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Like you, I have an aversion to microwaves but recently I found a use for them (thanks to culinary hacker Heston Blumenthal): use them to "cook" vegetables of which the aromatics dissolve in water, like fennel, asparagus and broccoli. What you do is you rub butter and salt and pepper on the vegetable of your choice and wrap it tightly in two or three layers of microwave foil. Then you zap it three times in one mine b…
Hmmm...I have a nice stovetop steamer for vegetables which seems to work fine. But maybe I'm missing something. Will have to try it next time I'm cooking at a location that is microwave-enabled.
With a steamer you're still working with water so some aromatics will probably get lost. A better alternative to microwaving would be stir-frying as you coat your vegetables in oil so no aromatics would leak out.