictures tell the story but it is important to understand that a LOT of planning into the optimal setup for the reflectors was based upon some extensive research carried out with heat sensors in the USA. The cooking pot was sourced from a flea market and had originally been a fondue set from the 70's. Note the trendy vibrant bright orange colour.... spray painted black with a culinary (none toxic) paint to add additional absorbtion.



Note the basic setup consists of a flattened cardboard box covered in basic kitchen foil and the transparent cover is an old plastic salad bowl (same flea market). Total cost of setup around $5.



Set up in place, time to build the green house.... occasional visits back to inspect the progress and (most importantly for the none salmonella lovers) the temperature. Now one of the aspects of one of these setups is that there is no need for perfection when it comes to the foil as a too flat surface would simply reflect heat back in straight lines. I believe the idea is to have the rays bouncing back in several directions to the cooking surface. Someone, somewhere is I am sure more proficient in the fine details of this but our fall back on this were it to fail was pizza or a stir fry Thai style. The importance of this whole exercise was the fact that we were doing it, nothing more. Curiosity in this case would, at the worst, result in feeding the cat (or several based upon the quantity). A couple of hours later on a somewhat overcast day (and the really important thing here... in the NETHERLANDS) we checked the thermometer. An important point to note here is that the position of the thermometer would not give us a truly accurate reading as it was placed on the lid of the pot. We could only assume a rough temperature.

IF you can be bothered to look closely at the reading you will note that the reading is at 120C after about 4 hours or so. Now G might correct me here but I believe that the total cooking time was no more than 5.5 hours or so. The end result.....

As they say around here (Served with rice and nan bread of course...) is "Lekker".

Even G was impressed with the cooked state of the tomatoes. So was I. His wife, S, was more concerned over the 'bacteria'. If the blister on my finger was a representation of the heat in the pot I believe those guys left several hours prior to my burning my finger as I lifted the lid. If you want the recipe then let me know. You guys in Oz could do this with one roo behind your back and a possum up your tree.

Now I know that I can achieve the same and more on my roof terrace in Spain... where it is currently raining.