Babaganoush

Spring is a great time for dips and salads, so today in celebration of the warm weather we had a salad. Roquette, cos lettuce, cherry tomatoes, red capsicum and tuna with lashings of babaganoush on top.

The best thing about cooking babaganoush is you get to be a bit primitive, charring the eggplant on the open flame. I remember my surprise at the smoky flavour of this dip on my first encounter and I'm not sure that I immediately loved it. But I char with gay abandon these days filling the kitchen with an aroma reminiscent of marijuahna burning (so I am told). 

The smoky richness of babaganoush goes well with salads, barbecued meat and fish, especially lamb or just plain old carrot sticks, pita bread or water crackers. 

Babaganoush

Ingredients

1 medium to large eggplant (aubergine)

1 teaspoon of cumin seeds

1 teaspoon of coriander seeds

1 clove of garlic

75 grams tahini

75 grams olive oil

50 ml water

Half teaspoon salt

Juice of 1 large lemon

Method

The smoky flavour of babaganoush is developed by placing a whole uncooked eggplant directly onto the gas flame of your stove top. Turn the flame on full and let the eggplant cook until it is charred on the underside then turning it over with a pair of kitchen tongs repeat the process on the other side. You will find the peeling process, which comes next, easier if the eggplant is well charred, so don't pull it off the stove too quickly.

Once this is done, put the charred eggplant aside in a bowl to cool 

Dry roast your cumin and coriander in a heavy based pan until they darken slightly and release their aroma. 

Place the seeds in the Thermomix bowl and grind on speed 10 for 60 seconds

Add the garlic and chop on speed 7 for 5 seconds or until evenly chopped

Now that the eggplant is cooled slightly, peel the charred skin away. Make sure that you leave as much of the browned layer beneath the charring as possible, this is where the flavour is. 

When you have removed all of the skin, cut off the stem and place the eggplant in the Thermomix bowl. 

Add the other ingredients ie tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, water

Blend on speed 5 for 30seconds.

Turn out into a bowl and sprinkle with soumak more for the decoration than for flavour

Eat whilst still warm (which I think is the only way to go) or at room temperature.

Za'atar Bread

They say you recognise soulmates from past lives by their smell. A hint of something familiar, alluring, attractive or comfortable caresses your nostrils, the earth moves and you remember. For the past week I had the flu and my sense of smell (and taste) deserted me.  I spilled half a bottle of tea tree oil on the floor and could smell nothing- no smell, nothing at all. I could have met a thousand soulmates and passed them by without a clue. So you can imagine that eating food was nothing like what it should have been either: salty, bitter, sour, sweet but nothing in between. What a strange world it is without smells, happily removed from and oblivious to the stinky things in life, but isolated from the pleasures that smell brings without really knowing it. Anyway my sense of smell is back and the richness of life awaits.

Za'atar is a herb mixture from the Middle east which is used to flavour kebabs, chicken, fetta cheese and more. However I know it best as the distinctive aromatic topping on Middle eastern herb bread. Za'atar lends piquancy and a herby aroma to the bread and it is very addictive. You have to love anything that starts with a Z don't you?

Soumak is the only ingredient which might be unknown to you. Well perhaps you might know it as the tangy red speckles on Arnott's barbecue shapes.  It is a crimson red powder with a sharp lemony tang and is available at the Queen Vic market or at middle eastern grocers. 

Za'atar Herb Mix

Ingredients

15 grams Sesame seeds toasted

35 grams Soumak powder

10 grams Oregano

10 grams Marjoram

10 grams Thyme

1 teaspoon Seasalt

Method

For za'atar you will need to toast the sesame seeds in a dry frying-pan on the stove. The Thermomix isn't set up to cook at such high heat because of the damage this does to the food, but despite the damage, toasted seeds do taste very nice. Put the seeds in a cold pan and place over high heat, agitating the pan constantly to brown the contents without burning. When the seeds are toasted to a light brown remove them to the Thermomix bowl immediately to prevent burning.  

Empty your packets of herbs and the salt into the Thermomix bowl. I actually used packets of herbs that weighed 8 grams and didn't fuss about finding the extra 2 grams. 

Pulverise all of the ingredients on speed 10 for 30 seconds or until you have a fine powder.

Pour your za'atar powder into a screw top jar.

Za'atar Focaccia Bread

I followed the recipe from the Australian Thermomix Cookbook, but I did find I needed to add quite a bit of extra flour because the dough was sticky.

Ingredients

200 g boiled water

200g cold water

1 sachet of dry yeast

20g olive oil

500g white bakers flour

Pinch of salt

Method

Place water in the Thermomix bowl add the oil then the yeast. Mix for 5 seconds on speed 6

Add flour and salt and mix for 20 seconds on speed 6

Set dial to closed lid position and knead for 2 minutes on interval speed

Add extra flour as the dough kneads if it feels sticky.

Remove dough from the Thermomix and leave covered in a warm place for up to 1 hour to rise.

After an hour take a large sheet of silicone baking paper and on it stretch your dough into an A4 sized rectangle.

Dip your fingers in flour to stop them sticking and press all eight fingers into the dough to make a line of indentations without going all the way through. Repeat until the entire rectangle is covered in indentations.

Fold the dough in half, stretch out to an A4 sized rectangle again and repeat the indentation process. 

Repeat two or three times and then leave the A4 sized rectangle with indentations covered with a teatowel or gladwrap to rise for another 30 minutes. Preheat your oven to 220˚ C

Sprinkle the dough heavily with your za'atar powder and drizzle liberally with olive oil, don't hold back, the herb powder needs to be moist with the oil.

Bake for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown.

We made tuna, rocquette, red capsicum and parmesan cheese sandwiches with this bread and they were magnificent. 

Cashew Nut and Vegetable Stir Fry

Neil Perry says that "the art of stir frying is the art of organisation". Yep that would be right and there's my problem. Why do so many things in life have to revolve around being organised? I think I would be much happier if the art of mild to moderate chaos and disorder was more highly valued in society. Sure I can be organised, I just need a little more time than ordinary people to get things that way. So the fast art of stir frying demands something from me that I can find difficult to give. Thermomix to the rescue!

It's one of those things that seems unlikely-the Thermomix stir fries vegetables?  This isn't 'authentic' stir frying, the action isn't frenetic, the oil isn't overheated, there is no smoke, you can't taste the sizzling Wok in the finished product and for some people this might be a disappointment. However if you want to taste the vibrant flavour of vegetables simply cooked without overheating and to stir fry without being the master of organisation then this is for you. 

With this dish you need to chop the vegetables by hand, rather than by Thermomix, so that you get nice textures and shapes that encourage the vegetables to cook at a similar rate

Wombok however can vary in texture, from fine and lacy at the top, to more solid and chunky as you reach the base of the cabbage. The finely textured tips of the leaves require less cooking and so I add them to the Thermomix in the last two minutes of stirfrying. 

The choice of vegetables nuts and sauce are up to you, use this recipe as a starting point and move on from there. If I am feeling like meat, I marinate chicken breast in honey, soy and oil then cook in a pan while  the vegetables are stir frying.

Cashew Nut and Vegetable Stir Fry

Ingredients

30g Macadamia oil (olive oil will do if that's all you have)

1 Garlic clove

2 pieces of ginger the size of a 20 cent piece

50g Red capsicum cut into batons

200g Broccoli cut into florets

15 Snow peas sliced on the diagonal into thirds

250g Wombok (chinese cabbage) shredded

1 Dessertspoonful of Oyster sauce (Housewife brand)

Raw cashews

Basmati or jasmine rice

Method

Set some rice cooking on the stove or cook it in the thermomix and keep separately in the Thermoserver until ready to serve.

Start with a clean, dry Thermomix bowl. Add garlic and ginger to the Thermomix bowl and chop for 5 seconds on speed 7

Scrape down the sides of the bowl with your spatula so that the chopped garlic and ginger are all down the bottom on the cooking surface of the Thermomix

Add your oil and saute on varoma temperature for 3 minutes

Then add all of your vegetables except the wombok and cook for 6 minutes at 100 degrees, reverse and speed soft(that's the spoon symbol) 

You may not believe that the vegetables are going to circulate down to the cooking surface and up again, but they will. Try not to spend all of your time gazing into the Thermomix

After 6 minutes, add the Wombok cabbage and oyster sauce, cook for another 2 minutes at 100 degrees reverse and speed soft (spoon symbol). 

Watch the Brocolli to see when it has become the vibrant green that signals perfectly cooked. You may have to stop early or add another couple of minutes to the cooking time to get it right.

Aim for slightly under, rather than over cooked, remember the vegies will continue to cook slightly as you serve them up. 

When you are happy, pour the stir fry over a bowl of steamed rice and sprinkle liberally with raw cashews.

Cinnamon, Apple and Oat Porridge

Tired of plain old porridge?

We loved our breakfast so much this morning I had to post this so that everyone could have some mid winter joy first thing. No fancy ingredients, hearty and sustaining. Just what you need to get you going on these cold mornings. You spend a small amount of time preparing the ingredients and let the Thermomix look after the cooking while you have a shower or get the kids ready. This is when you really appreciate the time-saving capability of the Thermomix.

Cinnamon, Apple and Rolled Oat Porridge

Ingredients

2cm cinnamon stick

15 grams brown sugar

2 apples quartered remove the seeds

80 grams rolled oats

625 grams water

Method

Throw cinnamon and sugar in the Thermomix bowl (make sure the bowl is dry)

Process on speed 9 for 20 seconds or until cinnamon is powdered

Add the apples and grate for 3 seconds on speed 5

Add oats and water, cook at 100 degrees for 10 minutes on speed 1

Go and have a shower, come back in ten minutes and pour out 3 large bowls of porridge.

Serve with yoghurt, milk of your choice or just as is.

Sticky Black Rice

There's a book called the Spiritual Nutrition and the Rainbow Diet where the author Gabriel Cousens says that you should try to eat all the colors of the rainbow every day. Activate your base chakra with red food, the solar plexus with yellow, some other one with green, the next with pink, some other ones in between and then the crown chakra with purple food. I love this way of looking at nutrition, but not all purple foods can be equally spiritual. I just can't see myself walking into heaven with an eggplant in my hand. However, I am totally willing to believe that I can eat my way to Nirvana with a big batch of sticky black rice. Well maybe two or three batches. Because it's not really black is it, I'm sure it's purple, in that burgundy kind of way. So put the purple cabbage aside for a moment and accelerate your spiritual growth the Indonesian way.

Get your glutinous rice, pandanus leaves and palm sugar from the Asian supermarket. Despite its name glutinous black rice contains no gluten, I am absolutely sure. Pandanus is a strappy leaf, the Asian equivalent of vanilla, that imparts a pleasantly sweet fragrance to the rice, you can leave this out if you like, but it is worth chasing up in the freezer or fresh at the market. Palm sugar is sold in compressed cylinder shaped blocks, you can substitute dark brown sugar if you like. 

Are you worried about the fat in coconut milk? Well the fats in coconut aren't as unhealthy as we have been led to believe in the past, just don't overdo it.  There are some nasty coconut milks out there that are worth avoiding, I use Ayam brand,  certainly don't go with light coconut milk, it contains things that are unhealthy despite the light label, always check the ingredients. 

For me a cinnamon stick is preferable to ground cinnamon, not only because the flavour is better, but also because you can fish it out at the end and suck it clean, YUM. Is that disgusting? Sorry, I love cinnamon.

Sticky Black Rice with Coconut Cream

Ingredients

280 g  Glutinous black rice 

110 grams palm sugar 

750 g water

2 pandanus leaves

1 cinnamon stick

3-4 slices of fresh ginger size of 50 cent piece

270 ml can coconut cream

Method 

Remove the measuring cup (MC) 

Place a medium sized bowl on top of the Thermomix and set your scales to zero

Weigh 280g of glutinous black rice into the bowl,  cover with water a leave to soak overnight.

The next morning discard the soaking water, it will be a spectacular bergundy. 

Bash your palm sugar with a rolling pin or something heavy to break it up and weigh 100g into the Thermomix bowl.

Pulverise the sugar on speed 9 for 5 seconds

Add the soaked black rice, cinnamon, ginger and pandanus leaves (knot the leaves into a ball so that you can get them out easily after the cooking is done)

Add 750g of water

Cook in reverse at 90 degrees for 60 minutes, speed 1.5

At the end of the hour the mixture should be thick and soupy, transfer to the thermoserver and stir in the coconut cream. 

Fish out the pandanus, cinnamon and ginger replace the Thermoserver lid and allow the rice to cool.

Or pour yourself a big bowl and enjoy warm 

Transfer the leftovers to the fridge where it will set. 

Serve with sliced banana, mango or papaya.

Serves 4

Persimmon and Vanilla bean Sorbet

Persimmon and Vanilla Bean Sorbet

I just bought forty really ripe and squashy persimmons at the Vic market today for two dollars, that's five cents each! Looks like sorbet is on the menu again 

Of course I could never use forty persimmons before they go bad, so they'll get washed and frozen as hard as cricket balls. So how patient are you? I am used to making a sorbet in a minute, so waiting for things to thaw seems like a really long time. To avoid the wait, take the frozen fruit and leave them out for five minutes, they'll be soft enough to chop into quarters, to remove the calyx (that thing on top) and pips if there are any. Having done this you can go on and use these frozen quarters for your sorbet. This impatience however must have an antidote and fortunately its quite straightforward, simply add 300 ml of water and the sorbet will cooperate and emulsify properly. For those using fresh fruit or who have managed to let the persimmons thaw out completely, you can happily forget the water.

Now as far as I'm concerned, vanilla bean comes straight from heaven but vanilla essence, it can only hope to be half as virtuous. So for that heavenly result, it's definitely the bean for me. But if it's all you've got, then a tiny splash of vanilla essence will have to do.

Its still cold outside, but I know you won't complain, just rug up and enjoy. This is really good!

Ingredients

100g sugar

3cm vanilla bean

300g of squashy ripe persimmon (3 small or 2 large)

700g ice cubes (4 trays)

Method

Starting with a dry Thermomix bowl, add the sugar and vanilla bean 

Pulverise on speed 9 for 15 seconds

Add 300g persimmon. If the fruit is frozen add 300ml of water as well.

Now add three quarters of the ice holding the rest back until after you begin processing

Pulverise on speed 10 for 1 minute

After 15 seconds while the machine is still running, add the remaining ice through the lid of the Thermomix and stir the mixture with the spatula. Persimmon seems to need a bit more work with the spatula to get the machine churning on its own so stick with it.

Turn the sorbet out into a serving bowl. Enjoy even more because this classy dessert cost less than one dollar!

Persimmon and passionfruit sorbet

Persimmon and Passionfruit Sorbet

Persimmons are an Autumn fruit almost past their best now that Winter is here. You can pick up a tray of really squashy persimmons for a few dollars at the market right now and these are perfect for making sorbet. I know the weather is cold, but this sorbet has a creamy texture too good to miss no matter how cold it is!  

For me the subtle flavour of persimmon can struggle to carry a sorbet alone, aren't we lucky that passionfruit are so good at the moment!

Don't bother to add eggwhite, this is perfect on its own; ice, fruit and sugar.

Ingredients

100 grams sugar

2 really squashy persimmon, seeds and stalk removed

Pulp of 3 passionfruit

700grams/4trays of ice cubes

Method

Make sure your Thermomix bowl is dry and cold

Put your sugar in the Thermomix and pulverise on speed 9 for 6 seconds

Now add fruit and 3 1/2 trays of ice

This sorbet can get really thick, so hold back a half a tray of ice-cubes just to give the Thermomix a chance to get on top of the job. 

Pulverise on speed 10. Keep the machine running and after about ten seconds add the remaining ice through the lid and stir with the spatula as required to help incorporate into the mix. 

This process might take longer than the usual minute: keep going until the sorbet is churning smoothly without assistance. 

Turn out into a serving bowl and enjoy (in front of the heater)

Oh and the other 22 persimmons in the tray? 

Wash and freeze them whole, use them at your leisure. 

Perhaps persimmon and vanilla bean sorbet .