zanussi cooker installation

hi,i took the panel off my new cooker to connect the 6mm cable to it and instead of terminals with screws like my previous cooker, it had small nuts and tiny washers and a large square metal plate (removeable) and i found it very difficult to connect securely under nuts so i have placed the wires behind the metal plate instead to make a good contact. does anyone know if this is ok & safe to do this way or is that what is supposed to be done as the washer is far too thin to hold any wire
any help would be great
cheers
andy

Can you post a pic of this? I would expect the nut and washer to be used to clamp the wire between 2 larger plates. So, the setup would be a fixed contact plate, an unfixed plate the washer and the nut, but I really can't be hard and fast without seeing the unit. Does the instruction manual not shed any light?

Could you not use crimp connectors, so the nuts would tighten up on them?

sorry i cant post pic no camera, there is only 1 plate behind each nut,behind it is the rest of the terminal block with connectors with other wires one line for live and one for neutral,and the manual doesn't say anything
also to luminaire-i could try to crimp but the washer still would be useless as its so thin,also i did not anticipate the earth being so far away and so cable length is short and so if i crimp i would have to recut to size which would make things very tricky in the small space between units
cheers