Traveling around the country conducting cooking demonstrations gives me exposure to many different foods. We are always looking for new and interesting flavors. On one such trip, while shopping at a Trader Joe’s in Atlanta, I came across a unique frozen flatbread pizza-like product called ‘Tart D’ Alsace’. When I picked up the box to examine it, a shopper in the store said, “ Oh, those are really good.” I bought 10 boxes.

Alsace is an area located along the west bank of the Rhine between Germany and France. Between the 17th and 20th centuries Germany and France had a tug-of-war about who owned this region but King Louis XIV of France ultimately won. Today, the cuisine and the wine are influenced from both countries. Tart Flambé or Alsatian onion tart is a classic recipe of the region. The scratch recipe uses Crème Fraiche, bacon or ham, onions and a flour-based dough crust and takes about 20 minutes to bake at 400°F. The frozen tart I bought is made by Maitre Pierre and is based on a 100-year-old-recipe made with Crème Fraiche, caramelized onions, ham and Gruyere cheese. When you read the package instructions, they say to bake the tart at 475 degrees F for 10 minutes. So how do I do that in a TurboChef oven? Simple:

Select Bake > Pizza > Frozen > Thin crust. The oven will bake it for 2 ½ minutes from frozen. I placed it right on the rack and it came out perfect.

I recently bought a house in Santa Fe, New Mexico and I wanted to have a few neighbors over for hors d’ oeuvres and drinks. I thought, “why not serve the ‘Tart D’ Alsace’”? They have a Trader Joe’s in Santa Fe so off I picked one up. We had our little ‘happy hour’ and I was surprised by how much more time it takes to entertain when you don’t have a TurboChef oven. I don’t have a TurboChef oven at the new house in Santa Fe yet, so it took 25 minutes to heat the oven and over 10 minutes to cook the tart. More than 35 minutes for something I did in just under 10 minutes before. It was a bit like our computer system in the new house. We don’t have a direct connection to the Internet yet so we have to rely on dial-up. The TurboChef oven versus a regular oven is a bit like dial-up versus a T1 line. I can’t wait to remodel the kitchen in Santa Fe. Now that I have been cooking in the TurboChef oven, I just can't go back.

If you have a TurboChef oven, you're going to find preparing for sporting events like today's Big Game allows for more time in front of the tube and less time cranking out snacks from the kitchen. The oven crisps up wings like they came from a deep fryer by using the Air Crisp setting. Crispy potato skins are also easy and don’t require frying either. Here's how:

Select Bake > Vegetables > Potatoes > Bakers > Quantity 4. Allow the oven to preheat. Brush your potatoes with a little olive oil, place them directly on the oven rack and hit “Start.” Four potatoes will take just 10 minutes to bake. This will give you enough time to prep any other ingredients you want to top them with later.

Quarter your potatoes (or halve them if they are smaller), and remove some of the flesh. To crisp the inside of the skins select Air Crisp > Appetizers > Unfilled > Fresh >Toasted. Place the skins on a baking sheet flesh side up while the oven is preheating. Once preheated, place the sheet in the oven and press "Start" to begin baking. It takes about two minutes.

When finished, the skins are ready to jazz up with toppings so select Toast > Cheese Melt > Count 6. Top the skins with grated Cheddar cheese, and place your baking sheet back in the TurboChef oven. Two minutes later, you're ready to garnish a perfect set of potato skins with salsa, sour cream, bacon and fresh minced chives. Touchdown!

I have two little boys – ages three and four – and in our house I'm in charge of dinner each night. So one of my favorite things to do in the evening when I get home is to cook with the boys. It's fun to do together, it lets them be creative and, when they've had a hand in the creation, it gets them interested in trying new foods. And I can state unequivocally, there is no better oven that compliments their enthusiasm and eagerness to get from creation to completion better than the TurboChef oven.

Of course, one of our favorite things to make is pizza. Our local market sells a great fresh pizza dough that I bring home at least once a week now and it is always a culinary highlight for them. They can really have fun with a pizza and handle just about every aspect of it by themselves (although they seem to be a little behind in the dough spinning category). So when I stumbled upon this video at the very clever "Tamra Davis Cooking Show", I was inspired to take our pizza-making to the next level. Last weekend was Henry's 3rd birthday party and instead of the backyard inflatable jumper or the piñata, we let two-dozen kids loose on a table full of pizzas. It was a ton of fun and the kids got a kick out of eating their own creations. We cooked up eight fresh-made pizzas in about 30 minutes – four minutes each with the TurboChef oven. We could never have pulled it off any other way. Even the parents got into the act, taking turns manning the oven and slicing up pies.

Coincidentally, I spoke to a customer just a few days later and she shared the same sentiment. Dee-Dee in Chicago said, "One of our favorite things to make in our TurboChef on a regular basis is Chicago-style deep dish pizza. With five kids and many different tastes, we make several different kinds in one meal. The TurboChef lets me offer a greater variety of options for the family with no problem. I can make four different pizzas in the same time it takes to make one in a conventional oven. That means everyone is satisfied and harmony is achieved at the dinner table." Keep in mind, you're typically talking 30-45 minutes for a typical scratch recipe for deep dish pizza. TurboChef cooks one up in about six and a half minutes.

Bottom line, thanks go out to Tamra for the inspiration and to TurboChef for helping us pull it off in record time. Henry and his friends had a blast.

Martha Stewart recently paid TurboChef a visit at the home of Richard Perlman and Ellen Hanson, our Chairman and his wife. She came to film a feature with the TurboChef oven for The Martha Stewart Show. TurboChef has formed a great relationship with Martha and you can expect to see more of the oven on her show and in a variety of other forums in the weeks and months ahead. We're excited that she’ll be telling more and more people what we know to be true – the TurboChef oven is, as Martha puts it, "an amazing new technology for today's kitchen."

Click here to watch the TurboChef feature on The Martha Stewart Show.