Cooking with Samsung convection microwave oven.

Recently, I was given the privilege to attend a cooking class by Samsung to promote their convection microwave oven. And after attending several cooking classes by Rohani Jelani, I had really high expectations for this class which was held at Cilantro Culinary Academy, Subang Jaya.

Upon registration though, I realised that this wasn't an exclusive bloggers' event but a good mix of bloggers and owners of the Samsung convection microwave ovens. Therefore, they have kept the class as serious as possible.

I have to be frank, though, that I only managed to do 2 out of the 3 recipes that day because I was given the impression that class was going to end at 12.30pm, as stated in their invitation, However, I was told that it didn't end til after 4pm. As I had another event to attend that day, I had to make an exit by 12.45pm.

I was a little disappointed with the class because I had so much expectations on it... I mean, I love cooking classes but there were too many weaknesses that made it look a little bit disorganised and poorly planned. It started around 10am but even when I left around 12.45pm (15 minutes after class was supposed to end) and managed to do 2 recipes, I still haven't touched the microwave oven and do not know how easy or difficult it is to operate it. We only prepared the food until cooking time and then everything was inserted into their huge conventional oven. As I wasn't able to experience it myself, I shall provide the product info based on the product details that was furnished to me.

the Samsung microwave CE117AE-S on our table

This microwave is sold at RM1,199.

Now, I love microwave convection ovens because I think they make cooking experience easier and I am able to cook delicious, nutritious food in a healthy way - because the heat is distributed evenly, I only need to use very little amount of oil and at most time, I would just grill the food I intend to serve my family... they not only come out juicy but cooking time is also shorter because of the energy efficiency involved.

I know a lot of us would just heat/re-heat left over food in our microwave ovens as how I did, but through time and wanting to make full use of it, I have done much more than just that... there's the grilling of my homemade burgers, thawing frozen food, steaming of vegetables, cooking Jada's favourite salmon, baking my new favourite fatty lasagna and even finishing off that last step for the ayam percik recipe I learnt at Rohani Jelani's class. Hence, I am always on the look out to learn much more ways to cook food in my microwave.

During this class, I managed to learn to prepare Red Bean Buns and Siew Mai Dumpling. I have to tell you that the buns are so difficult to make because you'd need to whip, knead and roll till everything becomes soft, and waiting time was the killer... but I guess Samsung wants us to know that you can bake them breads in their convection oven and unfortunately, I didn't get to experience that for myself.

the most valuable skill i learnt during this class was to fold the dough and make it look attractive. oh, we also learnt to make hot dog buns.

When we did the Siew Mai Dumpling, everything was already prepared for us and we only needed to learn to fold the dumpling skin and insert the ingredients into it. We were told that preparation time takes hours and use a huge amount of running water (*gasp*!)... therefore, everything was done for us earlier and we only had to learn the tricks of making the dumpling look nice before putting them in the tray for the guys at Cilantro to insert them into their conventional ovens. I guess, this one is also possible to cook in a convection microwave oven.

folding them thin skins is time consuming considering that few seconds for a person to put it all in his mouth...

As this is a review blog, and I didn't get the chance to use the microwave oven, there's nothing much for me to say about the microwave oven... I would like to point out the weaknesses of the class as a review but that was not the reason why I was invited to the cooking class. Thus, I shall say my peace here and thank the organisers for having me in the class. I did learn some valuable tips in there.

Do you own a convection microwave oven? If you don't, would you consider checking out the potential of this Samsung convection microwave oven?