Inner Solace

Vegetable chawan mushi with dried mushroom, lotus root, edamame and carrot, and pork rib soup with Chinese radish, carrot and red dates with rice.  Both made in the Thermomix at the same time and both absolutely delicious.

Although the pork ribs would have benefited from a longer and slower boil to make it more tender and next time I’ll remember to cover the chawan mushi bowls so you don’t get the lumpy looking top. Oops.

Chawan Mushi

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup chicken stock
• pinch salt
• 1/2 Tbs mirin
• 1/2 Tbs light soy
• 1 dried mushroom, rehydrated and sliced (or one fresh shiitake mushroom)
• sliced carrot, lotus root and edamame to your liking

Pork Rib Soup (adapted from TrueMix recipe book)

Ingredients:

• 200g pork ribs
• 200g Chinese white radish, cubed
• 1 carrot, cubed
• 6-8 dried red dates
• 1000g water
• sea salt, pepper, fish sauce and light soy sauce to taste

Method:

1. Beat eggs and chicken stock together. Stir in salt, mirin and soy and divide into two small bowls.
2. Drop remaining ingredients into the custard.
3. Cover the bowls with gladwrap, foil or a saucer.
4. Place the pork ribs, red dates and cubed white radish and carrot into the Thermomix basket insert.
5. Pour in the 1000g water.
6. Lock the Thermomix lid in and place the chawan mushi bowls into the large Varoma basket and cover.
7. Cook at Varoma temperature for 28 minutes on speed 4.
8. Season the soup in with sea salt, pepper, fish sauce and light soy sauce to taste.

Eggless cookie dough designed for the raw eatings.  This is step one in my grand plan for world sweet domination.

Recipe adapted and made non-vegan from HubPages.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup plain flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp bi-carb
• 55g butter, melted
• 6 Tbs raw sugar
• 6 Tbs brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 Tbs milk powder
• warm water
• Handful of mini chocolate chips (or however chippy you want it)

Method:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients except the chocolate chips together.
2. Stir in the butter.
3. Add small amounts of water and mix until it reaches the dough texture that you want. You do not need much water at all.  I used maybe two tablespoons max.
4. Mix in the chocolate chips.
5. Chill until firm.

Note: You can probably drop the sugar levels. Six tablespoons of each is probably a bit much.  If you want to lower the sugar content, drop the raw sugar.  You want the brown sugar so the cookie dough turns a nice caramel colour.

I rarely make Anzac biscuits.  Mainly because I dislike Golden Syrup.  But I felt like biscuits and there happened to be a recipe in the Thermomix recipe book for them.

The recipe suggested baking them for 8-10 minutes.  I have a fan-forced oven and this didn’t seem long enough to get a nice golden colour so I left them in for another 5.  They’re chewy but with a bit of bite in them still.

And I love that when you’ve got most of the dough out of the Thermomix bowl you can whizz it again to fling the remaining bits onto the sides of the bowl to get at it.  That got me a whole extra bikkie.

Black Sesame Ice-Cream (adapted from The Little Teochew, converted for Thermomix)

I <3 the black sesame.

Ingredients:

• 300g milk
• 200g whipping cream
• 2 egg yolks
• 100g + 2T sugar (separated)
• 60g black sesame paste (unsweetened)

Method:

(sans Thermomix) Follow the method in TLT.

(Thermomix) Put all other than the black sesame and 2T sugar in the Thermomix and cook at 80C for 5 minutes on speed 4.

Whisk the 2T of sugar with the black sesame paste.  Slowly fold in the custard from the Thermomix.

Pour into a metal container or an old ice-cream tub and freeze for 3-4 hours until firm but not hard.

Cut into ice-cube (or slightly larger) sized pieces and blend for 15 seconds on 9 then drop speed to 4 for a few more seconds.  You might need the spatula to stir it down a little.

Return to freezer until solid.

Note: I used 80g of black sesame paste.  The flavour was extremely strong so I’ve dropped it to 60g above.  Was also too sweet with about 120g sugar, so that was dropped too.

Breakfast this morning was

Spiced Steel Cut Oats (serves 2)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 C steel cut oats
• 2 C milk/water (ratio to your liking[1]), plus 1/4 C if you’re using dried fruit
• 1/3 cup flaked/shredded coconut
• 1/3 cup dried figs, chopped
• splash of vanilla essence
• 1/4-1/2 tsp each of ground cinnamon and cardamom
• 1 T brown sugar/honey/maple syrup/some sweetener (or to taste)

Method:

1. Put everything except the sugar into a pot
2. Heat over medium to low heat for about 30 minutes or until it reaches the consistency you like
3. Stir in sweetener to taste

Note: Actually, pretty much everything is to taste.  I’m probably going to kick the spices up a notch myself.

I quite fancy steel cut oats over rolled oats.  It’s nuttier and, cooked to this consistency, still has a bit of texture.  This flavour combination is also reminiscent of the epic rice pudding I had at Kazbah in Sydney.  Speaking of, I might even add some toasted hazelnuts next time.

[1] I used 3:1 for the creaminess. If you like living dangerously, use half and half or stir some cream in at the end.

Taiwan Bread (recipe)

Another Thermomix specific recipe.  Not a fan.  It’s sweet like other Asian bread, but dense.  The brown sugar used also gives it an unusual sweetness.

Also had difficulty with the rise.  Had to leave it for a couple of hours before it doubled in size for the first rise, and another couple for it to rise in the loaf pan.  And it still came out dense.

edit: It also dries out very quickly.

I’ll be sticking to my Tang Zhong bread.

Salted Caramel Maple Ice-Cream (recipe) with pecans and a slice of Torta Caprese.  Both Thermomix recipes.

The ice-cream is brilliant.  Best ice-cream ever.  There are really no other words to describe it, just try to make it yourself.  If you don’t have an ice-cream maker (which I don’t), you can still adapt the recipe for your stove-top then do the hand-churn every few hours. Toss in the chopped pecans (toasted is best) in the last churn.  Trust me, it is absolutely worth it for this ice-cream.

The recipe suggests chopped chocolate.  Don’t do it unless you really want the sugar rush.  The pecans however make it perfect.  Or do both if that kind of thing tickles your fancy.

A little note though.  I have never made ice-cream before and it took three days for the ice-cream to freeze to a gelato consistency.  At first I was concerned the custard wasn’t thick enough, but it seems ice-cream custard bases are very runny.  Just barely coats the back of a spoon.

Also important is the container you freeze it in.  I tried freezing it in one of those microwaveable 360 containers from IKEA.  Seems they insulate a little better than I thought.  The second batch of ice-cream I made got frozen in a plastic ice-cream container and that froze solid in the expected time-frame.

Now the cake.  I was somewhat disappointed by the Torta Caprese.  It was meant to be baked at 180C which I did and it came out dry.

There was a note in the recipe which I didn’t see until after that said to drop it to 160C if you have a ‘very hot oven’.  Correct me if I’m wrong but very hot or not, 180C is still 180C.  I presume they meant fan-forced which would make lowering the temperature by 20C make sense, but I didn’t see any other indications that the recipes were written for non-fan-forced ovens.

I had a taste of this cake at the Thermomix cooking class the other week though and it was moist.  But to be quite honest, Clotilde Dusoulier’s Melt-in-your-Mouth Chocolate Cake or Anouchka’s Chocolate Cake from Joanne Harris’ The French Kitchen are far better examples of that kind of thing.

As a side note, the Torta Caprese called for grating chocolate in the Thermomix.  This was an interesting experience.  I have crushed ice in the Thermomix before for sorbets, but never done chocolate before.  They really need to put some sort of warning on that process because by jebus was it loud.  Hard chocolate flung against stainless steel is not a fun sound.  Ice will shatter, chocolate does not.  I needed to borrow Eric’s over the ear headphones to muffle it ever so slightly until the hard part was over.  The chocolate was perfectly grated at the end of the process, but it so wasn’t worth it.

Braised Beef Cheeks in red wine with cocoa[1] (recipe[2]).  I’m game to cook anything savoury with a bit of cocoa in it.  Just adds that extra little bit of warmth to a dish.

This meal was an excellent example of a winter warmer.  The beef cheeks were beautifully melty after three hours in the oven, being left overnight to enrich the flavours and then re-ovened for another hour the following evening.  I really did have to hold back from digging right in the night before, though.

It went brilliantly with the roasted brussels sprouts and the dutch potato mash (made in the Thermomix[3]).  I know that waxy potatoes give mash a more gluey texture, but it turned out almost exactly like the mash from Red Cabbage, which I love to bits.

And all the produce came from Clontarf Farmers’ Market.  Really am becoming quite fond of the place.  Lovely fresh produce and most of it is extremely well priced.  Some considerably cheaper than your average supermarket.

[1] Brown things really are a challenge to photograph without making it look like poop.  The vegetable bits in the sauce probably did not help.

[2] I found the exact same recipe copied word for word with no source listed on at least five other sites.  I have no idea whose it actually is or where it originally came from.

[3] The Thermomix recipe for mash recommends floury potatoes and mashing for 20-30 seconds.  If you do use waxy potatoes, drop the mashing time to about 15-20.  It’ll be just as smooth without making it too springy.

Had some persimmons I needed to get through, so it got turned into sorbet with the Thermomix.

I reduced the sugar because that’s what my consultant did when she demo’d the mango sorbet and it tasted great, but it didn’t occur to me that persimmons aren’t quite as sweet as mangoes.

Not bad though.

Kaya using the Thermomix.  The recipe in the book suggested blitzing the pandan leaves and squeezing out the juice, but I wanted a more subtle flavour so I tied a few into knots, crushed them, and threw them in for stirry flavour.

Proper hand-made kaya usually takes between 1-2 hours stirring over a double boiler to get a translucent jam-like consistency.

The Thermomix recipe tells you to stick it in stir mode for 20 minutes at a pretty high temperature.  If you put an eggy mixture on a relatively high heat you end up with custard, which is exactly what I got here.  It then instructed me to blend it smooth.  Which means I get a blended custard.

This is not quite what kaya is meant to be.  Not the kaya I know anyway.  It was tasty and all, but not quite right.  The flavour was much closer to the top layer of seri muka without the flour than the translucent jam that I produced last time.

The next batch I make is going to be using a proper old-fashioned recipe, but I’ll get the machine to handle the stirring for me.  It’ll take longer, but it might produce something close to what I’m expecting.