Pureed Zucchini

4 large zucchinis, peeled and chopped into quarters, pureed at speed 8 for 20 seconds, cooked at 100C for 10 minutes, and pureed again looks like this:

Mashed Pumpkin

I made some mashed pumpkin for baby’s first foods, other than Farex.

Peeled and cut up a whole Jap Pumpkin. It ended up being about 1.8 kilos of pumpkin. I put in 1 kilo of pumpkin, then chopped it for 20 seconds on speed 7. Added 1 MC of water, then cooked it at 100C on speed 3.

Once it was done, I pureed it some more at speed 8 for 20 seconds.

Nice and creamy and baby LOVES it!

It did stain the bowl though ….

Mushroom Risotto a success!

I tried the mushroom risotto again tonight. And I followed the recipe properly this time.

Success!

vegetable stock concentrate

Given that we did not have any stock that didn’t have Flavor Enhancer 635 (which is the new version of Flavor Enhancer 621 – just as bad though, if you ask me!) I decided I should make the vegetable stock concentrate as described in the Thermomix recipe book.

200g celery, roughly cut
2 carrots, roughly cut
1 onion, peeled and halved
1 tomato, halved
1 zucchini, roughly cut
1 clove garlic
1 bay leaf
few leaves basil, sage and rosemary
1 bunch parsley
150g rock salt
1 tbsp oil

Chop all veges for 10 seconds on speed 6
Add salt and oil and cook at varoma temperature for 20 minutes on speed 1
Mix by slowly turning dial to speed 6 then pulverize for 1 minute on speed 9

It’s a very unspecific recipe – we used 4 stalks of celery, 4 medium carrots, 3/4 onion (we had that left over from our risotto), 2 small tomatoes, 1 small zucchini, no bay leaf, about a teaspoon of dried rosemary, a huge bunch of fresh parsley (who determines how big a “bunch” is?! we had a lot more than you’d get from the store, that’s for sure), 150g iodised grinder salt, 1 1/2 dessert spoons of oil. And the left over bits of our beetroot juice.

I’d already chucked the tomato into the Thermomix, and proceeded to wash and chop all of the other veges into a large bowl, so I could just tip it all in at once. It didn’t all fit. There was a lot of parsley. So we put in about half of the veges and chopped that up at speed 6, then put in more veges until we’d managed to fit them all into the TM bowl. All those veges chopped up resulted in about 1 litre’s worth of vegetable pulp.

I set the timer, the temperature and the speed and let the Thermomix do its magic. I noted that it took about 4 minutes to get to 90C and that was from room temperature – none of the ingredients were cold from the fridge.

At the end of 20 minutes, the red beetroot splatters that had been in the inside of the MC were no longer red. Everything was an unattractive green.

I slowly wound up the speed to 6, taking about a minute to get there. The Thermomix did a lot of wobbling! And I eventually got it to speed 9 after another 30 seconds.

It is a success, but I will not be making another batch for probably a LONG time – I have a lot of this stuff now!

Beetroot Juice

Mum brought over a whole bunch of vegetables so I can make the vegetable stock concentrate, but she’d like to make some beetroot juice beforehand.

We use one peeled medium beetroot, 2 medium carrots, a stick of celery, some frozen rockmelon. We chopped this on speed 8 for about 30 seconds. Then we added some water and mixed it for about a minute on speed 8.

It was too thick. And too beetroot-y for my liking. But I think it was good for us, so I drank it.

Soy Milk

I have about a quarter of the soaked soy beans left over, so I halve the recipe from the book. 250g of water to pulverise the beans, and 300g to cook.

I read the instructions on halving recipes – it says to reduce cooking time by 20%, so it should be about 8 minutes at 90C on speed 4.

I set it for 6 minutes – I don’t want it to burn.

While I wait, I do some research on how long soy milk needs to boil for the trypsin inhibitor to be destroyed. All the information I find suggests about 5 minutes is the minimum.

I return to the Thermomix and find it’s almost done and it hasn’t gotten to 90C yet. Note that my beans were cold from the fridge to start with. I keep it going for another 8 or so minutes. I want to make sure the resulting milk is digestible.

I strain it the next day after keeping it in the fridge – I have to wait for the straining cloth to be returned. It turns out to be very nice and thick.

I think this one is a success.

Carrot and Rockmelon Juice

Mum wants to try something in the Thermomix.
What can we do?
Carrot and orange juice! Like it says in the recipe book. But she doesn’t want citrus even though I have mandarines. We’ve recently cut and frozen some rockmelon. We reckon that will work.

The recipe:

1 large carrot
1 tray ice cubes
2-3 navel oranges, peeled, quartered
200g-500g cold water

At speed 8, for 30 seconds, blend carrot, ice and oranges.
Add water then mix for 2 minutes at speed 8.

Our variation:

2 medium carrots
about an ice cube tray’s worth of frozen rockmelon
about 500g water

mix everything for about 1 minute on speed 8

It worked, and resulted in about 700ml of juice. It tasted of way too much carrot, not surprisingly. It would have been better if we’d followed the method correctly.

The Thermomix Arrives

The day of the delivery arrives! How exciting! Mum already had me soak 2 cups of soy beans in preparation.

The Thermomix lady arrives and we set up the machine. It’s so easy, just like the demonstrations.

We try to follow the recipe to make soy milk.

150g dried soy beans, soaked overnight and drained.
1100g water

Mix beans and 500g of the water at speed 8 for 1 minute
Add the remaining water and mix at speed 4 for 10 minutes at 90C

Strain, add sweetener as required, drink.

It was a success and even the Thermomix lady was impressed.

Thermomix Demo

An up close and personal demonstration.

Everyone arrives late, but once it gets going, there’s no stopping what the Thermomix creates!

We made strawberry sorbet, peach bellinis, bread rolls, garlic and herb dip, mushroom risotto, coleslaw and lemon custard – all from the recipe book.

The things we didn’t like:
the raw garlic and the raw shallots in the dip
watching all the powdered sugar and flour waft through the gap created by the MC and into the kitchen – ugh – I detest mess!

But overall, it was all yummy and easy and fast.