There are a few recipes books for steaming - mostly based on the steamer basket you put on top of a pot of water or the steamers they sell to cook rice. Cooking with steam : spectacular full-flavored low-fat dishes from your electric steamer Stephanie Lyness, . and Cuisine àla vapeur = The art of steam cooking Jacques.Manière, , My local library had both and they had some ideas that were useful. For salmon, I lightly salt it, then steam it, and heat a sauce in a small pan to give it some flavor. The sauce I use is 1 cup fat free half and half, 1 teaspoon cornstarch ( you can increase this if you like your sauce to be thicker ) 1 TB dill, 1 TB honey mustard - bring to a simmer and let simmer for about 5 minutes. Pour over the fish when it is done.

I got an email message from skik2000 asking, "We are remodeling our home and are considering a combi. What have you been cooking in it? Do you think it provides superior results to regular ovens or is it the quicker cooking that you like?". There was no link in the email so here's my response: We've only had our Gagg installed for about 3 weeks. So far it's great, but we are still figuring out what works. Our steamed-roasted chicken was a little too steamed. The steamed eggs a little too soft. The first time we roasted salmon I cooked it too long. The last time it was divine. These problems are user errors in my opinion and part of the learning curve. Thus far, straight up steaming seems the most straightforward and has high caliber results and is F-A-S-T. Steam-roasting is a little trickier (how much steam and for how long before I go to dry heat?) and something I definitely want to master for steam roasted (starchy) veggies, chicken and more over this winter. Based on my experience thus far, my guess is that in the long term it will generally provide a faster, different cooking experience than a conventional oven. For foods that do well with the steam, the product may be superior and definitely more convenient. For foods that don't require steam, I don't think it will provide an advantage other than a quick heat up time and faster cook times because of it's small size, but time will tell. The oven does seem to heat up super fast (~4-8 minutes) and cook faster than our previous 1956 range and crappy rental ranges we've cooked on for years. I wouldn't recommend a speed oven if you are getting a steam oven because I think the size and heat up make it much faster anyway. I'm definitely enjoying the new flexibility the steam oven offers and think we will enjoy it's functionality for years to come. I didn't steam a lot of foods before either but see so many uses now that we have it (steamed eggs, rice, grains, a steamed 12oz filet of salmon in 12 minutes - it's fast food!, grains, beans, heat up left overs, more). BTW, we didn't pay full price. We got a 200 series model off of ebay for less than 1/2 of retail. It was NIB with 5-year warranty. So far so good. Selling points were ease of use, I liked the simple interface better the Miele, plumbed, side opening door which worked much better in our space, and it's reputation for being the gold standard of steam ovens. Hope this helps.

Thanks dcarch, I often use sushi plates for sandwiches because the shape works so well and in this case, the brown flowers matched the dark brown egg whites, I thought more about the color than the motif. I made egg salad again for lunch today, and yes Max enjoyed it too. He hadn't noticed the eggs reposing under cover in their dark bath in the fridge over the weekend. I know I'll be making them again. Cathy they were fun to do. To me, the predominate flavors were soy, five spice and the star anise. My Sichuan peppers didn't seem to pack much punch, maybe they need replacing. And I couldn't detect any flavor from the apple or the tangerine peel. John, the pressure cooker worked well for cooking the eggs in the soy/spice liquid, just remember LOW pressure. And while I really like steaming eggs, I won't use that method again for hard cooking the tea eggs, they just cracked too well. Laura, how nice of you to comment. I really enjoy your blog and your Milk Poached Fennel and Creme Caramel are on my short list of things to try. For anyone reading this who has an interest in trying some different things with a pressure cooker, take a look at her blog, she has some unusual and great recipes. Lee Here is a link that might be useful: Hip Pressure Cooking

cynic, I use that same method, but I didn't know that Cook's Illustrated used it, that's just how Grandma showed me. Cover the eggs with cold water, bring to a boil, shut off the heat, cover the pan, let them sit for 10 minutes. Drain off the hot water, cover with old. She even rolled the eggs around on the counter to crack them all over! I'll bet she could have worked for CI, LOL, if she had ever heard of them. (grin) Anyway, I've never steamed eggs either because this method has always worked for me and so I've never bothered to use anything else. Pam, I colored the eggs too, I always do, the Grandkids love it. They wouldn't eat an egg for any purpose, no matter how it's prepared, but they get a charge out of me coloring the eggs: I also decided to get creative and dye some eggs. A magazine I had here had instructions to put a flower onto the boiled egg, put the whole thing into the toe of some pantyhose to keep the flower in place and then dye it. when it came out of the dye it would have a nice imprint of the flower. Yeah. Sure. It must have worked for them because the eggs on their cover were cool. This was mine, look, you can almost see a pattern of a flower... OK, that didn't work, so the same magazine (no, I just don't learn) said to make neat polkadots, just stick those page reinforcments on the eggs and dye them, them peel off the round reinforcements. Again, lovely pictures. I dunked the eggs into the dye and sure enough, all the little stickers came off and floated to the top and the eggs came out like this: So, I spent two hours dying eggs that look just like the ones that usually take me five minutes. And people wonder why I don't do crafts, LOL. Annie