Lunch zipped up

I mentioned previously that I’d been keen to think of some way to eschew ready meals at lunch in the office when I haven’t made some soup or have brought in some leftovers that I could enliven.

With limited time and resources it really needed some creative use of the microwave – not my favourite method of cooking. But I happened to stumble across Alan Coxon doing an infomercial about Zip' n Steam bags. These are bags that steam and pressure-cook your food but in the microwave. I’ve never indulged in a buy from television experience so I googled the bags and found their website and had a box of bags delivered to the office. Also I found that Lakeland sell the bags, which give me a bit of confidence regards to their effectiveness.

So here is my first attempt. I’ve chopped up an organic leek, a fat happy chicken breast and added some half fat cream cheese with garlic and chives. The bags do come with recipes, and the consignment of bags also came with a recipe book. There are definitely some interesting ideas, you can ‘bake’ a potato in 6 minutes and you can also steam a whole corn on the cob, which I have been meaning to try for ages.

You place your choosen ingredients in the pouch and seal it. There is a valve on one side of the bag which turns it into a steamer. The bag puffs up and cooks the food keeping all the juices in.

And 3 ½ minutes later I had a rather nice fresh, home cooked plate of food. The cream cheese makes a sort of sauce and I intend to experiment with various vegetable and meat combinations. If I have the fresh ingredients I can prepare the bag at home and then take it in a chiller bag or I can grab a few bits whilst running around the city. I am hoping that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall would approve at my attempts to ensure a tasty freshly cooked lunch.