Quick winter salads

Fast & easy side dish to off set any meat or just a healthy vegetarian main meal!

Ingredients
2 beetroot
1/2 a medium Spanish red onion
100 g walnuts halved
200 g baby spinach or mixed leaf salad
100 g Danish feta
Salt/pepper to taste

Method
1. Peel & quarter the beetroot
2. Place beetroot & onion in TM bowl. Speed 5, 3-4 seconds.
3. Add walnuts, whole block feta and chop at Speed 3, 2 seconds.
4. Place salad green in bowl / plate.
5. Scoop out salad & apportion onto plate for presentation. Serve with toasted Turkish bread for a main meal lunch :)


Sprinkle salt & pepper if you'd like. I found the fresh sweet taste of the beetroot, the salt in feta & the bite of the Spanish red onion was enough.

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.

Potato & Leek Frittata

Due to my love of Potato and Leek soup, and the objections of my family to having soup (what they perceived to be ALL the time). I searched for something different. Ta-da... Potato & Leek Frittata - what a wonderful idea! And yes there's a TM receipe for it on the community or Google it. I can't keep to recipes so here's what I did instead. I used the Varoma to steam the potatoes.

Ingredients:
4 medium Nadine potatoes (peeled, sliced into 5mm thick pieces)
1 leek (white only)
50g olive oil
1/2 brown onion
1/2 cup of bacon (roughly chopped, approximately 2 rashers)
6 button mushrooms (sliced)
8 eggs
Parmesan & Cheddar cheese mix (80g of each, pre-grated in TM)
100g of cream * can use milk but use less so the frittata would set.
Pepper & Salt to taste
Water for steaming

Method:  1. Fill 1 Ltr of water in TM, add sliced potatoes to Varoma (tray & receptacle). (15mins, Varoma, Sp1).
 2. Remove Varoma, leave potatoes to cool. Rinse out starchy water.
 3. Pre-heat oven to 180C.
 4. Add onion, leek, oil to TM bowl (Sp6 to chop).
 5. Add bacon to TM (4mins, 100C, Rev Sp1). Listen for the sizzle. Remove from TM.
 6. Add eggs and cream to TM (Sp4 to mix). You can combine Step 4 & 5 but I wanted to carefully layer my frittata, if you combine the steps, keep blades on Reverse.
 7. Layer potato, then leek & bacon mix, fresh mushrooms - repeat if your baking dish has space.
 8. Pour on egg, cheese and cream mixture.
 9. Place in oven, 25-35 mins until frittata is set. I say 35 – in case you use milk instead of cream and also additional time to cook the potatoes.

Serves 6, with salad or another appropriate side. Photos forthcoming.