I miss my *real* oven

I really, really hate Dutch combis – I hate them in general and the one in my current apartment is a particularly loathesome specimen of the breed. A combi, for those lucky enough not to have encountered one, is a small combination microwave (they say “magnetron” here), grill, and convection oven. It sounds useful, but the thing is, they don’t do any of those things well. They are larger than an American toaster oven, about the size of a small American microwave. (Definitely smaller than either the microwave we bought in Taiwan or the one we have in the US.) It goes up to 900 watts on the microwave side, which is on the low side but not awful, (US microwaves seem to range from 800W for the cheapest ones to 1250W for nicer ones) but the oven and grill only go up to 200 degrees C, which is not quite 400 F. You can imagine how helpful this is is you want to grill a steak. I’m not convinced of the reliability of those numbers, either, because even prepackaged Dutch foods take longer to cook than they’re supposed to.

But it isn’t the problems with normal operation that have set me off today; it’s because the damned thing keeps tripping the circuit breaker, again. (The electrical closet with the breakers is on another floor, outside my apartment, and requires a special key.) I can flip the breaker and cook with it, then sometime later when it’s off it trips the breaker.

Last time this happened, they sent someone out who fixed it but told the management agency (who told us) it was just because the combi was very dirty. You can imagine how embarrassing that was. But he did do something with it, because it’s worked fine until now. I don’t think that can have been it, because for one thing, it actually wasn’t all that dirty (I mean really, all we do is cook in it!) and for another, it shorts out while it’s off, not when it’s on. Still, just in case, I have thoroughly cleaned it, which gave me new insights into all its other design flaws.

In the US, we have two kinds of cooking appliance. We have microwaves, with insides of smooth plastic that can be wiped out easily, and we have ovens, which these days are mostly self-cleaning. Even when they’re not, you buy oven cleaner, apply it, turn the oven on to high for a while, and then just wipe out the resulting flakes. Easy. Not so much here.

For one thing, it’s placed high enough that I needed a stool to clean the back. (Being Dutch, this flat is designed for giants – upper cabinets and bathroom mirrors start at the level of my mouth or higher.) More critically, the thing is very hard to clean. The sides have knobs for the glass pan that serves to put food on, and also some grilles for ventilation. Said pan is of course as big as the combi but made of quite thin glass, and I’m always scared when I take it out. The top has a heating element that doesn’t remove, though I finally figured out that it can be dropped down to get behind it. But then you still have to clean around the knob that holds it up. Not having many cleaning supplies, I used soap and water to clean it out – which is when I realized there’s a glass sheet emplaced in the bottom, because the soapy water got behind that. I was able to pry that out with a butterknife. (I wonder if it’s meant to serve as another shelf?) I do hate cleaning things with soap that can’t be placed in a sink to be rinsed, but I think I have all the soap off. Now I’ve left the combi open to dry and I’ll wait a while until I flip the breaker again, because I’m worried that all that water could also short it out.

To tell the truth, I’m sort of hoping this doesn’t work and that the breaker flips again. I’d hate to learn that it was so finicky that a little food spatter could bring it to its knees.

ETA some hours later: After a thorough cleaning, the breaker has flipped again. I stand vindicated. (Too bad they probably won’t be able to have anyone look at it until next Tuesday or Wednesday – maybe Monday if the office is open tomorrow but I’m off so I’m guessing they will be.)