Tomato soup try-outs!

I hate tomatoe soup. After a team meeting where we talked about how to not be prejudiced against a recipe (roughly) and try things out and have a new perspective, I went home to try this out. I bought a whole bag of tomatoes and thought this can't be hard. It is soup season, and I can't just keep to potato and pumpkin. Exploration was called for.

Followed the EDC Tomato Soup recipe somewhat. Added my own twists: I thought it would be too slim and sour, so I added risoni (rice shaped pasta) and a can of white beans to padd it up. The beans I blended in with the cooked tomatoes and then added the risoni. I served it with soft Greek feta cheese. Have to say, it wasn't as sour as I had expected and the melted feta was delicious. But then again cheese always is!

What I do look like about this dish is that it's heartier the next day. The Risoni absorbs the flavours thoroughly and also reduces the acidity, extra sugar at the cooking stage will help too if you like a "sweeter" soup. I had my own milled pepper and put that in as well so it was quite spicy & peppery.

This works really well with the Five Seed Bread or a nice cheese scone!

Would I cook it again? Maybe not... I'm still a Potato & Leek Soup girl no matter how many I've tried. Maybe I'll take a crack at the new "purple" cauliflower - and make that into a creamy soup next time!

Scones and Soup!

I love a hearty soup with the right breads. After a hint from a work colleague about a favourite soup being Potato & Bacon, I took a look in the cupboard and fridge on the weekend and decided that's a pretty hearty one to make.

The soup is pretty simple, follow the normal Potato & Leek (take out leek), maybe use some spring onions instead. Add a few slices of bacon with onion to fry up at Step 1 and of you go!

I had made the staple of 5 seed bread but it's really so yummy to eat by it self I didn't want to use it with soup! So I made scones! Cheeze and chive ones! Added dash of pepper and about 80 g of cheese or so.

A couple of different decent butter / dairy cheese replacement can be found at PAWS. Careful when you pick out margerines from the regular stores, a couple of the brands are actually not vegan-friendly.  

I shook out a Rochelle Adonis recipe and used the tip of flouring my "cookie cutter" before cutting my scones. The don't stick as badly and look prettier.

Before & After photos:

Absolutely delicious and quick meal on a Sunday winter's afternoon!

Before you start the soup, mix the dough for scones and set up for oven baking.

By the time the soup is done in 17 - 25 mins. You will have the scones piping hot (cooling down enough not to burn yourself). Watch out... cause I did burn my tongue on these.

I absolute adore easy meals. Feeds 4 to 6. In my family, that only went enough for 3. Too bad my stomach only allowed me to have 2 per bowl of soup! (But I managed to sneak in seconds and trick my tummy!)

TM Meeting & a late night snack

Went to a TM Team Meeting and ate out at Siena's in Mt Lawley! Had to say the pasta/pizza deal on Mondats/Tuesdays are still worth it at $13.95 (volume/price wise). Service and the wait left much to be desired. I realised upon ordering my usual penne al pollo style dish, I could cook this! And I could make it saltier and tastier with more cream & cheese without feeling guilty in a Thermomix! (I've yet to learn portion control really after I've tested a recipe)

So went home and decided to try out the Bee Hoon dish in the Taste of Asia Cookbook. Upon reading it, I realized there was no way at 10pm at night I was defrosting a couple of chicken breasts pieces just to put into my lunch tomorrow - I settled for vegetarian bee hoon.

Since I was taking out the chicken strips, the ingredient portions weren't really right - but then again, considering I never follow recipes this wasn't a surprise.

Here's my version, and no I didn't really re-invent the wheel. Bee hoon is one of those dishes that left over stir fried veggies actually make it taste better.

Ingredients:

200 g Bee hoon (lukewarm water, soak for at least 1/2 hour to more - you don't want it mushy but all must be separated into 'strands')

4 dried shitake mushrooms (soaked for while - I put these to soak before I left the house for dinner at 6:30 - started cooking at 10:30; generally it will only need an hour or two)

200 g carrots (julienned)
100 g of left-over stirfried green beans (you can use raw but will have to put in at same time as carrots)

3 garlic cloves

1/2 sml - med brown onion

1/4 lrg red onion (sliced)

1 sml dried red chilli
1 tbspn Oyster sauce
1-2 tspn Sesame oil

50 mL Cooking oil (extra virgin olive oil)

2 tspn of vegetable paste
1/4 tspn of cracked pepper (I used TM milled pepper)
320 ml of liquid (I used the soaking water/liquid of the mushrooms = mushroom stock)
1 spring onion (chopped / julienned)

Method:

1. Garlic & brown onion & chilli into bowl, Sp 6 & 5 seconds.

2. Add 50 mL of cooking oil, set to 3 mins, Varoma, Sp Soft - Reverse. I put it on reverse now in case I forget later.

3. Attach Butterfly.

4. Add carrots & red onion (& green bean if using raw). Set to 5 mins, Varoma, Sp Soft - Reverse.

5. Add bee hoon, space it around the butterfly (having too much curled on top could 'skew' your butterfly during the turning process).

6. Add spring onion.

7. Mix vegetable paste, oyster sauce, sesame oil, cracked pepper in with the 'mushroom stock'. Pour into TM Bowl on top of bee hoon & spring onions.

8. Set at 7 mins, Varoma, Sp Soft - Reverse.

9. Pour into Thermoserver, stir through with chopstick as mixture may not be as even when poured out. Don't worry it's all cooked through & evenly cooked!!!

Taste: 4 out of 5 stars. I don't give full points. It lacked in presentation.
The spice might not be to what you normally prefer - but this way it provides a little bit of heat during "winter". Asian winter warmer!

Tips/Recommendation:

Things to note namely is the presentation... it's a bit "blobby". As in gluggy looking. This is because I tried to reduce the liquid portion when I took out the chicken - but I didn't reduce this enough! Change to 250 mL of liquid and it'll be perfect. Depending on the vegetables you use - always keep in mind they have water content, when cooked this liquid comes out and can replace

The 'mushroom stock' also gives the noodles a darker colour - so I don't use soy sauce.

Side note - prefer saltier? Add light soy - this adds salt. If you prefer 'darker coloring' - add dark soy sauce - this adds colour and not as much salt as the light soy.

I used extra oil:

1. carrots 'eat up' oil when stirfried, and you can stirfry this longer.

2. this also keeps the noodles from becoming extremely starching - other method is to drain out water & dry out the bee hoon and add a drizzle of oil on before placing in TM bowl . This means extra prep time, but it does actually reduce the overall amount of oil used.

Options with bee hoon: buy the ones which are already cut - in noodle packets - this way you don't have to worry about how long each strand is and it getting stuck on your butterfly. Or just trim the "roll/woolspun" ones at ends. So far I haven't found a favourite brand. The one I used was called the Chilli Brand (not chilli flavour, but somehow looking at the picture, adding a small chilli sounded like a good idea).

Also - upon tasting, I realized chopping the onion in with garlic really didn't do much. It's better to have it as slices, instead of the red onion, to add in with carrots. Why? Cause the red onion actually loses colour & vibrancy - it also adds colour to the overall dish. Use yellow or white onion - it will lead to a 'clearer' bee hoon dish at the end.

Always remember to have something white, green, red or yellow. Bellpeppers is a good one to add. The original calls for cabbage, cabbage requires quite a bit of cooking time and liquid. I'd recommend against it if you're doing a straight vegetarian one - extra liquid leads to a much more starchy bee hoon texture.

Pasta e fagioli à la neko style

Of course I made changes to the EDC recipe. I changed only portions of content and so of course it can't be called a pasta e fagioli any more.

Ingredient differences, I:

• used Cannellini beans and Butter beans instead.
• used a can of Roma tomatoes instead of 2 fresh tomatoes.
• 2 small brown onions,
• 2 cloves of garlic.
• lessened the chilli to 1/2 - we're not a spice-centric Asian family.
• added 1/2 smoked chicken breast and 1 cooked chicken breast.
• chopped some fresh parsley.
• used risoni instead of ditali pasta, and
• added baby spinach in the TM server.

Method:

I did poach the smoked chicken a little bit, the smokey flavour is quite strong and you should add it in last with about 3-4 minutes to spare on the final cooking time. This just mixes it through and allow the subtle smoke flavours to mix in but not permeate all the risoni.

I also added 1 minute to the onion cooking time. And at least 2-3 mins to each batch of cooking time due to the increase in ingredients. The risoni remained al dente upon serving into the TM server.

The smokey flavor completely changed what sometimes can be a plain dish. Other alternatives to add flavour included placing more parsley in the initial stages and red onion. I'm not a huge fan of parsley so I usually like to refrain from using it too much. Other than the chicken this could be made into a vegan dish :)

Recipe success: 5 out of 5 stars. My father ate it! Ok, he eats most things I cook but he's "picky". He liked this, so I'd say the variations worked out fine!
Taste: 4 out of 5 stars. Personally, I don't like smoked chicken that much. It's mom's favourite.

Baking night: Five seed bread (EDC)

We always buy the Helga's Five Seed Bread so I decided to try my hand at this recipe. Making the dough was easy enough, watching it rise and fall has been heart breaking. Still not ready but the seeds on top looks a bit burnt ;(

Learnt my lesson with the Hot Cross Buns. I pre-heated the oven, and left the dough in these baking dishes next to the oven to prove. It did double in size. Photo on the right was after 15 mins.

Lowered the temperature. We'll have to wait and see how this turns out.

Update: 9:15, ok have taken it out. Looks good... How am I going to get it out. Just realized I forgot to grease the trays.

Update: After midnight, it was cooled enough to slip a butter knife in to 'pry the edges' and then "turn it upside down to get it out. Of course I lost a bit of "seeds" from the top surface.

Hmm I wonder where the photo of the slided bread is...

Receipe success: 4.5 out of 5 stars (only because I forgot to flour the dish, the slightly burnt seeds actualy didn't mean it was burnt at all!)

Taste: 5 out of 5 stars. I'm so making this on a regular basis.

There is egg in this so for strict vegetarians/vegans - you would have to substitute with Ogran egg substitute or something similar.

Pumpkin & Parsnip Soup (Asian Style)

Soup is one of the easiest things to make in the TM. I mean, what could go wrong? Too much soup for too little people.

I had 1 parsnip and 1/2 a medium butternut pumpkin in the fridge, so I thought to myself on Thursday night, I could just change the EDC Pumpkin Soup recipe, a little.

Ingredients:
1 medium parsnip (peeled, chopped into 4 large pieces)
1/2 medium butternut pumpkin (peeled, chopped into large pieces)
1/2 Spanish red onion
1/2 red chilli
1cm piece of ginger (more if you prefer the taste - it's really hard to get me to eat heavy ginger flavoured dishes)
60g olive oil
1 tbspn of TM Vegetable Paste
Water (enough to fill up, up to under max mark, you can use less - depending on thickness)
2 MC of cream
Some coriander leaves (leave a few sprigs aside for presentation, should you be plating properly)

Method:
 1. TM minced and then fried: onion, red chilli, ginger (Sp 6, then fry - 3 mins, 100 C, Sp 1 to fry).
 2. Scrape down sides with spatula. Add parsnip & butternut pumpkin. The two vegetables added to about 600g. I peeled them because the butternut had been sitting in the fridge for a while, if you buy fresh leaving the peel on is fine after a good wash. (Sp 6)
 3. Add water and TM Vegetable Paste.
 4. Follow the EDC recipe for cooking time + additional 20% for the volume.
 5. Add coriander - to taste.
 6. Add 2 MC of full cream.
 7. Whiz/puree (up to Sp 9, 30sec to 1min, depending on the consistency you would like).

I added cream but if you like to make a vegan version just don't use cream. Sadly, I did this and forgot and brough a cup for Vegan Boy. LOL he didn't drink it of course, but it didn't go to waste - someone else at his work drank it.

It was quite spicy, the ginger and chilli combination really hit the throat and opens up your sinuses. I was so glad I didn't use the birdseye chillies I bought and only put 1/2 a chilli in. I also recommend to either up the speed on Step 2 to chop finer before cooking OR add additional puree time. The TM can actually create quite a smooth soup without the cream. I just love creamy soups. Coming to winter, I can see myself soup-ing a lot more.

Food vs Study...

Ok, procrastination hat on - Soup Sunday! And to be precise, mushroom soup. TM recipe aside, I added extra mushrooms (only 100 g more), extra cream and refrained from adding parsley. There's almost parsley in every recipe! Hmm I think I shall call it - Soup Sunday! Yes corny I know, but I bow before many a greater rhymers before me or alliteration advocates - e.g. Meat Free Mondays! (which by the way I do not observe).

Oh and I made hearty pasta with zucchinis and a chilli tomato sauce for dinner. It's not a recipe in the book and I only did it becuase I had spare zucchini and I bought chillies intending to make Red Curry Paste from the EDC and forgot shrimp paste (yes, my Asian household doesn't have shrimp paste). So I couldn't do the Curry Paste but I could make pasta - again!

Method:
1. Chop 1/2 a medium onion & 1 small red chillie (suggestion, if you don't want too spicy avoid the bird's eye sized red chillies - ahhh the voice of reason/experience) - speed 6, 2-5 seconds
2. Add 50g of oil & saute the usual way (2 mins, 100 C, Sp 1)
3. Add large cubed zucchini, don't worry this will cook down and soften but give texture. Add TM vegetable paste 2 tbspns & 700g of water.
4. Cook for 7 mins, 100 C, Sp 1 Reverse. Reverse because you want the zuchinni cubes to remain intact as much as possible to add colour and a taste explosion when you bite into it.
5. Add pasta, 300 - 400g, zucchini gives out a lot of water and could mean that you will need to add more pasta than you originall thought.
6. Cook for 10 mins, 100 C, Sp 1 Reverse. Add Salt & Pepper to taste.

To serve: Place some baby rocket in the bottom of the TMServer. Pour in pasta - if very saucey, don't panic, the pasta will soak up more of the sauce and you can also add parmesan or chopped cheddar to it if you like.

I served it with Catalano's grilled crumbed sardines and green salad (optional).

Photos are on my i-Phone which I'll upload soon.

Later at night I did try to practice the recipes. Hummus & Sorbet... I didn't remake custard, it never gets finished in the house and I hate wasting food. I invited a girl friend over to eat the sorbet and try the hummus. It was too garlicky and a bit too gluggy - shall add more oil in future. Also found out the inherint 'goodness' in tahini. I shall not be making many hummus dips for home eating in future. LOL as if the cream cheese one is much better for my wasitline. Delicious on my lips, deadly (if I keep eating in this quantity) on my hips.

Oh and it took me until today to realize the blog time was set to PDT instead of WST (Aust). WOW... where have I been? No wonder I felt like the weekend just ran away like a Herbie race.

TM potato & leek soup

This is my favorite soup and despite the fact I was due to go out for dinner I still made it.

200 g of leek means 1/2 a leek, what was I suppose to do with the rest of it? So I used the whole one (whites only) and ended up with double the leek. Luckily remembering the TM bowl capacity, I did not double the water'

I doubled the potato but didn't double the onion or oil (butter). I had run out of butter - it all went into the red velvet cupcake, I had thought I'd make butter & buttermilk - leaving extra butter for soup... But due to time restrictions with the cupcake I didn't make buttermilk, so I was short butter. Used virgin love oil instead.

I forgot to +20% the cooking time for the 'frying' part. But it turned out ok.

I did +20% for the boiling/cooking time and blended for a little bit longer. I think I put a little extra TM vegetable stock paste, as mine was little less on the salt. It seemed to add quite a bit of parsley & celery taste to the end result. Must really watch out for that next time do the TM vegetable paste.

I added cream in end after blending, the mixed a little on Speed 1 to stir through the cream. You could do this to taste, depending on what you like in the texture.

Overall the soup was more leeky than usual, but still creamy and tasty! I think I shall 'fry' the leeks & onions a little more til caramelised before adding the potato & stock.

If not catering to Vegan Boy, then definitely use butter instead of olive oil, and as liquid use 1/3 to 1/2 milk instead I just water. This will help cream the potatoes and make the soup extra rich.

I forgot to buy chives for garnish - but remember people, presentation/plating is very important to the palate! If servin guests always remember to garnish and add a few drops of truffle oil ;) or truffle butter or sprinkle truffle salt on top with freshly cracked pepper.

Rating: 5 stars (despite the heavy leeky flavour, it's my favourite soup!!!)

However, I do need to work on camera skills. (iPhone 4 camera is just not enough... this is possibly the worst point to start a hobby in photography - time commitment-wise).