Preparing for the unexpected

I stole the idea from a great post on the Forum Thermomix:

What is your morning tea for unexpected guests?Muffins. I have a small recipe book for muffins and my favourite is the spiced mandarin ones. I rarely have tinned mandarins though, so I use whatever fruit I have around.

Spiced fruit muffins
250g wholemeal plain flour
1tsp baking powder
1T garam masala
1/2tsp ground nutmeg
1stp ground cinnamon
1tsp cardamom
1/2tsp ground ginger
3 eggs
1/2C raw sugar
1/2C yoghurt, milk, light vegetable oil
1C roughly chopped drained fruit

Preheat the oven to 190C. Prepare a 12- muffin tray by either lightly greasing it, or lining it with cute gorgeous cupcake liners. Put the eggs, sugar, spices and yoghurt/milk/oil (use what you have to hand - sour cream also works well!) into the Thermomix bowl and mix at speed 5 for 5 seconds. Add the flour and baking powder, and pulse 3 times at Turbo, to just incorporate. Add the fruit, lock the lid and use the kneading function, on reverse for 5 seconds. Spoon into the patty cases and bake for 25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Adapted from The Pocket Muffin Book by Syd Pemberton. 

What is your quick "slap-up" thermomix tea for your family?Risotto! So easy to make, I have things for it to hand all the time - at least vegetables, vegetable stock, cheese, onion, garlic. Maybe some meat or fish to spice it up.

What do you keep frozen in the freezer for busy times?
Pastry. It's a good thing to keep on hand because it's a pain to make from scratch when I'm also making a filling. But to make a meal all I really need is leftovers and some pastry. 

Ask me how to pronounce quinoa

It's pronounced keen wa. It is not a widely known product but it should be. From the wiki on this:

...a species of goosefoot (Chenopodium), is a grain-like crop grown primarily for its edible seeds. It is a pseudocereal rather than a true cereal, or grain, as it is not a member of the grass family. As a chenopod, quinoa is closely related to species such as beets, spinach, and tumbleweeds.

Quinoa was of great nutritional importance in pre-Columbian Andean civilizations, being secondary only to the potato, and was followed in importance by maize. In contemporary times, this crop has become highly appreciated for its nutritional value, as its protein content is very high (12%–18%). Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), and like oats, quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete protein source among plant foods.[9] It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten-free and considered easy to digest. 

It is a brilliant product. It looks fabulous and unfurls its little tale when it's cooked. It is so lovely to make a salad from and here's a recipe that is fabulous for Christmas or entertaining.

Festive salad
1/2C quinoa
900g water
1 cucumber, cut into pieces 2" long
1 tomato, halved
1 bunch of herbs (mixed is good but parsley, dill, oregano, mint or other fine-leaved herbs are lovely)
Zest of one lemon
Juice of lemon
20g olive oil
Pinch of salt

Put the water into the Tmx bowl. Add the basket and the quinoa into the basket. Cook for 12 minutes on Varoma temperature at speed 3. Remove and set aside in a large bowl to cool. Dry the bowl well! Add the zest and process for 5 seconds at speed 8. Add the herbs, tomato and cucumber, lemon juice and olive oil. Process for 2 seconds at speed 5. Yes that short - you don't want a cucumber/tomato dip! Add to the quinoa, taste and adjust seasoning. Serve - I like eating quinoa salad warm.

Cake! Stunning cake! Lemon poppyseed in this case.

I made a cake this morning before an Australian Breastfeeding Association meeting. I made a lemon-poppyseed cake (thin-skinned lemons with lots of juice) which was delicious and still warm when I got to the meeting. I didn't make the icing in the Tmx but it was so.good. that I licked the bowl out.

Lemon-poppyseed cake
Rind of one lemon - dry it on paper towel so it doesn't just stick to the edges
250g raw sugar
1/2tsp of the best vanilla extract you can get your hands on
175g butter
4 bantam eggs and 1 humungous egg (or else 3 normal-sized eggs)
60g milk
Juice of the lemon
250g selfraising flour
30g poppyseeds
A pinch of cinnamon

Icing
75g white chocolate dots
1T sour cream
A drop or two of vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 175C. Spray a cake tin - I used a circular one from Ikea with hearts on it! Place the rind and sugar in the Tmx and process for 5-10 seconds at speed 7. Add the butter and eggs and process for 15 seconds at speed 6 if the butter is straight out of the fridge. You should cut it into small pieces if this is the case so it processes easily. Add the juice by squeezing the lemon onto the top of the Tmx lid when the MC is in place - this catches the seeds! Sweep the seeds off before you open the lid though. Add the flour and cinnamon, and mix for 30 seconds at speed 4. Add the poppyseeds and mix for an extra few seconds to incorporate. Pour into cake tin and bake for 45 minutes. Check that it's cooked then cool before icing.

To make the icing - melt the buttons in the microwave (takes about a minute). Add the sour cream and the vanilla, stir well and drizzle over the cooled cake. I did it over still-warm cake and it was fine.

This was inspired by the EDC book but is not quite the same as I'd heard the crumb wasn't particularly fabulous with that recipe (it used plain flour and baking powder, and I also adjusted the process to reduce the speed as the recipe goes on).

Keeps for a few days if it lasts that long. Lem

Whole egg mayonaise

My family recipe for mayonaise I have down pat in my teeny little food processor. It is based on a per egg calculation and for potato salad you use the proceeds of 1/2 an egg per person to give you an idea of how much to make. I usually make it 1-2 eggs at a time as there's only 2 of us eating it but it wouldn't be hard to make it with 3 or 4 but at a cup of oil per egg you are making a LOT of mayonaise each time so don't go crazy with quantities.

My best advice - eggs have to be at room temperature before making! It's weird when they're not at room temperature. It stores in a clean jar in the fridge for about 2 weeks before separating which is when you should bin it, but if it's been on the table for a few hours, dipped in to, I'd personally chuck it.

I like using sunflower or canola, cold pressed and organic if possible. Olive doesn't really work unless it's a "light" one and then it's uber processed so I'd rather just use a light oil. You can add up to 1T of mustard or condiment of choice of a similar texture - I've used apple sauce, most mustards, mint sauce, honey, gerkins, herb pastes, tomato paste, quince paste and so on. You might need more oil if that's the case! The more oil you add the thicker it gets so if it's not the right consistency (ie is too thin) add some more oil.

Ingredients
1 egg (60g so 2 bantam eggs)
pinch of salt
pinch of white pepper
pinch curry powder
1T white wine vinegarabout a cup of a light oil

Method
By hand it's easy - combine everything but the oil, whisk together, then add the oil really slowly. Really, really slowly. If it splits, google how to fix it or start again.

TMX method
Put the ingredients into the very clean tmx bowl except for the oil. Turn on to speed 9. Put the mc in place on the lid and pour a third of the oil into the lid - it will drip in at a good rate! Scrape it all together again. Add another third of the oil to the lid and let it dribble in. Now check for consistency - it should be quite thin! You can just lift the mc to check. Add the remainder of the oil to the lid. Taste and adjust then serve.

Wow that's a lot of gremolata...

So what's a woman to do? Turn it into a dip it seems!

Easy dip
Leftover gremolata (or else a bunch of herbs, some garlic, some lemon zest etc etc)
250g cream cheese
2T sour cream

Break up the cream cheese. Put it into the Tmx bowl. Add the gremolata. Close lid and slowly, over 15 seconds, increase the speed to 8. Leave it there for 5 seconds. Turn off. Eat.

It was delicious instead of butter on sandwiches, eaten with good bread and good company, and also on a roll in the oven as sortof garlic bread.

The good thing about making a feast...

Is that even when guests don't turn up, it's still a feast.

I made risotto with a few springs of asparagus and some amazing organic tomatoes from Food Connect Adelaide. From the EDC so nothing exciting there. I made, before that, a gremolata - amazing garnish that is parsley and lemon inspired:

Gremolata
Zest of 1/2 a lemon
1 clove of garlic
A small bunch of parsley, with the stalks cut off
Olive oil
Salt

Put the zest and garlic in the TMX and process for 3 seconds on 8. Scrape down the edges, fish out the biggest bits of zest and put aside for something else. Like a risotto - it is fabulous! Add the parsley and a dash of oil and process for 3 seconds on 5. Add a tablespoon of olive oil and a pinch of salt. On reverse, mix together for a few seconds. Scrape out and use as a garnish on whatever you like! Also great on flatbreads after baking, with more olive oil, or through pasta as a quick and easy dinner.

And toasted some pine nuts, fried some veal/pork mince with fresh ginger and some chilli sauce, and made bread.

Yellow chicken curry

Oh yum! This was dinner last night and was lovely and yummy. It was very soupy but that's how I like my curry.

Yellow chicken curry20g oil
1 onion
6 small chillis, frozen so not very hot!
Thumbsized piece of ginger, cut into 5
1 zucchini, diced
1 carrot, diced
1/2 capsicum, cut into chunks
2tsp dried cumin
2tsp curry powder mix
2T vege stock paste
200g pasata or tomatoes
100g water
200g chicken
200g Greek yoghurt

Put the onion, chillis and ginger into the bowl and process for 10 seconds on 6 to break up. Scrape down the sides, add the oil and cook at Varoma temperature on reverse on speed 2 for 3 minutes. Add the spices and continue to cook for another 2 (so set the clock for 5 minutes and keep an eye on it, adding the spices at the end). Add the vegetables and cook for another 5 minutes. Add the chicken, then the rest of the ingredients. Cook for 20 minutes at 100C at speed 1. Let it sit while you make the rice and then eat!

I have decided to cook, as much as possible, on reverse or else you end up with very finely textured food!

Chai tea for one for breakfast

I love chai masala so much that the first thing I did with my new Thermomix cookbook (Fast and Easy Indian Cooking) was to make the chai masala.
Except that the recipe made 6 cups and there's only me.
And I like it spicy.
And not sweet.
And I hate heated milk with a skin.
And to reduce the volume of liquid meant I couldn't put the tea in the basket.
So here's my adaptation:

Chai tea for one
7 cardamom seeds or 2 pods
3 cloves
4 peppercorns
2cm cinnamon quill
350g water
250g milk
3tsp black loose leaf tea
1tsp raw sugar
2mm slice of ginger
1/4tsp vanilla
Nutmug + grater

Put the first 4 things into the bowl. Process on speed 8 for 10 seconds. Add the tea, sugar, ginger, water and milk to the bowl, and process at 80C for 9 minutes at speed 4 on reverse (cause this bruises the ginger but doesn't shred it - this'd make it way hotter though!). Add in a grind of nutmeg and some vanilla at the last minute. Strain to serve.

 Was enough for 2 generous mugs of hot spicy tea for me! A great way to start the day.

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!!

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!

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?

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!