Red Bean Blended Ice

Mum and I are fans of Red Bean Blended Ice from EasyWay. So, we thought we’d try to make some at home. Simple. Ice and red bean dessert (as in the Cantonese red bean dessert soup – red beans, water, sugar and cook).

I brought out my ice, and based on what happened with the sorbet from my first demo (the ice didn’t crush up as well as the demonstrator had hoped) decided I’d crush the ice first. The basics guide says about 400g of ice at speed 7-10 for about 10 seconds. I didn’t weigh my ice, but I turned it up to speed 7. And went by sound. There was no more rattling after about 4 seconds, so I figured it was all crushed. I was surprised to see it wasn’t just crushed – it was… well, it looked like icing sugar, it was all white! We added the red beans and some extra water, and the result was fabulous.
Our own Red Bean Blended Ice at home. All that was missing was pearls.

Soy Milk catastrophe!

After our cheese and bacon scrolls, we decided to make more Soy Milk. I’d washed the TM bowl, bowl base and blade. Somehow, the bowl made it to the TM machine without the base, and without the blade. For some reason, mum didn’t notice.

She proceeded to pour the soaked soy beans into the bowl, wondering why the scales weren’t registering the weight. No matter, she thought, and proceeded to add the water. Needing to add 500g of water, she started to pour. And pour and pour.
“Why is the scale still on zero?”, she thought to herself as she continued to pour… and then noticed the water pooling on the benchtop! OMG! It’s leaking! OH NOES! There was water everywhere! Catastrophe!
We lifted up the TM bowl and, fortunately, most of the beans stayed in there. We grabbed all of my teatowels to soak up the water, and mum said “I wondered why it wasn’t working right! Oooh! Look, that’s what that little hole in the bottom of the machine is for…” – to let any spills drain out.
We wiped up all the water, and then we lifted the machine to wipe up the bottom of it more water dribbled out!
Fortunately, the machine seemed ok, because we proceeded to put the TM bowl together correctly and make soy milk successfully.

Crisis averted!

Cheese and Bacon Scrolls

Mmmmmm. Cheese and Bacon Scrolls!
We used the bread recipe from the Herb and Garlic Pull-apart that they did in our first Thermomix cooking class.

450g lukewarm water
2 sachets yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
750g plain flour
5 tbsp oil

Mix all ingredients for 5 seconds on speed 7.
Knead for 2 minutes on Interval speed. (I like to think of it as the Wheat setting because it’s got a picture of wheat!)
Allow to rise for 20-30 minutes.

We then rolled out the dough into a big rectangle, sprinkled it with bacon and cheese, rolled it up into a big log, sliced it into rounds and arranged them into a baking tray.

We put it into a cold oven, set to 180°C until they were cooked.

They turned out quite ok, but I think we could have used more cheese!

Caster sugar from the Thermomix

The Basics section of the TM recipe book says to process 200g of sugar for 3 seconds on speed 9 to get caster sugar.

Well, you don’t get caster sugar. You get powder. Even processing for just 2 seconds leaves you with a significant quantity of powdered sugar.

And you shouldn’t process raw sugar for caster sugar. The book doesn’t specify, but you should use white sugar if you want white caster sugar (which caster sugar typically is, otherwise, it’s called brown caster sugar). If you make TM caster sugar from raw sugar, you will still taste the rawness in your recipe that calls for caster sugar.

Creme Anglaise

I tried the creme anglaise recipe from the TM recipe book.

It says you need

250g milk
250g cream
6 egg yolks
80g sugar

I had a 300ml bottle of cream – it weighed 280g. So I increased the milk to 280g as well. I used 7 yolks from 50g eggs. I didn’t increase the amount of sugar.

I followed the method and it turned out quite well. The only thing I wasn’t particularly happy about was the visual texture – it looked grainy. Mum thinks it also had a grainy feel, but it seemed ok to me.

Steamed Egg Custard

I needed to make something with the 8 egg yolks left over from making meringues. So I decided to make Cantonese Steamed Egg Custard. The sweet type with milk, not the savoury type with water/soy.

So, I added 4 more whole eggs, and put them in a 1.65 l pyrex dish.

I boiled 1 litre of milk with about 1 cup of sugar, and poured it into the egg. With 1 litre of water in the Thermomix, I set the temperature to Varoma, set the timer for 30 minutes and put the custard in its dish in the Varoma steamer and let it cook.

Mostly a success – I suspect the Varoma temperature is a bit too high – my custard went a bit bubbly around the outside, but it set.
I’ll try it again on just 100C next time.

Mushroom Risotto a success!

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

Success!

Whipping Egg Whites take 2

I thought I’d try beating egg whites again. Without heat, but with a pinch of cream of tartar.

They whipped to what looked like soft peaks quite ok. But then they deflated when I put the sugar in. 😦

So I had to bring out the Kenwood Mixmaster and stiffen the egg whites. I made plenty of little meringues, but the conclusion of these experiments is that the Thermomix is NOT cut out for making meringues.

Whipping Egg Whites

Mum wants to see how well the Thermomix beats egg whites. It doesn’t. Not in our opinion anyway.

The recipe book says to beat 4 – 10 egg whites at 50C for 3-5 minutes at speed 4.

I’m dubious about the heat. Mum reckons it’s good to help it whip up.

We put the 4 egg whites and a bit of cream of tartar in and beat. Mum starts to add caster sugar when she thinks it’s stiff enough to hold it.

We stop the Thermomix at about 4 minutes – it’s still very runny. White and opaque but still very runny. We transfer it to the Kenwood Mixmaster to stiffen it. We know that the Thermomix isn’t going to cut it.

I will try it again with just egg whites and no heat.

[update]
I found some interesting information about egg white whipping:

Whipping Egg Whites for Macaroons and Meringues – Helpful Tips and Techniques

and
http://www.akiskitchen.ca/techniques/eggs_how_to_whipup/whipping_egg_whites_1.html

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!