Awesome banana icecream

Take one banana. Cut it into chunks and freeze it. Blend it with a spoonful of yoghurt (add other fruit or a little chocolate if you like). Result: awesome, healthy, creamy icecream. Speed 5 if you are using a thermomix, but I’m sure any food processor would work.

Indian feast

A few days after the Thermomix arrived, N had sone friends over to watch rugby and my parents were visiting, so I had a captive audience and an excuse to cooke a feast. I got home after a day out at around 4pm. By 6:30, I had on the table fresh peshwari naan (naan filled with marzipan, even the filling made from scratch), bombay potatoes, steamed rice and lamb vindaloo, all made from scratch in the Thermomix. These were from the excellent Indian cookbook thst I bought with it.

The vindaloo was prepared in the thermomux, but finished off in a fry-pan while I used the device to steam rice (a job that it does much better than the microwave – it’s lighter and fluffier – or the rice cooker we used to use – no crunchy burnt layer at the bottom).

I also added left-over dahl that I’d made the day before. It all went down very well

Yoghurt

Making yoghurt is very straightforward. You heat milk with a little extra milk powder added for half an hour or so at 90C, then let it cool to tepid, mix in a spoonful of live yoghurt from your last batch (or from a tub), and try to keep it tepid overnight. The first time I tried this, I used skim milk and non fat yoghurt and got a very liquid drinking yoghurt that tasted fine. The second time, with full fat milk and letting it sit a few hours longer, it worked perfectly. But I don’t eat full fat yoghurt enough to justify making it in bulk.

Bubble tea

I was quite excited to find a bubble tea recipe in my “Taste of Asia” cookbook. It takes about an hour. I added strawberries to basic recipe to make strawberry milk tea. But it turns out that white tapioca seeds (sago) are not the same as the big black tapioca pearls usually used in bubble tea. They dissolved cometely. The result was just a thick strawberry smoothie that took an hour to prepare.

Some things I’m learning about my Thermomix (the down-side)

1. It is a bit noisy. Like having the washing machine going, which will eventually get irritating if I’m using it for long periods every evening.
2. If a quick “self clean” rinse doesn’t clean it, it’s easier to take it apart than try to clean it with the blades in place.
3. I need to be careful when taking the lid off not to spill water over whatever is sitting behind or near the Thermomix. I water-damaged some of my Thermomix cookbooks within minutes of first using the machine. (A pity, as I don’t think much of the Budget Busters book and would probably have sold it on, otherwise).

Beef Rendang with rice

Beef rendang is a favourite of mine, a Malaysian curry. This recipe caught my eye in the “Taste of Asia” cookbook. There’s another rendang recipe in the everyday cooking cookbook, but it’s quite different and this one looked better.

Put in the Thermomix:

75-150g chillis, seeds removed (used gloves to do this!)
2 onions, skin removed and halved
10 cloves of garlic
25g ginger
25g galangal (use 50g of ginger if you can’t find fresh galangal)
2 stalks lemon grass, washed (white part only)

Whiz for 10s on speed 8, scrape down and repeat as necessary to form a fine, well blended paste. Add:

1/2 cup dessicated coconut, toasted first in a dry saucepan
.25 tsp ground coriander
3 fresh kaffir lime leaves
20g oil (I used canola oil)

Cook at varoma temperature (114C) for 8 minutes on speed 2. Add:

1kg beef, cut into 3cm cubes

Cook at varoma temperarture for 10 minutes on reverse speed soft. Add:

200g coconut milk (perhaps increase to 270mL if you prefer a less dry style of rendang)

Continue to cook at 100C on reverse speed soft for another 30-40 minutes.

This serves 4, with rice. I had a bag of small green chillis that looked sufficient, but turned out to be only 75g, though the recipe in the book called for 150g. I threw a few in seeds and all to increase the chilli-heat, and I think I got it about right (these were hot little chillis, and made a nice, hot rendang). It’s been a while since I handled more than a chilli or two at a time, so I was blase, used my fingers to deseed them and did not wear gloves. Big mistake! When I showered later, my hands went bright red and stung as though I had dipped them in boiling water! Don’t do this.

When I first opened the lid after it was done, I have to admit, I was worried. The rendang was a very pale colour and at first glance, it looked as though it had been mashed. I scraped it into the Thermoserver and left it sitting while I cooked the rice. When the rice was ready and it was time to serve, I was relieved to see that it wasn’t at all mashed. It was still pale, but served on rice with a little fresh coriander, it didn’t look bad and tasted great! I’ll definitely be making this again – it’s the best rendang I’ve ever made. Next time I try it, I’ll add some tumeric to see if I can improve the colour: either 3cm fresh tumeric with the galangal and ginger, or 1 tbsp dried tumeric with the ground coriander, I think should do it.

While the rendang was sitting in its insulated dish, I cooked the rice. More or less following the recipe in the Indian cookbook, I put the quantity we wanted in the basket, unwashed, over 1L water and rinsed it by running the Thermomix for a few seconds at speed 5 before turning it down to speed 2.5 and cooking at varoma temperature for 18 minutes.  This did a great job: not stuck together like our microwave rice often is, and no crunchy layer at the bottom like our rice cooker used to give us. The downside, of course, is that I can’t cook the rice and main at the same time in the Thermomix, so doing it this way added another 20 minutes to an already fairly long cooking time.

Summary

• Did it work? Yes. Delicious.
• Was it easier in the Thermomix? Yes, and the dishes were easier, too. Nothing stuck to the bottom of the pan.
• Was it better in the Thermomix? Better than I’ve made before, yes.

One downside is that the machine is quite a noisy thing to have running for an hour or more at a time.

CADA

This quick and easy breakfast recipe was made at the demo class at which I first encountered the Thermomix, and I liked it enough to try for myself. Put about half an apple, a handful of almonds, and similar volumes of dessicated coconut and pitted dates in your Thermomix or food processor and pulse at high speed a few times until it is all mixed and finely grated. Enjoy!

I served mine with a little yoghurt.

With the quantities pictured, it came to about 535 calories, which is a little on the heavy side for breakfast for me, but it tastes good and is a good mix for sustained energy, so I’ll keep it for an occasional treat (or else, reduce the quantities).

Summary

• Did it work? Yes
• Was it easier in the Thermomix? I imagine it would be just as easy and just as good in any food processor.