Zingy thermomix cauliflower salad

I was walking by the river tonight and I took inspiration from the 4 Blades Podcast who accompany me when I am not listening to the Verity Podcast 

Verity's influence is anything but healthy - I feel inspired to make Doctor Who themed cupcakes and biscuits but first I needed dinner.

Rather than come home and make poached egg on toast for tea I put a steak in a pan and mixed me up this salad

The method is based on their Simple Summer Salads episode

The finished product

Chop 60 grams of pecans at Speed 4 for 6 seconds
Set aside

Put 1/4 bunch of parsley in the bowl with 2 cloves of garlic and half a long red chilli deseeded
Chop 4 seconds Speed 10

Add 250 grams of cauliflower broken into florets, a carrot, chopped roughly, a capsicum, chopped roughly and half a red onion, peeled
Chop Speed 4 for 4 to 5 seconds

Add 1 tablespoon cider vinegar, juice of half a lemon and 100g fat free yoghurt We are loving this one from the Tamar Valley because it is delicious and reminds us of home

Mix on reverse speed 4 for 5 seconds.

Is that steak done yet?

No? It must be time for a glass of something then

Spicy turkey skewers

These are SO quick and easy and SO delicious! Serve with a salad of your choosing and yoghurt sauce - I used garlic chives, parsley and mint with 125g yoghurt a pinch of sugar and a shake of tabasco.
Start with a good size handful of flat leaf parsley

Chop on speed 7 for 3 seconds

Add half a red onion 

Chop on speed 7 for 3 seconds again

Now it's time to get spicy! What do you think of my expensive spice canister collection?

Add:

500g turkey mince

the insides of a stale bread roll pulled into small pieces

2 tblsp sweet paprika (not hot)

1/2 tsp chilli powder

1 tblsp cumin

1 1/2 tsp coriander

1 1/2 tsp cloves

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp sea salt

a generous grind of pepper

Mix 10 seconds on speed 5

Turn onto a board

form into a loaf and use the TM spatula to divide it into 16 

roll into torpedo shapes and leave to stand for 1/2 hour or longer if possible

Grill on skewers for 8-10 minutes. Serve with grilled haloumi, yoghurt sauce and lime and mint quinoa salad

These are 2 Weight Watchers ProPoints each - so you can have 4 if you like! Or have 2 and fill up on squeaky creamy haloumi!

Points free peach icecream - delicious mess in a bowl!

Start with a jar of peaches in natural juice - I can't reember what that weighs but I used the whole thing. Spread it on a tray covered with a silicon baking sheet (like the one from Chef's Toolbox)
Freeze until solid. Mine went in a couple of days ago (hence the frost)
Fold up the sheet and break off the chunks of fruit. Place in your Thermomix
Process 20 seconds at speed 7

Add 100g natural yoghurt (I used Greek) and insert the butterfly
Blend 20 seconds at speed 4

That's it. Serve and enjoy. You can go for elegant, or hungry. We were hungry. It was delicious.

This would work equally well with apricots. Or mangoes

Devilish fragrant chicken curry

If you don't have the Thermomix Devil of a cookbook well you should. Just go buy it right now. Every dollar spent goes toward safe habitats for Tasmanian devils who are not infected with the horrendous cancer that is threatening to make them extinct. For more information check out the Devil Island Project.
Anyway we had the pleasure of attending a cooking class with Fiona Hoskin on Friday night and sampling this curry so I thought I would give it a try.
After a rough start when I discovered I needed fenugreek seeds not leaves, which necessitated a trip to the Oriental food store and caused me to buy delicious things to use later... I followed the recipe in the book but added a couple of extra tomatoes and doubled the chicken.

I am so glad I did because that is a LOT of sauce, and you can't just fill up on sauce and rice if you are counting points.
While it was cooking I went and cut some mint and pulled out my trusty stick blender. I know the TM does everything the stick blender can do (better, stronger, faster) but I can't afford a second machine and often mine is busy. Besides my stick blender is so pretty I couldn't let it go. If the Thermomix put out limited edition red machines it would sell like crazy.
So while the curry cooked I made a mint chutney.

Use a bunch of mint, a spring onion, a shake of tabasco, 3 tablespoons greek yoghurt and a generous squeeze of lime juice. This is just so beautiful - to taste as well as look at. And it cools your mouth for hot curries (this one isn't hot by the way)

So after only about half an hour at home I have a lovely curry made from scratch. I needed to cook rice for the crowd, but as the recipe includes coconut cream there were really no points left to spare for rice for Taff and I so it was back to the old cauliflower trick.

Which meant this delicious plate full came in at only 10 ProPoints so we had some roti bread too!

this plate does not contain rice