Mixadventures in the festive season

The summer festive season always seems to inspire people to get creative in the kitchen. So I figured I’d get in on the action this year. Especially since I haven’t attempted too many new recipes since my last mixadventures post in July. (Having said that, don’t get too excited. I’m still sticking to simple things.)

Beetroot relish

I’ve been meaning to make beetroot relish for ages. I love beetroot relish. And the whole chop/stir/cook thing the Thermomix has going on makes it ideal for relishes and jams.

So I searched the Thermomix recipe community for beetroot relish recipes and tried one of them out. I selected one that uses brown sugar and includes Dijon mustard, cinnamon and nutmeg. [EDITED: After sharing it with a few friends, it seems the secret ingredient may have been the rice wine vinegar I used instead of white wine vinegar.]

The process was really simple:

• Step 1 – chop stuff up (7sec)
• Step 2 – add more stuff and cook for 30mins

While it was cooking, it occurred to me that I hadn’t organised any jars. (oops) And then it occurred to me that one is supposed to sterilise said jars. Not to mention seal jars (ideally) for preservation purposes.

So there I was rummaging around for appropriate glasses to fill up with relish and googling how to sterilise them while the relish was cooking. Since I wasn’t going to be able to seal them, it was a good thing I wasn’t making a huge quantity.

That’s another thing about the Thermomix. It might be ideal for relishes and jams, but it only makes small quantities. It won’t really suit those who are used to making enormous vats of condiments. But it’s great if you’re happy to make relish semi-regularly (and it’s so easy, why wouldn’t you?).

In the end, the batch filled two glass tumblers (covered in cling film), and I’m just going to have to eat it all before it goes off. I don’t think this will be a problem.

It’s really delicious, and not too sweet. I tried it out first with cheese on crackers. We also had some for our Christmas meal with turkey and this morning I paired it with scrambled eggs. YUM.

Broccoli salad

Our family Christmas was fairly low key this year — cold meat, roast potatoes and a couple of salads. (The solution to not eating too much, I’ve decided, is to reduce the number of things to choose from.)

My contribution to this meal (aside from beetroot relish) was the very simple broccoli salad from the Thermomix Basic Cookbook. This is so simple it hardly qualifies as a recipe… There’s only one step: Put stuff in, chop/mix for about 10sec.

The salad has a yogurt and lemon juice dressing. It’s fresh and healthy and makes a great accompaniment to a meal. I was hoping it would be a salad I could make for a summer meal (with some chicken, say), but I think I need to tinker with it a bit. Also, this salad doesn’t really keep — it was pretty ghastly the following day.

Now I come to think of it, I seem to recall making one of the other salads in the Basic Cookbook a couple of months ago… It was an adapted version of the “Pasta salad with trout and vegetables” (using salmon instead of trout). Didn’t take a photo, but it did me a couple of meals at least.

Chocolate sweet potato slice

This sugar-free baked chocolate sweet potato slice is a fun recipe my sister came across in the recipe community. It contains sweet potato and apple — and led to my first use of the Thermomix steamer (step 1). The steamed ingredients are then blended with dates, cocoa, eggs and stuff (steps 2-4), before baking in the oven.

Yet again, so easy. The texture of the slice is really smooth and velvety and makes for a fabulous guilt-free chocolaty snack. (I made this for an evening with friends back in September, and I should acknowledge that not everyone liked it as much as I do… heh.)

So that’s kind of it as far as “new” recipes go. I’ve repeated other recipes of course (especially soups, cakes, fruit and nut/seed mixes). I haven’t been a total slacker. Now I have a few weeks off… perhaps there’ll be some more mixadventures on the way soon.