Bangers and mash ... in the Thermomix

This morning, I had no idea what I was going to cook for dinner. Both The Boy and I stood in front of the freezer with it pulled open staring inside looking at what we had. We had a meat pie (beef, bacon and cheese - YUM!) for dinner last night, The Boy had had a few pasta dinners from the mac and cheese I made on Sunday and some leftover spaghetti that I brought home from lunch one day so we had a bit of a conundrum.

After looking at the freezer for a little while I pulled out a bag of frozen gourmet sausages - I forget what kind. I asked The Boy, "How about sausages?" to which he responded, "Can we have bangers and mash?"

I've never really made bangers and mash before, but really, it's not that difficult. It's just a bunch of cooked up sausages and mashed potatoes. Of course, I was going to serve our usual side salad of mixed lettuce leaves in a caramelized balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing.

The most complicated thing for this *very* pedestrian dinner (I'm finding, I'm rather good at making pedestrian food!) was making the mashed potatoes.

There are so many ways to make mashed potatoes. There is the traditional and probably most commonly used way - boiling and then mashing the potatoes with a potato masher. There is my restaurant style mashed potatoes way and then there is the Thermomix way.

I decided on the Thermomix way tonight because I wanted no fuss and I also wanted it to be quicker than the 1.5 hours it takes to make the mashed potatoes restaurant style. Plus I'm cooking on a weeknight, any shortcuts are welcome!

Here's the RECIPE for mashed potatoes made in the Thermomix:

Ingredients

• Mashed potatoes
• 800 g potatoes
• 200 g light or full-cream milk
• pinch finely ground sea salt
• 20 g Butter
• Pepper to taste

Preparation

• Peel 800 grams potatoes and dice into 2cm cubes.
• Place in simmering basket.
• Add 200mls lite milk or full if you prefer. Add a little salt.
• Cook at 100 degrees for 20 minutes or so on stir spoon.
• When tender, add butter and a little milk if required and turn speed to 4 for approximately 30 seconds.
• For extra zing, stir through half a teaspoon of horseradish paste. For extra creamy mash, use the butterfly to whisk and use cream instead of milk or half cream, half milk.

Since there were only the two of us, making 800g of potatoes was going to be too much, so I used two potatoes (medium sized) instead. That was about half the recipe - 400g, I think, so for everything else I halved the recipe though I did use extra butter. I think I might have doubled the butter! :-)

Instead of cooking it for 20 minutes, I went with 25 minutes just to let some more of the liquid evaporate.

I cooked it on Speed 1, instead of stir spoon.

I added two pinches of salt, which wasn't quite enough. I think it might have needed at least another pinch of salt.

I also added a generous amount of pepper and finally about 2 tablespoons of truffle oil because The Boy loves truffle mash.

Finally, where it was supposed to "mash" on speed 4 for 30 seconds, I added the butterfly and used that on speed 4 for 30 seconds.

After that it was just a matter of serving, putting the cooked sausages on top and adding the side salad, then digging in.

It was another one of those very yummy pedestrian dinners The Boy loves so much.

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