Steamed Blue-eye with Chermoula

Make up a batch of chermoula and you'll find a million ways to use it. This paste of middle eastern herbs and spices is wonderfully fragrant and goes well in a variety of dishes whether they be roasted, baked, steamed pan fried or barbecued. Use chermoula as a marinade, a stuffing, curry paste, as a filling for bread scrolls or as a pasta sauce, it is versatile and completely delicious. This steamed fish is based on a Neil Perry recipe in 'The Food I Love' and is an impressive way to start steaming. If you haven't started using the Varoma you are really missing out, so get going with it. You don't have access to good fish? Use chicken breast fillets bashed flat with a rolling pin instead. For vegetarians, do warm chermoula  poured over steamed or roasted vegetables and rice. 

You need to steam this fish in a bowl of marinade inside the varoma, so make sure you select a bowl or flat dish that can sit securely inside the varoma without rocking or wobbling. The bowl can go either on the tray (up the top) or on the bottom with the tray removed. 

Chermoula

Ingredients

Rind of a lemon peeled with a vegetable peeler

10g cumin seeds

10g turmeric (ground)

1 tablespoon of chilli flakes

5 grams sweet paprika

1 teaspoon of seasalt

1 red onion

3 garlic cloves

70gram flat leaf parsley

40g coriander leaves stems and roots (washed well)

150g extra virgin olive oil

20g lemon juice

Method

Place lemon rind in the Thermomix bowl and grind for 20 seconds on speed 9

Empty the bowl and put the lemon rind aside

Add cumin seeds, turmeric, chilli flakes paprika and salt to the Thermomix bowl and grind for 30 seconds on speed  8 or until the spices are powdered.

Add garlic cloves and process for 3 seconds on speed 6

Add coriander and parsley, onion, olive oil and lemon juice processing for 15 seconds on speed 5 or until a smooth paste has formed.

Scrape the resulting chermoula into a bowl, leaving 100g in the Thermomix bowl for the Blue-eye marinade.

Steamed Blue-eye with Chermoula

Ingredients

100g Chermoula

30grams of honey

10grams of lemon juice 

100g water

Grated lemon rind (reserved from chermoula recipe)

2 Blue-eye fillets 200g each

200g basmati or jasmine rice

Broccoli and snow peas

Method

Combine all ingredients except the lemon rind in the thermomix and mix on speed 3 for 5 seconds. 

Place your fish fillets into a bowl or plate, pour the chermoula mix over the fish and top with grated lemon rind. 

Measure 200g rice into steamer basket and rinse under running water

Measure 500g water into the Thermomix bowl and place the basket of rice in on top

Close the Thermomix lid and place the varoma on top

Put your bowl  of fish into the varoma and on with the lid

Cook for 15 minutes at Varoma temperature on speed 4

When there are eight minutes to go, being careful not to spill the fish marinade, add brocolli florets to the varoma and allow to steam, then add the snow peas in the last 2 minutes.

Neil Perry says a flat fillet of fish will only take 4-5 minutes to steam and this has also been my experience. So if using flat fillets rather than chunky ones, leave the bowl of fish out of the varoma until the last 6 minutes of cooking time.

Serve on a bed of rice with marinade poured liberally over the top, place broccoli and snowpeas on the side. Magnificent!

Field Mushroom Sandwich with Garlic butter

Cold clear days in early Winter take me back to my childhood when we would spend entire days tramping across the paddocks of my Auntie's farm collecting field mushrooms. We would each have our own bucket and it wouldn't take all that long to fill them.  So back at the farmhouse, our load would be cooked into an evil smelling black stew that adults devoured enthusiastically.  But not the kids. What kid could eat anything that smelled so awful? I must have collected thousands of those mushrooms and never ate one. Since then, I have developed a taste for fungus, but sadly the farm and my aunty are both long gone. My parents tell me, you can't buy mushrooms with flavour like those ones we collected, but at the moment you might find large organic Swiss browns that go really well in this sandwich.

Garlic Butter

To cook the mushroom you first need garlic butter, make up a batch and keep a jar in the fridge at the ready, where it will keep for a week or so. Once the butter is made, other than the field mushroom sandwich, garlic bread is a simple and popular snack for adults or kids to prepare.  Just split open a bread roll and spread liberally with garlic butter, wrap in foil, leaving a little opening in the top to let the steam out. Bake at 200 degrees for 20 minutes. 

Ingredients

5 cloves of garlic peeled

100g unsalted butter chopped into two or three pieces

Small handful of parsley

Pinch of salt to taste

Method

Make sure your Thermomix bowl is dry. If you have just washed your Thermomix it is a good idea to briefly pulse on turbo to flick residual water out from beneath the blades.

Place garlic in the Thermomix bowl and chop for 10 seconds on speed 7

Add parsley and chop again for 10 seconds on speed 7

Scrape down the sides of the bowl with the spatula

Add butter (there is no need to bring it to room temp) and salt. 

Chop/mix on speed 5 for 8 seconds.  

Transfer the resulting butter to a jar or roll it in baking paper now it can be kept in the fridge or freezer

Field Mushroom Sandwich

I can't pretend that this is my idea, I have to acknowledge The Domestic Goddess herself, Nigella Lawson. A great meaty vegetarian lunch or light evening meal that is simplicity in a sandwich and just a little bit decadent (but you would expect that from Nigella wouldn't you?). This is something that is really worth trying. If you can't get field mushrooms, use the biggest Swiss Browns you can rustle up. 

Ingredients

Large field mushroom per person

1 dessert spoon of garlic butter per person

Seed mustard

Lemon

Roquette

Turkish bread or bread of your choice

Method

Preheat the oven at 200 degrees

Remove the stalks of the mushrooms and spread a dessert spoon of garlic butter evenly over the underside. 

Place the mushrooms buttered side up, in an ovenproof dish and bake in the oven for at least 20 minutes at 200 degrees (the longer the better I reckon)

When the mushrooms are almost done, spread your Turkish bread with seed mustard

Place a mushroom on the bread, squeeze lemon over it and put some roquette on top, close the sandwich then go ahead and eat it. 

There's not that much butter, you have to try it.