Thursday, October 23, 2014

Quick Mexican tomato salad (or salsa)

We are having grilled fish tonight so I threw together a quick salad to go on the side. The glut of tomatoes from our garden continues and this has used up a few more...

In a bowl combine:

4 large tomatoes, chopped
125g can of sweet corn kernels (drained)
2 spring onions, chopped
4 leaves Thai (sawtooth) coriander chopped fine
1/2 teaspoon raw sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
 a pinch of cumin
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
juice of one lime
shake of tabasco (optional)



Tonight we are serving this with 200g barramundi fillets and 240g boiled new potatoes dressed with light sour cream with a teaspoon of this taco seasoning (thanks to the4Blades podcast for the heads up) mixed through



Total Weight Watchers ProPoints for the entire salad 1, for the whole meal 9

Monday, October 13, 2014

special pizza sauce

This is just delicious - we are having it tonight on a wholemeal TM pizza base with caramelised onions and some of the lovely vanilla balsamic dressing from Ciabatta Restaurant



Start with
  1 red onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced




Saute in
 30ml olive oil

Saute onion and garlic in oil until soft, then add

½ tspn dried chilli
4 tblsp red wine vine
Large pinch sea salt
2 tblsp raw sugar

then cook down about 5 minutes while you chop up the tomatoes.



Add:

 1kg ripe tomatoes roughly chopped
 1 tsp oregano

Stir in tomatoes, cook covered tightly over a very low heat until it is thick (about 45 minutes).


 Pour into Thermomix and turbo 3 -4 times until you like the consistency.

Store in a clean jar - will keep about a month in the refrigerator (if it lasts that long)


And here is our pizza:



Sunday, October 12, 2014

Thermomix Mexican Salsa

My apologies for the lack of posts recently I have been enjoying cooking other people's food especially ideas from the 4Blades podcast and when tired and hungry we always cook this Chicken and Brown Rice soup from Quirky Cooking, which is simply not possible to improve upon.

We have had a really busy couple of months between various theatrical events (participating and viewing) and a wonderful family holiday in Hervey Bay where we went whale watching.

So this week when faced with a glut of tomatoes (here is the gardener's photo from Instagram)


I wondered what I could make with them (I already have a couple of huge jars of passata in the fridge) - I asked on Facebook and people suggested butter chicken, relish, tomato paste, and (oh brilliant idea) salsa!

Of course I thought - off to the 4 Blades they did a Mexican themed podcast a few months ago here

I failed. Botheration - how can it be Mexican with no salsa?

I found some other recipes on the internet, read them, and decided to make my own so here it is:

Place in TM31:

4 cloves garlic
500g brown onions 
300g red onions 

Chop 4 seconds speed 5

Add:
700g quartered tomatoes
1 large red capsicum cut up
1 tablespoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon cumin powder
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seed
1 teaspoon raw sugar
2 teaspoons seasalt
80 ml apple cider vinegar

Turbo 3 - 4 times 

Cook 30 minutes Veroma reverse speed 1
Do what you have to do to manage splattering - I used a splatter guard but 15 minutes in things looked like this:



So I added a towel over the counter at the back and the basket upside down on the TM31 lid

While it is cooking cut up another:
 700g tomatoes 

I don't think there is an easy way to do this. Make sure your knife is good and sharp and note this recipe does not include human fingers.
After 30 minutes add the chopped tomatoes and cook another 20 minutes Veroma reverse speed 1


Add:
the juice of a lime

Stir through with your spatula. Did you know that if you wipe the inside of a lemon or lime on your fingers it will remove the garlic or onion smell?

Pour into sterilised jars and store (I am keeping this in the fridge but I think that will depend on your climate)

I will probably add some fresh chopped sawtooth coriander when using as a dip