Pork chops slow cooked with creamy gravy and mashed potatoes ... in the Thermomix

I'm sorry that there has not been as many posts the last couple of weeks. One week, we just had a lot of leftovers and this week, The Boy has been out a few nights so I have not cooked much. I also haven't been well and have not had much of an appetite. One night, I just had a banana for dinner.

I've been wanting to try slow cooking for ages and I've been seeing a ton of slow cooking / crock pot recipes being pinned on Pinterest.

In the past, when I've tried a slow cooker recipe, it has not been particularly tasty and The Boy has been all "don't ever cook that again!" That was mostly my fault due to the fact that back then I knew nothing about cooking and I didn't know how to adjust flavors to something that The Boy would enjoy. I'm hoping that this time, with a little bit more cooking experience, I am able to make a recipe taste good.

So, in trolling through Pinterest, this recipe for pork chops with dressing and creamy gravy caught my eye and I decided that it would be great for our Sunday night dinner.

I'm going to serve this with mashed potatoes made in the Thermomix ... which is where the "Thermomix" part in the title comes from.

Here's the RECIPE for the pork chops:

Ingredients:

• 4 pork chops, 3/4-inch thick (I used bone-in chops)
• 1 onion, cut into rings about 1/4-inch thick
• 1 box stuffing or dressing mix (I used Stove-Top brand, pork flavored. Chicken flavored would also be great.)
• 2 cans cream of chicken soup (I used Campbell's Healthy Request Cream of chicken soup)
• 1 soup can water
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted (optional, but recommended if your pork chops are very lean)
• Salt and pepper, to taste or use seasoning salt, to taste

Instructions:

• Season each pork chop with salt and pepper. Place in the bottom of a slow cooker.
• Scatter the onion rings over the pork chops.
• Sprinkle the dry stuffing mix over the onions.
• In a bowl, mix together the cream of chicken soup, one soup can full of water, and the melted butter. Pour over the dry stuffing mix.
• Cover. Cook on high for 4 hours. Serve with mashed potatoes and a side salad.

I have to admit to being rather intimidated about the whole idea of slow cooking since my previous attempts have not been met with enthusiasm. That said, I was careful in what I did this time so that I could make sure that the dish was tasty.

I was generous with the salt and pepper when I seasoned the pork chops and I also browned them in a pan first. When I spoke to a chef friend of mine to ask him if it was possible for me to "crock pot" in the oven since I didn't have a crock pot, he told me yes, but he also said that I needed to brown the meat since that would bring out more flavor in the cooking.

We don't have the Stove Top brand stuffing mix mentioned in the recipe so I got the White Wings Stuffing Mix because it seemed to have the most spices in it compared to the other brand that was on offer. Even after that, since the recipe said pork or chicken flavored and this was just stuffing mix with herbs and spices, I added a teaspoon of chicken stock into the mix (just in case).

I did use the butter just because the butter just makes everything taste better. If you're extremely health conscious then you can skip it but it does make the meat cook a lot more tenderly.

I didn't use a crock pot (as I mentioned before, I don't have one!) but used a cast iron casserole pot instead. I put everything into the pot according to the recipe instructions, then put a sheet of baking paper on top of the opening of the pot and then put the lid on. My chef friend tells me that this seals in the moisture better and keeps the liquids from evaporating as much, though to be honest, my cast iron pots seal pretty well.

After a couple of hours the apartment started to smell pretty good. After 3 hours, I took the pot out of the oven to check on it (I also did a little taste test!). I poked the meat with the fork and it seemed like it was becoming quite tender. I also mixed some of the stuffing mix around that was sitting on top since it had not integrated entirely with the soup / gravy, then back in the oven it went for another hour before serving.

This turned out to be a really delicious and tasty meal. Very rich and creamy. There was a ton of gravy from the dish too.

Oh and by the way, this is my first time cooking pork chops. Since it's turned out well, I might do it again.

Of course, I was very remiss and did not update my blog post to talk about the wine that The Boy had picked out to drink with dinner tonight, so check out his blog post on what wine goes best with pork chops.

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Tangy tomato chicken noodle soup

The Boy and I recently had dinner with a friend of ours and his new wife. They are both Iranian and we were invited to a home cooked Persian meal.

Persian food is interesting because "restaurant" Persian food is a lot of mixed grill, dips, etc., that is what typically defines a lot of "Middle Eastern" food but home cooked Persian food is completely different from what you get in the restaurant.

There are quite a lot of Russian influences in the food, especially with Northern Iranian food and a lot of very creative ways of cooking rice.

When we sat down to dinner, we were served a soup first and I loved it from the first moment that I tasted it.

It's tasty, tangy (from the lemon) and just simply delicious. I declared at that moment that if I had to forego every other dish and just have the soup, I would be quite happy for the rest of the evening. Of course, our friends were appalled that I would not want to eat anything else - I did by the way, and they urged me to try everything else on offer. It was all delicious!

I did manage to extract a promise that she send me the recipe for the soup, which I have now received and am quite happily passing on because good food needs to be shared.

Here's the RECIPE of one of the loveliest soups I've had in a long time:

Ingredients:

• 1/4 chicken breast
• 1 finely diced onion
• 750ml water
• 1 chopped tomato
• Noodle (a handful) - thin spaghetti or angel hair noodles, broken into small pieces
• 1 teaspoon  Oregano, salt and turmeric
• 1 grated carrot
• 1 fresh lemon juiced
• 1 tablespoon plain flour

Instructions:

• First boil the chicken and onion together for 30 minutes until the chicken is soft.
• Then separate the chicken and shred into small pieces then chop the tomato into small pieces.
• Pour into the chicken-stock (onions may be removed), top up with water if needed, add grated carrot and diced tomato.
• Squeeze in lemon juice and also add the noodles.
• Finally, add flour, spices and salt as needed.
• Let it cook for 30-45 minutes.
• Serve and enjoy!

Me being me, there were a few things that I did differently.

I used 1 whole chicken thigh instead of just 1/4 of a chicken breast.

I also used some chicken stock on top of boiling the chicken and onions together, just to add more flavor to the soup.

Aside from that, I really didn't do that much different.

I love the tanginess of the soup from the tomato and the lemon juice.

With the noodles (I'm going to try alphabets the next time!), it's a hearty enough soup to have as a meal in itself even though it's a more broth-like textured soup instead of a thick creamy soup. Also, I didn't put the noodles in right away as in the recipe. I put it in towards the end and only cooked them for about 8 minutes. I didn't want soft gluggy noodles, I wanted al dente noodles.

I also think that you could add some diced up celery into the soup and that would taste great too.

© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny's Fortunes Pty Ltd

My best banana bread yet ... in the Thermomix

Each weekend, I buy bananas for the following week. I usually eat two bananas each day, one for breakfast and one for morning tea, or if I don't feel like it at morning tea, then I save it for afternoon tea.

This week, in my zeal to buy bananas, I did not count how many I needed and ended up buying too many. 4 too many to be exact.

I like my bananas still slightly green and once it starts to have brown spots on them, they become too ripe for me to eat. This happened this week on Thursday, so by Friday morning, I could not eat my remaining bananas.

Anyway, I have previously posted a banana bread recipe which I thought turned out OK but to be honest, I suck at baking and that was possibly the third or fourth banana bread recipe I had tried and while it was quite good, it wasn't perfect. Problem is, because I suck as baking, I don't actually know how to make the recipe better.

This time I asked a girlfriend if she had a good recipe and she pointed me to this one which she said she had made and turned out well. Now, I take that with a pinch of salt because she's a FANTASTIC baker and makes the most delicious baked goods. In fact, she's even thinking of starting her own bakery - she's THAT good!

After I looked at the recipe, I thought, what if I made this in the Thermomix? So I rang, my other girlfriend, the one who is a wizz with her Thermomix (she's my go to girl whenever I have a Thermomix question) and asked her how to change the recipe into a Thermomix one.

After about 20 minutes on the phone, this is the RECIPE that I ended up with:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter softened
• 1 cup sugar 250g
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 4 bananas, broken into small pieces
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

• Add sugar and grind on speed 9 for 5 - 10 seconds
• Cream together butter and sugar and eggs on speed 7 for 8 seconds
• Add crushed bananas and vanilla
• Sift together flour, soda and salt and add to bowl
• Then mix on speed 6 for 10 seconds
• Pour into greased and floured loaf pan
• Bake at 160 degrees Celsius for 40 minutes in a greased loaf tin, then check every 10 minutes until cooked
• *Cook only for 30 minutes if in muffin tray

This is baking, so I'm paranoid and I did not do anything different.

That said, instead of baking everything in a loaf tin, I put the banana bread batter into individual serves in little muffin trays so that I would have single serve banana breads. This recipe made 8 mini banana breads.

This recipe turned out to be by far the best of all my previous attempts. The Boy loved it and his words were "The other ones weren't bad, by this is a lot, lot, lot better". I'm happy when he's happy. :-) I guess this will be the recipe that I am going to be using moving forward.

© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny's Fortunes Pty Ltd

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.

© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny's Fortunes Pty Ltd

Mac and cheese with shredded ham ... in the Thermomix

I was going to make a spiral pasta with pesto and chicken for dinner tonight but The Boy asked for home made mac and cheese. Actually, he asked that I make the mac and cheese from scratch for him one night this week and I gave him the choice of having it tonight or having the spiral pasta with pesto. He decided he wanted it tonight.

I love mac and cheese. To me, it's like the ultimate comfort food. The Boy will probably once again call it pedestrian.

I had thought that I would put peas into it, but The Boy doesn't like peas so I'm skipping the peas but I got some shredded ham to put in it.

The one thing that makes me cringe about cheese sauces is cooking them in a pot. Tedious and time consuming, the thought of standing over it, stirring, stirring, stirring. It's like making bechamel sauce. Not one of my favorite things to do. I have a friend who can do it with her eyes closed, but it's intimidating to me since there are some things in the kitchen that I do find intimidating. Making a roux is intimidating for me.

I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that I'm very grateful to have a Thermomix. It makes making a roux or bechamel sauce very easy.

Here's my RECIPE for making the sauce for my mac and cheese:

Ingredients:

• 60g butter
• 50g plain flour
• 750g milk
• 120g cheddar cheese
• 80g Parmesan cheese

Instructions:

• Put Parmesan in thermomix and grate on speed 8 for 10 seconds. Set aside.
• Place cheddar cheese in bowl and grate for 10 seconds on speed 8. Set aside
• Make sauce by placing butter, flour and milk into thermomix bowl and cooking at 90 degrees for 12 minutes on speed 4.

I decided to be a little different with my mac and cheese sauce, so I got a tub of pre-made white creamy Carbonara sauce from the grocery store.

Instead of 750g of milk, I used 425g of the creamy Carbonara sauce, and the remainder in milk. Of course, I used soy milk, since I'm lactose intolerant.

While the sauce was cooking, I also boiled up the pasta so that it would be ready. I used 250g of elbow pasta and put that into boiling water for 8 minutes to make it al dente.

Once the sauce and pasta were ready, I mixed them both together and threw in the shredded ham (about 2 handfuls, possibly 250g) and mixed that through.

Then I added salt and pepper to taste.

This is an incredibly easy dish to make once you get the sauce right.

Of course, if you didn't want to do it all from scratch Kraft also makes a decent boxed mac and cheese where I think you either just add water or milk to cook. I've tried it once before but that was a long time ago. I really don't remember it very well.

Happy comfort food eating.

UPDATE: Apologies! It appears that I have already posted this recipe for the mac and cheese sauce before in this post. I had just forgotten about it and when I checked my tags to see if I had done it before or not, I looked under the wrong tags so I didn't see it.

© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny's Fortunes Pty Ltd

Hummus .... a great dip and all around yummy

There's not much cooking going on this week since we had lots of leftovers from the beef and cheese macaroni casserole from the weekend and The Boy being out one night, me being out another. On top of that, The Boy is away for the next 3 days which means I won't bother to cook much until he gets home.

So rather than posting what I've been cooking, I thought I'd drag out a recipe from a good friend who makes the most delicious hummus.

I absolutely love this recipe. I think it's the garlic and the paprika that she includes in the recipe that makes it so tasty.

Here's the very simple RECIPE for it:

Ingredients:

• 1 can of chick pea
• 4 tbsp tahini
• 1-2 small garlic
• 1 or 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 lemon juice
• Some paprika
• 1/4 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 c good olive oil (More if needed)

Instructions:

• Add ingredients into food processor and blend until smooth.

That's it. Blend and dig in!

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Simple beef and cheese macaroni casserole

Last night I decided to try out a recipe that I had seen on Pinterest and thought it looked or at least sounded good.

For the most part it seemed like a very simple recipe, mostly made up of a Bolognaise sauce and elbow pasta (or macaroni).

Here's the *actual* RECIPE: (I didn't think the instructions in this recipe were very good or well written so you might want to pay a bit of attention to what I did outside of the instructions!)

Ingredients:

• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 tablespoon canola oil
• Salt to taste
• Optional seasonings: black pepper, oregano, cumin, coriander, chopped garlic, hot smoked paprika, chilli powder—whatever you're in the mood for
• 1 large 800g can whole tomatoes, pureed in the can with a hand blender or in a blender
• 1kg lean ground beef
• 250g of elbow pasta or macaroni
• 1 cup each grated cheddar and mozzarella cheeses

Instructions:

• Sweat the onions in the oil with a three-fingered pinch of salt.  Add the beef and cook it, breaking it up as you do.  Add another three-fingered pinch of salt or two, along with any dry seasonings you want.  Add the tomatoes and any fresh seasonings you may be using, bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat to low and cook for an hour.
• Cook the macaroni in boiling water till it's half done.  Drain it and add it to the tomatoes.  Stir it into the sauce.  Taste it.  Add more salt and other seasonings as needed, and cover.  When it's cooled and the pasta has absorbed the tomato juices, transfer it to a large baking dish and cover it with foil.  It can sit out for several hours like this, be refrigerated for up to two days, or frozen a few weeks.
• Bake it in a 200 degree Celsius oven till it's piping hot (about 45 minutes if it's cold to room temperature).  Just before you're ready to eat, remove the foil, cover macaroni with the cheese and broil till it looks beautiful.

I went about cooking this pretty much the way that I would making a Bolognaise sauce as I would when making spaghetti, so to be honest, I didn't follow the instructions that much for the sauce part of the recipe.

I did decide to vary the spices so that it wasn't my usual Bolognaise flavors so that we could taste something different. Instead of using Italian Herbs, I used Mixed Herbs, along with a generous sprinkling of cumin, paprika and ground coriander.

I also added several (okay a lot!) cloves of garlic into the mix.

After cooking up the sauce, I put it into a saucepan and placed it in the oven to simmer at 120 degrees Celsius for 1 hour, rather than have it sit on the stove at a low heat. I always find this way of simmering a sauce much more effective, safer and consistent.

After an hour, I pulled out the sauce and had the pasta boiling. I also tasted the sauce to make sure it tasted the way I liked it and added some more salt and pepper to taste.

I usually boil pasta for 8 minutes for it to be al dente but this time I only boiled it for 4 minutes based on what the recipe said.

After that, I layered the pasta, then two handfuls of shredded cheese (mix of tasty, cheddar and mozzarella cheese) over the top of it into a baking dish (I should have used a larger dish as I had sauce leftover!). Then I ladled the sauce on top of it.

I then placed the baking dish into the oven at a very low heat - 90 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes for the pasta to finish cooking and soaking up the sauce.

After 20 minutes, I put two more handfuls of shredded cheese on top of the casserole and back into the oven at 200 degrees Celsius for another 20 minutes.

All up, this takes about 2 to 2.5 hours, possibly 3 hours of cooking time. Make sure you allow that if you are going to make it.

I misjudged a few things:

1. I used a baking dish that was slightly too small and ended up with some sauce leftover. I'll probably freeze that and use it for a pasta dinner one night when I want to just cook something quick.
2. I also started cooking it a little too late so dinner was quite late for us. I should have started cooking about 5pm or even at 4:30pm but I started instead at about 6pm or possibly a little after. This meant that we didn't end up eating till close to 9pm. Very late for dinner at home.

One last thing, since it's all baked and the casserole has pasta in it, you need to be a little heavy handed with your seasoning if you want the dish to taste good. Don't be shy with your spices and your seasoning. It will really help your dish taste yummy.

While the casserole was baking, The Boy snuck into the kitchen and had a taste of the leftover sauce. He declared it "very tasty" and was quite adamant about saving it for another pasta dish one night. :-) It always makes me happy when The Boy enjoys the food I make.

Anyhow, it turned out to be delicious!! The Boy loved it though he termed the dish very "pedestrian" by which he means "everyday, home cooking that is yummy to eat". We have a ton of leftovers, so there are at least another 2 whole meals for the both of us left for the week.

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