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Topics - Paul

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1
Desserts / Easy Mango icecream
« on: November 29, 2009, 05:59:32 am »
Mango season in FNQ, and this icecream is so easy with the thermomix.

Flesh from 2 mangoes
I lime, juiced
1/2 cup castor sugar
30ml mango liqueur or white rum
300ml cream

Blend mango, lime juice, sugar and rim on 7-8 until smooth.  Add butterfly, then cream, and whip for 30 seconds on 4.  Freeze in the usual way. 

As this is not a custard icecream, it's best eaten on the day that it is made.  This is a good basic recipe for any quick fruit icecream, bananas are good too.



2
Desserts / Key Lime Pie
« on: November 27, 2009, 07:20:23 am »
I'd never heard of key lime pie, until I watched an episode of "Dexter".  Key limes are what we in Australia call West Indian, or Tahitian limes.  I had some growing so I thought I'd make it.  Most of the recipes call for the pie to be cooked, but originally this recipe was not cooked, even though it had raw eggs.  As we don't have salmonella inside intact eggs in Australia, I thought I'd make it without cooking.  I've never died from eating tiramisu, so I'm sure I'll be fine.

Chocolate crumb base

Use 2 cups of crumbs from the chocolate cookie recipe
75 g good dark chocolate
3 tbsp unsalted butter

Pulverise the chocolate on 7-8.  Add the biscuit crumbs and butter and mix on 5 until it comes together.  Press into a pie or flan dish.

Filling

3 large eggs
1 cup sweetened condensed milk
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1/3 cup fresh lime juice

Beat the eggs with the butterfly on 4 until frothy.  Pour in the condensed milk.  Add the lime juice in a thin stream and continue beating for 5 minutes.  Pour into pie and refrigerate.

Having written this I have just had a thought.  Although the limes juice reacts with the condensed milk and eggs to 'cook' and make a custard, you could heat the thermomix while beating, if you're worried about raw eggs.  I would say 70 is probably enough, it thickens so much you wouldn't want it to be rubbery.

Anyway it looks very nice sitting in the fridge and I hope I enjoy eating it as much as I enjoyed making it.

members' comments
Mimzim - I found even cooking it as Paul suggested, it did not set and I eventually froze it and served it frozen. Very delicious. How can I get it to set?

Cookie - I think I'd cheat and use gelatine!!!

Thermomixer - you could use an extra egg and scrape out the filling and cook longer?





3
Main Dishes / A use for all that peeled garlic - 7 hour lamb
« on: November 27, 2009, 04:38:58 am »
7 hour garlic lamb

This is a recipe from Paula Wolfert's book "The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen".  A good use for a jaw dropping amount of garlic, but very easy and the garlic isn't as overpowering as you might fear.

1 leg of lamb on the bone, shank removed
2 tbsp olive oil or goose fat
5 heads of garlic (heads, not cloves!) peeled
3 tbsp cognac or brandy
1 cup sauternes or other sweet white wine

Brown lamb on all sides in the oil/fat in a cast iron casserole.  Drain off most of the oil.  Add garlic cloves, then heat cognac, set alight, and pour over lamb (don't set fire to the kitchen).  Add sauternes. Add salt and pepper.  Cover with a wet sheet of baking paper, put lid on casserole.  Bake in oven at 100 for 7 hours, turning lamb halfway through.  Remove the lamb and let stand for 30 minutes somewhere warm.  Skin fat off the sauce.

The lamb becomes a deep pink colour and falls off the bone, and is delicious.  You can taste the garlic for sure, but it cooks so long it dones't seem to have the usual garlic side-effects.  This takes about 10 minutes to prepare, then it's set and forget.

4
Cakes / Chocolate cookies
« on: November 26, 2009, 12:19:25 am »
This recipe is adapted from a fantastic book called "Bubby's homemade pies" I bought in Sydney.  From the US, mainly sweet, but some savoury.  This biscuit recipe is primarily to make biscuit crumbs for pie bases, but the biscuits are pretty good!

1.5 cups plain flour
3/4 cup Dutch or good quality cocoa
1.24 tsp baking powder
Pinch salt
175g unsalted butter
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1.25 cups sugar

The recipe called for all sorts of blending and creaming.  I threw everything in together, mixed it on 5 until blended, using the spatula to push down the sides.  Then I kneaded it briefly on  :: until it came together.  Roll into a 5cm cylinder and refrigerate for 2 hours.  Cut into 3 mm slices and bake on oven paper for 8-10 minutes at 180, leave to cool.  Crumb some for a biscuit base, eat the rest.

members' comments

Thermomixer - You can of course just make the mix and place in the base for the cheesecake rather than making the biscuits?  Maybe add just a tad more butter. I made a similar mix in a whole piece to crumb as decoration for a dessert - could easily have been a base for a cheesecake.

Paul - The other thing you can do is just roll out one sheet and bake it.  But it's nice to have some leftover biscuits to munch.

cathy79 - For those who are wondering about quantity, recipe made approx 500 g of biscuits.  I needed 250 g for the cheesecake base.  So the little biscuits I have left are perfect for little hands and toilet training treats.



5
Special Diets / Dog biscuits
« on: November 07, 2009, 10:11:59 am »
Not too sure where to put this one, but this was a recipe I found on the net.  I have a 14 year old dog called Max, he loves a biscuit in the morning.  Sometimes his breath gets a bit over the top, so these parsley biscuits seem to have helped.  I might try a hard cheese like cheddar next time to make it tastier.  The flat leaf parsley is the one I use, tastes better and grows like a weed up here in Cairns.


3 cups   Minced fresh parsley
¼ cup   Finely chopped carrot
¼ cup   Grated Mozzarella cheese
2 tablespoons   Vegetable oil
2¾ cup   Wholemeal flour
2 tablespoons   Unprocessed bran flakes
2 teaspoons   Baking powder
½ to 1 cup water

Mince the parsley, carrot and cheese together until fine, on 6.  Add flour, oil, bran and baking powder.  Add half a cup of water, more  if needed.  The dough needs to be quite dry.  Mix on  :: for 2 minutes until you get a stiff dough.  Add more wholemeal flour if you've overdone the water.

Roll it out using a rolling pin, dues with more flour. Use a bone shaped biscuit cutter to cut into the right shapes, and place on a baking tray for 30-60 minutes at 200 until brown.  Mine took quite a while to go brown.

Max likes them - sort of.  I think a tastier cheese, maybe even parmesan rinds, might make them more to his liking.

6
Main Dishes / Cannellini bean puree
« on: November 07, 2009, 09:07:44 am »
Sorry I haven't been around much lately.  Work sucks.

Today we slow cooked a leg of lamb for 7 hours, with 5(!) garlic heads.  A delicious recipe from Paula Wolfert.  I'm serving it with a white bean puree, which is delicious and perfect for the thermomix.  You can soak dried beans overnight, but I forgot so I used a tin.  If you remember to soak the beans overnight, use 1 cup and simmer for 2 hours with 3 cups water and the tomato paste, but the tin method seems to work.  This is a modification of a Stephanie Alexander recipe.

400g tin white (cannellini) beans rinsed and drained
1 tbsp tomato paste
salt and pepper
1-2 garlic gloves
1 tsp fresh rosemary
EVOO
200ml chicken stock
1/2 lemon juiced

Chop the garlic and rosemary finely.  Scrape down.  Add 2 tbsp EVOO and saute on Varoma temp 2 mins speed 1.  Add the beans, tomato paste and puree on 7-8.  Add stock, bit by bit, until you get the right consistency - I like it not too runny, like firm mashed potatoes.  Cook on speed 4 at 100 for 8 minutes.  Add lemon juice, more oil, salt and pepper and blend on 8 for a few seconds.

It's a great alternative to mashed potato or polenta, and looks very professional.  If anyone wants the lamb dish let me know, but it's not TMX.

Tomorrow I'm going to take out my work frustrations on making the Christmas cake and a loaf of bread for a friend.  I also need to order a turkey for Christmas.  Last year we ordered a 'free range' turkey, but when it arrived it had those holes in the skin which meant it had been injected with some hideous fake substances.  Gee I hate fake food!


7
Chit Chat / Holiday
« on: August 14, 2009, 02:22:05 am »
Well, I have been so busy at work I haven't had time to cook or contribute to the forum.  How slack is that?  Hopefully I can make some bread and ice cream this weekend, because I'm off on holidays next Friday.  One week in London, and then 3 weeks in Cyprus.  I'm hoping to try some good food in the non-touristy places.  I'm taking my Mum, because her Dad came from Cyprus.  Unfortunately he died when she was 16, so I never knew him.  We've never investigated our Greek Cypriot heritage until now.  Mum will have her birthday while we're there and I've booked this restaurant: http://www.7stgeorgestavern.com/

It is supposed to be very good, completely organic as the boss grows everything, finds it in the wild and preserves it all.

In the last couple of days we've discovered her first cousin living there, who knew of our existence, but we didn't know about her.  So I'm really excited to be going there and hopefully making a connection with my newfound relatives!

8
Seafood and Fish / Marinade for baking/barbecuing fish
« on: July 23, 2009, 01:35:44 am »
Sorry I have not written anything for ages, but work has been so busy with the birth rate exploding, and swine flu has made it all much harder.  I also had a knee op last week, so I've been hobbling around doing nothing, least of all cooking.  A friend dropped off a huge reef fish the other day, his brother in law had caught it and didn't want it.  It was about 5-6 kg, I could only weigh it on the bathrooms scales (which I never stand on).  So I put it in the Weber, and used an old Charmaine Solomon recipe for a fish marinade and adapted it for the TMX.

1 cup yoghurt
Vegetable oil
1 red chilli
3 cloves garlic
lump of ginger
salt
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp garam masala

(I needed twice this amount for my fish)


Chop the chilli, ginger and garlic on about 7 for a couple of seconds.  Scrape down, add 1-2 tbsp oil.  Cook on Varoma temp at speed 1 for 5 minutes.  Add the cumin and garam masala and cook for another 2 minutes.  Turn off the heat, but keep stirring until the temp has dropped to normal.  Add the yoghurt and salt to taste and mix on 4-5 for a few seconds.

With a sharp knife cut a few deep cuts into the fish, and rub the marinade into the cuts and the body cavity.  Bake in the oven or cook in the bbq.  I'm hopeless at timing the cooking of fish, and last night's meal was nearly a disaster.

I got the fish last week and had to freeze it after cleaning it (confronting job).  I forgot to scale it, so yesterday I thawed it and scaled it late in the day (it never really completely thawed despite being out of the freezer for 8 hours).  Scales all over the place.  As we were setting up for dinner, we realised we had thrown out the coal panniers for the Weber BBQ, and had to rush to the shops to buy some more - made it 2 minutes before closing time.  The fish was way too big to fit into the oven, so there was no other option if they had been closed.  I wanted to wrap it in banana leaves, where I live in Cairns there is a lot of public access land near gullies and waterways and people have planted a lot of fruit trees, you can always find something there.  I sent Mark off in the dark with a pocket knife, but he cam back empty handed.  So I had to use aluminium foil.  If you want to use the banana leaves, cut out the middle spine and use the leafy bits on each side.  They are very brittle, so you have to pass them over a flame (stove top) until they go darker green and more pliable.  The fish tastes so good wrapped in these, but it tasted pretty good in foil.  Luckily I guessed the cooking time correctly, even though it was still semi frozen when it went in, and we enjoyed the fish with some delicious chocolate icecream to follow.

9
Desserts / Mandarin champagne jelly
« on: June 20, 2009, 11:21:19 am »
Courtesy of the goddess Stephanie Alexander

400 ml mandarin juice
7 leaves gelatin
250 g sugar
300ml champagne


Put gelatin leaves in bowl of cold water for a few minutes
Peel enough mandarins (about 600g or so) and put them into the TMX
Blend on speed 7 until juiced
Strain until you have 400ml juice
Put 100ml of the juice in the TMX with the sugar, cook for 5 minutes at 100 C speed 3 until sugar has dissolved
Add squeezed gelatin leaves and blend for 5 seconds on 4
Add remaining juice, blend gently until mixed
Leave cool to room temperature
Add champagne, mix gently and refrigerate

You can taste the champagne bubbles in this one - weird sensation from a jelly!

10
Non Thermomix Recipes / Char grilled Italian vegetables
« on: June 20, 2009, 11:12:10 am »
The key to this one is the marinade

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic
Handful of flat parsley leaves
Juice of half a lemon
Salt

I often double the amount.  Put it all in the thermomix and blend on 7 for a few seconds

Brush onto vegetables and grill on the BBQ.  You can use anything you like - here are a few suggestions

Red and yellow capsicum (I prefer to peel them first)
Eggplant (sliced, salted and then drained and washed)
Zucchini cut into slices longitudinally
Oyster mushrooms
Radicchio lettuce
Fennel bulb (sliced and blanched in salted boiling water for a couple of minutes)
Sweet potato (same as fennel)
Jerusalem artichokes (same as fennel)

Obviously the different veges cook more quickly or slowly depending on the type.  Try and get nice grill marks on the more solid ones.  After they're cooked, brush them again with marinade and let them cool.  This is why I double the amount.

Soooooooooooooooooo nice!



11
Desserts / Mandarin bavarois
« on: June 20, 2009, 11:00:11 am »
This one is perfect for the thermomix, adapted from a very old Stephanie Alexander recipe.

2 mandarins (preferably clementines, or ones with tighter skins)
150 g sugar
4 egg yolks
350 ml milk
4 leaves gelatin
60 ml strained mandarin juice
350 ml lightly whipped cream

Peel the zest with a vege peeler and put in TMX with the sugar, blitz on 9 until completely zested
Add the egg yolks and blend on 6 until mixed and aerated
Add the milk and cook at 80 C speed 3 for 10-12 minutes or more until thickened (see comments later)
Strain into a cold bowl

Add the gelatine leaves to a bowl of cold water for a few minutes
Put the mandarin juice in a saucepan, and when boiling add gelatin leaves (squeezed to remove excess water), swish to dissolve
Let cool for a couple of minutes, then add to custard, mixing well
Leave to cool to room temperature
Fold in whipped cream, then put into a mould in the fridge

Comments

I'm still having trouble with the custard.  It curdled the first time set to 90.  When set to 80, it never seems to thicken!  So I cooked on 80 for 10 minutes, then did 90 at 1 minute intervals until thickened, checking carefully each time.  Maybe if I left it for longer at 80 it would thicken, I'll have to try.

I put it in a jelly mould, and then added mandarin/champagne jelly for the base, another Stephanie recipe.  If anyone wants the jelly recipe let me know, the TMX was perfect for juicing the mandarins.  It makes a nice dessert with the jelly base and the creamy top.


12
Desserts / More banana ice cream
« on: June 15, 2009, 03:15:48 am »
After I used the enormous pumpkin a friend gave me, another friend has dropped off three gigantic pomelos and some beautiful little bananas (not sure what variety, but they are smaller than ladyfingers and very sweet and tangy).  No idea what to do with the pomelos, but I made a lovely ice cream with the bananas.  They taste much better then the usual bananas we get in Australia.  No-one eats these in Asian countries, they all eat the various little ones.

300-400g bananas out of their skin
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp banana liqueur or white rum
300ml cream
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup sugar

Add all ingredients except cream and blend on 7-8 until smooth.  Add the butterfly, and then the cream, and mix on 4 for 3 minutes with the MC off.  Make the ice cream in your usual way.

You probably should eat this on the same day.  As it's not made from a custard, it goes as hard as a rock overnight.  Once I stirred some cold chocolate sauce through it and made banana choc ripple - yum.




13
Starters and Snacks / Pumpkin scones
« on: June 14, 2009, 02:39:53 am »
Well, a friend gave me an enormous pumpkin and I have been whittling away at it.  I think I'm right in saying there are no pumpkin scone recipes in the site or in the book?  At any rate, here goes


300g  SR flour
250 cubed pumpkin
Pinch salt
20g butter
1 egg

Steam the pumpkin in the varoma for 20 minutes, let it and the jug cool for a few minutes
Dry off the pumpkin pieces with paper towel or tea towel
Mash the pumpkin speed 5-6 for a few seconds
Add all remaining ingredients and blend on 5-6 for a few seconds until well mixed
 *:  :: until it makes a soft dough
Big fat warning! - pumpkins are very wet, and you may need to add more flour to get the right consistency of dough
Shape and cut into scones, dusting liberally with flour

Bake in 200 C oven for 15 -20 minutes

Lovely!





14
Bread / Coconut bread
« on: June 12, 2009, 03:21:00 am »
This is an adaption of a Bill Granger recipe - best toasted

2 eggs
300ml milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
2.5 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup caster sugar
150g dessicated coconut
75g butter

Put all ingredients in thermomix.   *:  :: for 2 minutes, or until smooth. Pour into a greased and floured loaf tin and bake for 1 hour at 180 C

Whenever I make this it always splits, but still tastes fantastic!

15
Condiments and Sauces / Coconut milk
« on: June 02, 2009, 09:10:21 am »


Not sure if this is a recipe, or what section to put this in.  I often use coconut milk from tins, and I always find it too thick and fatty.  You can make your own, and the thermomix is ideal.

2.5 cups dessicated coconut
3 cups water
Cook at 100 C speed 2 for 15 minutes
Then blitz on 9 for 30 seconds (careful not to burn yourself)
Strain through a fine mesh sieve, using something to press down on the coconut to get all the liquid out.

If you put it in the fridge, the cream will float to the top and solidify.  You can use this to fry curry paste in, adding the remaining thinner milk later.

Tastes so much nicer.  You can also apparently use fresh coconut flesh, but I have no desire to try and hack a coconut apart!


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