All Hallow's Eve thanks for Thermomix

I went to an All Hallow's Eve feast tonight that was mostly brought to you by Thermomix. There was rice in little carved capsicums thanks to TheHusband, spiderweb soup thanks to my demonstrator and her Thermomix, custard for a cake in only a few minutes, and lots of alcohol.

There was a sorbet without the sugar thanks to the latter but it was just very tart and the kids loved it strangely enough. The collective gaggle of them inhaled the soup, ate the bread right up and generally loved on the food.

*That* is one of the most amazing things about Thermomix - it gets the 10 year old in the kitchen, it gets the smalls eating soup and vegetables, it gets more fruit into everyone and with minimal fuss or mess.

Happy Beltane for tomorrow by the way.

Thermomix demo tonight!

Which means I get the Thermoserver and the awesome Indian cookbook tonight. I am a little anxious that no one is going to come though because the people I've invited have not rsvp'd or have to say no. Sigh. Which is a shame because so few people know about the littlest kitchen but would be impressed if they saw it!

I know I was. I was fully prepared to think that there was no reason to buy another machine for our kitchen. Our fully functioning kitchen by the way. But we did and it is fabulous!

ETA: Well be careful what you wish for! There were 10 people at the demo. And everyone went home happy full I think! The beetroot salad was a hit, the lemon/mint sorbet was yum, the vanilla custard was delicious and my demonstrator is still trying gently guide me to becoming one. Which I would love to do at some point when I have my life organised a smidge more.

I have lemons, lovely lemons...

And what does one do with lemons when one has them? I picked a heap of a friend's tree the other day and now I need to do things with them.

There are two parts to a lemon of course - the zesty goodness and the juice/flesh. So I think I'll do something with both. That means making limoncello and lemon cordial I think! Or maybe orange-lemon cordial?

TheHusband test drove the chicken and cashew recipe EDC tonight. Nothing exciting to be honest but some great techniques there for making rice and using the Varoma.

10 things to have on hand to whip up anything in the Tmx

1. Ice
2. Cream
3. Milk
4. Meat
5. Legumes or pulses or beans
6. Tinned tomatoes
7. Vegetable stock concentrate
8. Onion
9. Rice
10. Vegetables

and with those, you can make a Feast!!

Kangaroo and vegetable casserole

Kangaroo is a delicious meat and I bet there aren't too many Thermomix recipes around for it. So here's my first one:

Kangaroo casserole
1 onion
25g butter
2 carrots, cut about 2" long
some pieces of celery, cut about 2" long
500g kangaroo, diced roughly 1"
100g mushrooms, quartered
100g wine (I used white but you could use red)
100g water
2T stock concentrate
1/2T tomato paste
1tsp seeded mustard with chilli
1T cornflour
1 bunch of asparagus

Put onion into Tmx. Process for a few seconds at speed 7. The carrots and celery go in for a few seconds too but don't mince them - just break them up a little. Add the butter, set to 100C and speed 2 on reverse, and cook for 3 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients except the asparagus, and cook for another 20 minutes at 100C on reverse, speed 2 so it's stirring well. For the last 2 minutes, add the asparagus - I just cut it into 3" pieces and stuck it through the hole in the lid and it was perfect!

Serve over rice. Or pasta. Or with mash. Or whatever you like.

Inspired by the Beef Stroganoff recipe in the EDC but adapted for kangaroo, the derth of ingredients in my pantry and fridge, and the need for iron. And asparagus in season!!

Scones! Rock! Yum!

Made the EDC scones today as I popped over to a friend's house at short notice and wanted to take something.

They were delicious!

The EDC cookbook is a really great place to start I'm finding. Highly recommend reading it and trying everything in it. I intend on :).

The hardest thing about using a Thermomix for making dinner...

is that everything in the Thermocauldron takes minutes and it takes an hour to bake the lasagne.

Tonight I made bechemal sauce. It took 7 minutes. 8 if you count from wo to go and weighing. It is like a plain custard and is just as good.

Yes, I did eat some out of the jug with a spoon.

I made bread this morning and well. It is delicious and I got a loaf and 8 rolls out of the batch. This is way too much for my little family atm so I will halve the recipe next time.

Give us this day, our daily bread...

The bread from yesterday wasn't fabulous. It's dense and rich but not what I like. On scouring the Forum Thermomix I found lots of hints and tips though and a good basic recipe to try. A few things that I suspected at the time I needed to change:

• More kneading - towards the 2 or 3 minute mark even
• I can leave it in the bowl to rise! Rather than taking it out and phaffing around.
• I was right to add more flour to get the ball to come together.

Not a problem though - just need to fiddle around! Lunch rolls might work better than a loaf as well.

I plan on making yoghurt this afternoon after work too. I'll be interested to see how it goes.

And on Saturday we...

Baked: bread is a'rising right now. I used my standard recipe from the breadmaker days - heh that'd be last weekend as the breadmaker bit the dust on Sunday night! and I needed to add an extra 20g of flour to get it to come together as a ball in the TMX. So my bread recipe is:

Bread recipe #1
240g water
370g breadmix
1tsp plus a pinch of yeast
15g olive oil
pinch of salt

Add ingredients in that order to the Tmx bowl. Process on speed 7 for 5 seconds. Lock lid and knead for 90 seconds. Turn out dough and wrap it in a silicone mat, eaving it for 20-30 minutes. Shape, brush with water, and put in a cold oven at 180C for 25 minutes.

Breakfasted: This morning TheHusband made himself steelcut oats and shared the recipe as well:

Steelcut oats
1/3rd C steelcut oats
1C water
1 pinch of salt

Put these in the bowl and cook at Varoma temperature for 20 minutes on speed 4 on reverse. Enjoy.

Icecreamed: And I just whipped the icecream that I made the other day, a la EDC, so that we can have it for dessert tonight. It doesn't make very much in the end does it? 500g of icecream isn't 500mL even, so the L tub I had was a little bare. I made it with some AMAZING vanilla from Vanilla Online so it has little caviar running around in it.

Steel cut oats, and a salad

TheHusband made steel cut oats into porridge this morning. He starts work early, and it just got earlier as he changes to 6:30am starts next week, and has quite a physical job so needs a wholesome breakfast and steel cut oats are the best.

He used the EDC recipe for porridge but cooked for 20 minutes. This cooked them perfectly. He started following the porridge recipe but steel cut oats take much longer to cook so it's not surprising that it needed much longer!

I made a salad today but it was a flop - the piece of Ginger I had was too large so hthe salad was hot and unpleasant. Shame as it was all veges.

Pumpkin scones and pizza dough

Today saw me whip up some pumpkin scones in the Thermocauldron. They worked really well. I'll share the recipe when I get a chance. It's an Aunt Flo one though, in case you're dying for it rightnow!!

ETA: now's my chance! So I took Aunt Flo's recipe and turned it into this:

Pumpkin scones
20g butter (1T in the recipe)
110g castor sugar (1/2C in the recipe)
a pinch of salt
1 egg
300g cold mashed pumpkin (1C in recipe)
380g self-raising flour (2C in recipe)

Preheat a very hot over (220-230C). Weigh the pumpkin, cut the peel off, dice, steam, and cool - so I started with 300g and ended up with 260g or so. Put it in the Thermomix and process of speed 6 for a few seconds to mash. Add the rest of the ingredients. Process at speed 4 for 3 seconds. Keep in mind that the worst thing you can do for scones is over process them! Lock the lid and knead for 30 seconds. Turn the dough out onto a silicone mat, smoosh flat to about an inch thick, use the spatula to divide into scone-sized blobs and pop into the oven for about 12 minutes.

I have taken to making notes in my EDC cook book about banal things like the weight, roughly, of an egg yolk. This is because I have access to some bantam eggs which are teeny tiny and I'll need a few to equal an egg yolk from a normal size chicken. I'm typing this not at my computer (in bed actually) so can't remember how much is weighed but as the rest if the recipe is usually by weight, I should keep note of this.

I also made the ragut and another risotto, so have lunches for the week. TheHusband likes leftovers too so that the meals serve 4 easily means we can cook our way out of spending money on lunches.

Speaking of which - TheHusband made pizza dough tonight. He had a ball doing it and said it was easy, and the hardest thing was cleaning up. He said it slightly more emotively than that though!

And on the third day, there was oatmeal

One thing I will say about the EDC is that some of the recipes need a lot of tweaking. None of them indicate how many it serves either.

This morning TheHusband made oatmeal, and so did I when I got up later. It was delish! But would easily serve 4 people so it's a bit if overkill for 2 of us. We prefer to use steel cut oats though so will have to experiment there.

Tonight for dinner I whipped up a chicken and broccoli curry. I made a few tweaks - no coriander as I detest it, no curry leaves in the house, used chilli bamboo shoots instead. The chicken ended up tender and stringy and it was really good. A definite tick here.

Oh Thelma! You came and you made me a coffee...

Thelma arrived last night. My demonstrator is awesome, walked me through the first angst at maybe breaking/scratching/ruining it meal which we shared with TheSister and TheHouseguest. I made spinach risotto and it was so yummy that it got yummed up straight away. It fed 4 hungry souls and is out of the Everyday Cookbook so I won't repost here.

I took TheSister home, ran some errands, put the babe to bed and then made lemon custard. Which was yum as well. Also from the EDC. Also yummed up.

This morning I've made porridge (half serve from EDC - works great!) and coffee. My own invention. Less than 24 hours and I have invented a recipe! I'm sure it's been done before but hey, I thought about it and applied it to the TMX so gold star to me.

Coffee for one
1 scoop ground coffee*
100g water
100g milk

Put into the TMX, close lid, put in the measuring cup (MC)**.
Cook for 7 minutes on speed 4 at 80C.
Raise to speed 8 for 20 seconds.
Strain well through a fine seive and serve.

I can't see why this wouldn't be able to be multiplied for more people so coffee at my place?

* The same amount you'd use if you were making plunger coffee. You can grind your own - 1T coffee beans, speed 8, 20-30 seconds.
** That's kind of the Thermomix equivalent of any knitting pattern that says "Join in the round, taking care not to twist", isn't it?

Today's the big day!

I wish I felt half as excited as that post title suggests. My dealer Thermomix consultant tells me that my package is on the truck with the delivery driver today. I have had very little unbroken sleep and am enthusiastic on the outside but inside I'm half-asleep still. This is fairly normal at Chez Someone though as we have a small person in our lives. I'm told the sleep thing passes after a few years.

Anyway, Thelma arrives today! My Thermomix has told me she wants to be named Thelma. Which to me isn't a very feminine name but more of a tall, broadshouldered, large handed, no nonsense kind of woman who would just as soon as help you with scones as help you break up a stump. It's apparently unusual to name a Thermomix with a woman's name though - most of those that get named are with male names, like Robbie the Robot. But Thelma it is.

I've been thinking of things to make - liqueurs, soups, drinking chocolate (which is ironic as I don't like chocolate), spice rubs, salts and herb mixes. And with Giftmas around the corner, perhaps some hampers for those that we will see? Hrmmm...

We are planning a trip away though somewhere, some time before December as we can't take leave that month, and for once I don't give a hoot about cooking facilities as we'll be taking Thelma with us! I wonder how to get a bag for her?

So all I have so far is an email...

I got an email! Our thermomix is on its way to my dealer Thermomix representative. She suggested that I think about what I want to make. I think I'll do a risotto first, but it also got me thinking about things that we buy, at the moment, that I want to make.

This is for lots of reasons. We don't have any food allergies or issues here but try to eat Real Food (ie the ones that don't have ingredient lists and nutritional panels) as much as possible. This falls down with a few things. We love Nippy's iced coffees, TheHusband has a sweet tooth, and we buy yoghurt, stock powder, baking powder and so many other things that I'm sure we don't need to buy and with the right tool, recipe, experience and amount of gusto, I could make.

Yoghurt comes to mind as well. I'd eat more if it was there, easy to make, not too sweet and not too gritty, slimy or weird, not too fruity but not too tart.

Tonight's dinner was an awesome morrocan pearl barley and carrot soup that I made a few weeks ago for a camp I catered, reheated with some prawns and some (fail) dumplings - fail because I used plain flour instead of anything that was going to rise. As I was stirring it, I thought that it'd be an awesome and easy recipe to Thermo-convert! Will have to think on that as it was a play on this red lentil and celery soup and I am going to have to learn how to change recipes from normal to Thermocauldron!

What is this all about?

Still waiting. Tap tap tap - that's the sound of my foot impatiently WAITING. Tmx won't be here until next week now, which is annoying but only mildly. It's not unexpected when there's a burst of orders and it's fine really - I have a great friend in my tmx consultant so it's nothing personal!

So in the meantime I get to tell you what this blog will have a focus on:

• Seasonal food - what's in season, what's available, what's great
• Cooking for two adults and a babe
• Hosting dinner/brunch/lunch with ease
• The Silly Season 2010 and onwards
• Gift making from the kitchen
• Kitchen/hearth witchery

Why is it that the silly season has started in October? My calendar is full full full for October and into November. My in-laws probably think I'm crazy for asking what the plan for Christmas is but it's not that far away! 10 weeks will just fly by I'm sure. 

Places to learn more about my TMX

Even before I get my hands on it!

• Super Kitchen Machine
• Forum Thermomix
• YouTube
• Best Bimby and Thermomix Blogs
• Thermorecipes
• Joy's Thermomix Experiences
• British Larder
• The Kitchen Playground
• The official Thermomix website in Australia
• UK Thermomix recipe log
• Brazen's Culinary Adventures (esp her list of places to find more recipes!)
• Full Little Tummies

Now to get a name for it. My iPod is Munchkin, my car is Illian, my phone is hated so doesn't have a name... Robbie the robot? Will have to meet it and find out!!

And did you know - if you accidently put you iPod in, say, the washing machine and have to wait 3 minutes for it to drain because it's a front loader and all you heard was a kthunk as it rotated to indicate that there was something in there that shouldn't be, a wipe off and 2 days in a large box of rice will dry it out and it'll be fine, really.

A good thing that a TMX can't fit in a washing machine, huh.

The first things I'm going to make

• A risotto. I am nutty for it and want to make a spinach and goats cheese one.
• Chai tea.
• A curry.
• Apple and cinnamon porridge.
• Who knows what else.

I will have to work out steel cut oats in the tmx for MrSomeone as that's what he does for breakfast. Off to do some searching!

Joining the club

On the weekend we decided to buy a Thermomix. They cost roughly $2k and despite being offered a bit of a deal by buying it at the Good Food and Wine Show it's still a lot of cash to drop on a piece of kitchenware.

Why did we buy? Cause it is a "we" purchase, not just something I wanted or TheHusband purchased.

1. We live in a normal size house with 4 adults and a child.
2. Kitchen space is at a premium.
3. I got a return-to-work bonus and wanted to do something else with it other than pay bills.
4. There are so many things I want to do with it!!!!
5. It will save us money and time and dishes and effort.
6. We eat from scratch much of the time and this will expand our cooking adventures!
7. We own a LOT of appliances and this means tossing a few!
8. We are thinking of emigrating in a year or so and we would only take this with us.
9. I am looking forward to working with a really good-quality, purpose-built, well-designed, powerful and reliable tool.
10. We make lots of things from scratch but still buy flour and dips and drinks and things and there is so much I don't know about that food and how it's made.

The worst part is the time between purchase and receipt!!! I can't wait!!!! In the waiting time, I've made a list of things that we're getting rid of, and have bought new spices.

Now to decide what the first thing I make in it is.