Pages

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Food for thought

To celebrate my friends Thermomix purchase (YAY!!) I thought I would gather a few recipes for us all to have a think about.....


We may yet have lasagne again! 
http://www.the4blades.com/dairy-free-bechemel-sauce-aka-cauliflower-leek-soup-in-the-thermomix/

Wraps, for those that are gluten challenged
http://www.the4blades.com/gluten-free-tortillas-in-the-thermomix/ 

Lunchbox treats with a bit of healthy thrown in
http://www.recipecommunity.com.au/baking-sweet-recipes/abbotsford-kitchens-school-lunchbox-biscuits/57783

It really is the best ever carrot cake!
http://www.recipecommunity.com.au/baking-sweet-recipes/best-ever-carrot-cake/49760

Risotto with Brie in it... genius!
http://www.recipecommunity.com.au/main-dishes-meat-recipes/chicken-snow-pea-mushroom-brie-risotto/157821

A great resource...for me anyway!
 http://quirkycooking.blogspot.com.au/p/dairy-free-substitutes.html

I have to give this one a go
http://www.recipecommunity.com.au/breads-rolls-recipes/marbled-rye-bread/176030

Homemade bread just got a bit more useful!
http://www.recipecommunity.com.au/breads-rolls-recipes/flat-hamburger-rolls/167266

4 Oranges made into juice. Peel, whiz the crap out of them (chill) and drink :)


Happy Cooking! 

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

All purpose Satay recipe

I love Satay.  Really. Really. Really

Do you think tastes are genetic? ?
My brother (hi Luke!!!) and I  have very similar tastes. We hate tomatoes, love chocolate pudding and love love love satay (There's a whole bunch of other tastes that are the same too)
It strikes me as strange that we can be so alike, what's a weeny bit stranger is that our partners have the same gross tastes, like oysters and cups of tea! 

Anyway,  a lack of cooking mojo today led me to cook my favorite.  Announcing loudly ' I am cooking Satay,  it's my favorite and I don't care of anyone doesn't like it!  '  you know how it goes...sometimes you need to make a stand.

This is a great recipe that I have been cooking for about 20 years,  another of my simple and practical standard dishes.
I have always done it on the stove top,  but I did it in thermie today with no problems. 

Add to your saucepan or thermie all of the following ingredients
2 tbsp honey
1 cup of chicken stock
1 tsp of coriander (the dry variety not the green!)
1/2 tsp cumin
2 tsp curry powder
1/2 cup of peanut butter
1 tsp of crushed ginger
Splash of soy
Squeeze of lemon

Cook up until it's thick and simmering.
In thermie I winged it a little and used varoma temp, sp 2 for 5 or so minutes I think.
It comes up quite thick,  great for dipping or spreading on kebabs. I normally thin it a little with water and mix in some cooked chicken and veg and serve over rice.  


I love rice.  Really. Really... so does my brother! 


Happy Cooking!

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Jamies meatballs & Thermomix fudge

I do love having like minded friends and I am feeling particularly grateful for them today.  I am dedicating today's post to Andrea and Donna.  Andrea gave me very helpful polenta advice and Donna said ' Hey Jacq,  you gotta try this fudge!' Ladies, thank you xx

Today I chose to try Jamie Oliver's Meatballs Alla Norma recipe here, mostly done without the thermomix, although Thermie made making the polenta that went with it a breeze.
I tried to stick to the recipe.  I promise I tried.  But it wasn't going to happen..... 


  • Firstly I doubled the whole recipe to feed 5 of us, theres meatballs left over but no polenta ( I used the recipe from the EDC for the polenta!) 
  • Next he suggested to roll the meatballs in fennel seeds, I just knew this would offend my children's palettes so I chose to just add them into the meatballs and I didn't use double.
  • I also added an egg white to the meatballs to make sure they stayed together (and I didn't use my hands I used the kitchen aide to mix it) 
I trundled along with the rest of the recipe as per the instructions.  My other thoughts are. . Eggplant, surely something that needs to be de-yuckified with salt etc can be replaced for the sake of simplicity,  it's not that yummy anyway (I picked most of it out) perhaps zucchini would be a good replacement. 
I liked the saucy bit a lot,  I think it could be awesome with just mince (or all veg) like a spag bog type of arrangement on top of the polenta.  Those meatballs took too long...

Keeping it real for you.....yes this is how I ate my dinner. Holiday chaos has taken over!


Oooooh and I made fudge!! Danger, danger Will Robinson! 
I was way too easy and it wayyyyyy too yummy! 
Thermie makes everything that you have to stir constantly so damn easy. This is no exception.



So you need condensed milk for the recipe, I make my own  using my fav recipe here.
The fudge recipe you will find here
The hardest part is waiting for it to set in the fridge.... 

Best you give some away as a gift, otherwise you'll eat it all yourself! 

'Happy Cooking!' 

Monday, July 7, 2014

Lets talk about bread

Anyone that knows me personally knows that bread is my 'thing'. I've been making it since my first child was born.  It all began with a 2nd hand breadmaker, but when that died I made it all by hand.  These days I have a kitchenaid that I bought for the purpose of bread making and it does a fine job. 
But if you're here is probably because you have a Thermie, not a kitchenaid.
I love love love it when I find out someone has ventured into making their own bread.  I feel immensely proud and thrilled for them.  Its easy,  its yummy & its bloody cheap.
So I am going to share with you my basic bread recipe that I have thermied, but if you happen to not own one yet, message me and we will chat. I am always happy to convert someone to the bread making side!  

OK let's get to it
* Its from this recipe that the majority of my breads are based on* 
Like some of my other recipes this one can be flexible, but only parts of it.  It is important to always have the correct weight in water and flour. This guarantees you more consistent loaf. All the other stuff just changes the flavour, except the yeast but you can go either way a bit with no dramatic changes. 
Begin by weighing 420gms of warm water into your bowl, add 10 gms of sugar,  10 gms of yeast and 20 gms of butter. Whiz for 1 min on 37 deg, sp 1. 


Next weigh in 750 gms of bakers flour and 10 gm of regular salt. Wizz it on sp 6 for a quick 7 sec or until the noise changes and the dough is coming together.  Now on interval, sp1 let it knead for 5 minutes. 
While that's happening fill your thermoserver with hot tap water and let it sit and warm up.
I wouldn't recommend leaving thermie alone while the dough was kneading,  it can jump about a bit.  And although mine has never come close to walking off the bench,  you just don't want to risk a $2000 gadget hitting the floor!
Just before time is up tip the water out of the thermoserver and give it a dry and a spray of oil including the lid. When the 5 minutes is up, tip the dough out onto the bench.  It should come out fairly cleanly. Shape it into a ball and press it lightly into the thermoserver, put the lid on and pop it somewhere that's not to cold.  I usually put mine on the stove, it helps me not forget about it!   


After 30 minutes or so it should have risen to fill the whole thermoserver,  if it's quicker then that's fine,  if it's longer that's fine too! 

Tip it out and give it a quick knead to get out all the air that built up inside the dough.
Split the dough into 2 and begin to shape into loaves.  A good way to get a good high loaf is to roll the dough out flat then roll it up into a sausage shape.  After a few goes you'll find what works. But no matter what,  it will taste good in the end!
Put onto a tray lined with baking paper, spray the loaves with cooking spray and cover with glad wrap.


 Let the bread sit somewhere warm to rise to about double is size. 
Now there's some debate as to whether you should put bread into a hot or cold oven.  I like hot.  So I put mine into a 220 deg preheated (obviously take the gladwrap off first!) oven and cook for 20 min or so, nice and brown is great and it should sound hollow when you tap it on the bottom. 

There's a 1000 teeny tweeks and problem solvers that I have in my head,  but it would be overwhelming for you and me to write them all in this space.  But do ask for help if you need it!
Soooo with a few ingredients you can make one of life's simple pleasures, hot fresh bread.  (don't be tempted to cut the bread when it's really hot,  it won't end up nice! Wait until it's just warm.. You can do it ;)  )



Sunday, July 6, 2014

Apricot Bites & Butter Chicken

Well, I was planning on making Cherry Clafoutis and telling you all about it.  But alas a lack of cream put a halt to those plans,  only after I opened the jar of cherries of course!  



So instead I'll share a couple of successes that I have saved up ...
My kids really, really love those little apricot bites that you pay a gazillion dollars for at the supermarket. They are def a sometimes treat, so when I came across a recipe that claimed to be just like them but healthier I had to give it a shot. The fact that they only have 3 ingredients is a mega bonus.
All you do is add 300gm dried apricots, 50gm dates & 100gm of coconut to your thermomix and whiz it on sp 9 for 30 seconds,  but I recommend getting to sp 9 over the space of about 10 seconds. 
What you do with it then is up to you. You could roll into balls the cover in extra coconut (or caster sugar like the shop bought ones), you could press it into a dish lined with baking paper,  refrigerate and chop into bars... This time I made the bars then cut them into little squares.  They went down well with everyone and made a nice little treat in the lunchboxes!



I also went in search of a tastier/spicier butter chicken recipe. We have had the EDC one quite a few times but thought possibly we could do better.
I found this one and gave it a go. It was OK,  the flavor was good although a bit spicy for the kids.  Mind you I couldn't find my teaspoon measure (it was hiding in the bicarb jar!) So I was winging it a bit with the spices. What I missed was the texture of the edc version, which uses cashews to make the sauce thick and luscious.  So next time I will try the spices from the new recipe (minus some of that chilli!) with all the other stuff from the old one.

I have also found a recipe for cashew cream, which can be a replacement for normal cream. . ... which will be great.  I'll let you know how that goes. 
I am off to figure out something for dessert that requires no cream. .... Maybe salted chocolate custard?
... mmmm! 

Happy Cooking!

*Feel free to share any new recipes in the comments or perhaps make a request!*




Monday, June 23, 2014

Melting Moment's & Lemon Chicken

One of the requests when we did this fort nights shopping list was Lemon Chicken...

Being the lazy bum cook I am there was no way I was doing any deep frying of chicken,  but in hindsight that's probably half of the yumminess.

I used this Womans Weekly Recipe

for the sauce.  But first I cooked my rice as per the edc and steamed veg and chopped chicken thighs in the Varoma.
Then chucked all the sauce ingredients in the bowl (after discarding the rice water) and cooked it on varoma temp until varoma temp is reached, I used sp 3.

It was OK enough,  certainly not mind blowingly delicious! Pretty sure I won't be making it again. 

I did have one success today with the melting moments. I am typically not a biscuit maker.  I think maybe I am just making the wrong biscuits,  these were yummy and next time I'll double the recipe. .Once they were all stuck together there was probably 15 biscuits.

I used the biscuit recipe from here, it's a great site to have a look around on,  they're is plenty of recipes I'll be having a go at!   When it came time to make the icing I made some lemon and passionfruit curd from the edc to use ( and what a pity, there's heaps left over! ) is just mixed with some icing sugar before popping in between the biscuits. Pretty fancy yet pretty easy!  You could easily change the icing in between for a change.  Chocolate, orange,  strawberry....nutella??

Friday, June 20, 2014

Cinnamon Tea Cake

This is fast becoming a family favorite.  They even passed on regular type dessert tonight in favor of it.  For some reason though,  it feels weird to make a cake for dessert. . Is it just me? ?

Anyway,  it's an easy recipe quick enough for whenever really! 

160 gm of raw sugar
125gm soft butter
2 eggs
150 gm plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
75gm milk
1tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 180 and grease and line a 20 cm tin or whatever tin you like, just be aware you may have to change the cooking time.

You can cream the butter and the sugar first or just bung it all in together and mix on sp 5 for a minute or so. .. It's up to you! 
Pour it into a greased and lined tin, sprinkle the top with extra sugar and some cinnamon (no need to be shy about it! ) and bake for approximately 30 minutes or until cooked obviously!