lime cordial

Not many posts lately - none this year because I have been busy baking for thespians
We have a glut of limes and this was a great way to use up a lot

250 ml lime juice
250g white sugar
250 ml water
1 tsp tartaric acid
1 tsp citric acid

Place in bowl cook for 25 minutes 80 degrees speed 2

Cool and pour into a clean bottle

Delicious with gin and bitters

Enjoy!

limes and finger food

I have been busy, travelling and unwell so my cooking mojo went somewhere else and my blogging mojo followed it, however...

This week I had a bucket of limes to use up. And there are more on the tree.

So the challenge begins:

I made Lime Curd - just the Thermomix EDC recipe Oh MY GOODNESS I just want to eat this off the spoon even after seeing how much butter and sugar went in there

Then Lime Marmalade - again the EDC, mind you don't look for it in the index under "L" or "M" whoever put that together should be writing crosswords for a living - it's under "C" for Citrus so I stumbled on the recipe by accident while making the Lime Curd. One batch made 4 jars of sticky breakfast goodness.

Lime cordial was next I chose this recipe because it had less sugar than the others. Himself (who is a bit of a lime cordial connoisseur)  is very impressed with the result.

We are having guests tonight so I wanted to make finer food - I decided to give The4Blades chicken wings a go.
I made the hot sauce a couple of days in advance. I substituted apple cider vinegar for the white vinegar and half the cayenne with paprika and it is still blow your head off hot. It will be interesting to see how it goes with the wings tonight.

So today I had a blitz - I made this cake which is way different to the lazy cakes I usually do - and it is sugar free and GF as well. It smells divine.

Then some of these Lime balls. Just because I could.

And because it seemed like we ought to have vegetables in there somewhere I made 40 mini muffins using this recipe

So then we did the 4Blades hot wings (I needed double the spice mix) and the jerk wings. One batch are cooking in the veroma right now.

Is that enough inspiration for a bit? I think I need a rest!

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

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:

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 

Decadent peanut butter and dark choc chip cookies

It is a cold day in Townsville (yes 17 degrees is very cold when you don't have heating) so any excuse to run the oven or the clothes dryer.

I read several recipes for cookies and came up with this which worked wonderfully well
These are a more adult cookie but if you substituted milk chocolate for the dark the kids would probably love them too

Preheat oven to 170 degrees fan forced

Grind 220g raw sugar for 4 seconds at speed 9
Add 60g peanut butter (I used bought but you can always make your own)
120g unsalted butter cut into chunks

Blend 1 minute speed 3

Add  1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1 egg

Blend 7 seconds speed 4

Weigh 310g SR four into a separate bowl

Add 130g dark chocolate chips (use Cadbury not Nestle for information about the Nestle boycott click here)

Mix on reverse speed 3 for 45 seconds adding the flour through the hole in the lid

Place teaspoons on CT silicon sheet on baking tray - they double in size so leave some space but not too much

Flatten with a fork, your knuckles or I used a CT muffin pan for a neat, flat top

Cook for 10 minutes and allow to cool on racks

This recipe makes approx 40 cookies and they are worth 3 Weight Watchers ProPoints each. But if you have two it's only 5 ProPoints!

Winning!!

Lest we forget

Anzac Day 2014

Dawn service for some members of the household and a facebook profile full of images like this one

I had time to go to a rehearsal, read a book, walk the dog by the river and listen to the 4 Blades Podcast who inspired me to make ANZAC biscuits too!

I followed the first recipe because it sounded very similar to the one I usually make which is from NMAA Cooks (the book anyone without a Thermomix should definitely own, and anyone with a Thermomix should be converting recipes from)

My three tweaks:

I used raw sugar rather than white
I set my oven to 150 degrees as we have a very hot fan forced oven
I used the Chefs Toolbox silicon sheets and rather than pressing down with the MC I used a CT muffin pan

The results:

Delicious!

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning. We will remember them. Lest we forget.