Thermo mixing

This is a text I sent to my friend who is a TM consultant...

Hi Vanessa 

How are you? I'm pretty excited... 

I just had lunch with my husband... I took him pasta fagioli. Since we had leftovers for dinner last night and he usually takes leftovers for lunch. Really I think I just wanted to see him a few hours earlier Lols. 

Wow nearly zero effort (I used the method you taught me) with cooking the pasta in the thermoserver, made his work mates in the office jealous and his co-worker happy as we shared some with him... (He's a celiac vegetarian) all in the space of an hour... He (Honey) even has lunch for tomorrow now. 

I've made this twice for the two guys the first time with just the one can of mashed kidney beans and rice macaroni from the Asian store. 

Today I made it with corn pasta and also added the second can of beans but used butter beans for the 2nd can (as I found that both boys are beans fans)... 

We liked both but loved today's with the corn pasta. The rice pasta was cheaper though. Just thought this info might be useful for demos with GF clients. 

Now I'm off to make the pasta for carbonara tonight. I'll let you know how it goes too

You could make pasta fagioli (which means pasta with beans) said like this... its well worth the effort to say it properly as it sounds so much more delicious and complicated to make.

and you can make it like this the “hard” way... like this or even this...

But my friend showed me a few months back a super easy way to make it with a TM and I discovered to my delight that it works just as well with GF pasta as it does with the regular kind. This pasta does not seem to be available any more in Woolworths however the Gluten Free San Remo and Barilla pasta's are now a great substitute.

I am pretty sure it would work as well in the Kogan however you will need a fake thermoserver. I have checked at the local Asian stores in Rocky and they did not have any in stock at the time the man from Flavourin Food World 157 Musgrave st said they get them in from time to time. He is beside the Indian Restaurant in the block just before the post-office heading from the bridge to shopping fair. I am never in town long enough to keep checking.

Pretty much the food-server keeps hot food hot, it is plastic on the outside (looks like Tupperware) and metal on the inside and is insulated. Apparently they also come with metal on the outside too- but I have only seen the plastic ones. They had them everywhere in the cheap stores in Cabramatta/ Fairfield area of Sydney.

Parmesan Cheese for serving (a squirt of lemon juice is also nice)

• 1 small red chilli (I just give my Mexican Chilli bottle a good shake)
• 1 clove garlic (I use 2)
• ½ onion (I use a full one)
• 50g Olive oil
• 1 celery stalk, roughly chopped inc leaves
• 1 can Borlotti or Cannelini beans, drained (Optional- leave out if your family is bean-phobic)
• 1 can Kidney beans, drained
• 2 fresh tomatoes (I used ½ a can)
• 2 tbs veg stock
• 900g water (I include beans water in this amount)
• 300g small pasta

Place Parmesan cheese into TM bowl grate 10s speed 9. Set aside

Place chilli, garlic and onion into TM bowl, chop 3s speed 7

Scrape from sides of bowl using spatula

Add oil sauté for 2 mins 100 degrees speed 1 (I usually give it 5 mins)

Add celery with leaves, kidney beans, tomatoes and stock and pulverise

Add water, 2^nd can of beans (if using) cook on reverse speed soft 10 mins

Pop pasta into the thermoserver

When the timer goes off, pour the hot sauce mixture over the pasta and cover with TS lid.

Do something fun...

10 minutes later give the Pasta Fagioli a stir and cover again

continue with fun thing...

Stir the mixture again in 10 minutes the pasta should be soft...

Add parmesan cheese and or lemon juice and salt

Serve.

The pulverised kidney beans make the PF look like there could be meat in it and they usually won't miss the meat. Cheap, easy healthy... awesome.

Homemade GF pasta

Making pasta dough is dead easy in the Thermomix (and I assume the Kogan too).

For this recipe I grabbed my TM everyday cookery book and swapped the wheat flour for GF with a dash of xantham gum.

• 300g plain flour
• 3 eggs
• 1 tbs olive oil

2 minutes on the kneed setting

I ended up using 400g of flour (My hand slipped, recipe just said to add 1 egg for each 100g flour). Also our chooks are quite young so they lay small eggs so I kept adding more till the mixture was right... it took 7 small eggs.

I left the dough to rest for ½ hour and researched ways to make flat pasta without a pasta maker. I found this one, and decided to make my pasta using smaller balls as I have a much smaller rolling pin.

I kept some pasta flat for lasagne recipe here

Others, I rolled the into scrolls and chopped them with a knife at about 1cm intervals. They unrolled nicely into fettuccine.

I later cooked them in boiling water and added cabonara sauce (made in the thermomix)

 Seafood Cabonara

• 1 onion chopped speed 7

• sauté in 25g butter 3 mins varoma temperature
• Add some bacon sauté for a further 5 minutes
• add 50g flour, 25g butter 500g milk and mushrooms
• cook 90 degrees, 7 mins speed 4.
• At 5 minutes to go add a handful of green prawn meat (optional)
• At 1 minute to go add 1/3 cup parmesan cheese

I didn't have much luck with milk sauces in the Kogan, however it probably just needed some tweaking. People with a thermochef were great at blogging advice for the Kogan.

The pasta was a little thick but we really enjoyed having the fresh stuff. I may yet invest in a pasta roller but apparently they are a pain to clean... I am looking forward to ravioli and cannelloni which I have not had in ages.

  The next day I made Lasagne with the pasta, and used the TM to make perfect cheese sauce. With rolled pasta, you can have your lasagne any shape you wish.

JUDIE