Cooking Up A Storm...!

Well we have certainly been putting Uma Thermie to work since her arrival on Wednesday...! The meatballs and mashed potato were a hit on Thursday night, especially with our gorgeous two year old dinner guest, who kept demanding “more mash” to which we happily obliged...!

Following this, my fiancé (let’s just call him K) and I made a No Bake Mars Bar Cheesecake for my mums birthday...and we had our first Thermie mishap! We followed the instructions exactly, but we couldn’t get the mars bars to melt, and they just kept getting caught under the blades...it was a nightmare to clean the blades when we were done. Despite this, our cheesecake was still a success and was pretty delicious, and I think this is more an issue with the recipe and not really Uma Thermie’s fault! 

I had to make a mini cheesecake for K as he wasn’t able to come to dinner because he had to work, but with me out of the house he made the most of having Uma Thermie all to himself. He made the Ham and Chorizo pasta from the Basic Cookbook (a recipe I’m not too keen on as I don’t like really meaty meals), and he loved it! His only complaint was that the spiral pasta he used was too small and he thinks it will be better with a big penne next time. 

Today I made these cheesy crackers to have with a dip I’ll be making tomorrow, when we have some friends coming up for lunch. The crackers are okay, but I’m hoping they will be better with dip as they are a bit dry on their own...watch this space!

K had his leftover pasta for dinner tonight, so I made myself some poached eggs in the Thermie, and they were perfect. I’ve always struggled a bit getting poached eggs just right in a saucepan, so I’m pretty stoked with how easy they are to make now! 

I am well and truly a Thermie convert (was there ever any doubt?!) and I’m sure my friends and family are already sick of hearing me rave about it, but I honestly think the Thermomix was the best investment I have made in a long time!

Amazing!

Amazing...that’s the only word I can use to describe the Thermomix! We made this chicken, leek and corn risotto last night (using the vege stock paste I had made earlier), and it was honestly one of the yummiest risottos I have EVER had!

As soon as we had finished dinner, my man immediately said he wanted to use the Thermie to make something else! I hadn’t prepared for this and didn’t have much in the way of ingredients, but we were able to make a super easy and delicious sorbet! Using the guided recipe from The Basic Cookbook chip, we milled 60gm of organic raw sugar for 10 seconds on speed 10, then added 500gm of organic frozen strawberries and blended on speed 5 for 1 minute 30 seconds...instant strawberry sorbet! So tasty and not terribly unhealthy either...!

The sorbet doesn’t look like much in the picture because I just spooned it straight out of the mixing bowl but it certainly tasted much much better than it looks! (I need to work on my photography skills for this blog...)

Tonight we are going to make meatballs with tomato sauce served with mashed potatoes. We have some friends popping in for dinner (including a very discerning toddler who will no doubt make her feelings known if she isn’t impressed with her meal!) so the pressure is well and truly on!

She’s Here...!

Uma Thermie is officially in the building...! And she is beautiful. I’m so excited, I have been googling dozens of recipes and religiously stalking other Thermomix blogs and Facebook pages to get recipes and inspiration...and now I can finally start making things!

The first thing I made, with the help of my Thermie consultant, was the vegie stock paste. So easy, relatively cheap, smells amazing and made me feel like a proper chef! But best of all I know exactly what is in it! One tablespoon of this paste plus 500gm of water makes the equivalent of a 500ml carton of liquid stock from the supermarket. And one batch of this in the Thermie made 1.5 jars of stock paste. The recipe can be found here.

I am super excited to make the meat stock and the chicken stock next. They keep in the fridge for a couple of months, but most of the Thermie recipes call for stock of some description so I imagine I’ll use them up pretty quickly. My man and I are going to try a chicken, leek and corn risotto for dinner tonight so I will be sure to let you know how that goes! Stay tuned...