Sushi Rolls

Sushi Rolls are great for lunchboxes or canapes when you are entertaining .  You can choose your favourite filling and get rolling…. I have used a bamboo mat in this example, but I also have a sushi box.  Whatever your chosen method, cook the rice in the Thermomix and utilise the varoma to steam fillings like chicken and carrot (having small kids, lightly steaming carrots make them more palatable for mine).

Ingredients

400g Sushi Rice (washed)

30g Rice Vinegar

15g Sugar

Good pinch Salt

Nori Sheets

Fillings

1/2 Chicken Breast cut in strips and marinated (soy, oyster, ketchup manis what ever you want to try)

Avocado

Mango Frozen Yogurt

This is a very quick afternoon treat or dessert which we do a lot, it came about last summer after I bought a case of Mangoes and froze the extra cheeks.  You can use any fruit,  it is just a demonstration of the ‘wet and dry’ principle outlined in the ‘Sorbet tips and variations’ post.  The quantities and proportions can be varied it is merely an example, I just chuck in some cheeks and add a couple of spoonfulls of yogurt and adjust, but for those who prefer something to work from use this ‘recipe’ as a guide.

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Ingredients

300g Frozen Mango

200g – 300g Natural yogurt

Honey to taste 

Sorbet tips and variations

Sorbet is one of the first things most new owners make and it is not uncommon to hear the expression ‘you had me at Sorbet’ when people are talking about their demonstration!

I thought in this post I would just remind you of ways you can ‘play’ with the sorbet recipe and experiment with different flavours and consistencys.

The basic principle

Raw sugar is ground to icing sugar as a sweetener – The amount of sugar depends on the fruits used and can be reduced or omitted completely, in some recipes like my frozen yogurt I sweeten at the end as required with natural honey.

Your chosen wet and a dry ingredient e.g Fresh fruit and Ice  are ground at high speed (speed 9) until the desired consistency is reached encorporated with aid of the spatula.

Add an egg white and encorporate – This is purely textural and optional, if you leave out you will just get an icier more granita or slushy style sorbet.  When using as a drink base i:e with champagne do not add it, there is also no need if using cream as it has a creamy consistency anyway.

Understanding and choosing your wet and dry ingredient

If you just grind ice in your Thermomix you will make a  ‘snow’, therefore if your second ingredient is also frozen (fruit) you will get a very dry granita, in order to get the preferred texture one of the ingredients needs to be ‘wet’ or a liquid needs to be added to emulsify the two often adding egg white alone is not always sufficient.

Dry Ingredients variations  –  Experiment with your ice cubes freeze:

Milk, Yogurt, Cream, Cordials ( Elderflower cordial works well) Juices, coconut milk or cream.

Wet ingredients :

Fresh fruits, Cream, Yogurt, Juice, Water, liqueur or Alcohol!

If the sorbet is not coming together it is too dry so add more liquid, sometimes you need to add alot.  Equally if sorbet is too wet add more ice, fruits like watermelon are very high in water and subtle in flavour so maybe best pre frozen or combined with other fruits.

Add extra flavour

Once you understand the priciple, get creative with flavour……

• Add zest when milling the sugar to add a real zing!
• Herbs, like mint, rosemary, lavender
• essences, pastes, cordials or infusions

Cocktail books can provide inspiration for pairings like pineapple and coconut (fresh pineapple and frozen coconut cream) Lime, elderflower and mint (pictured), there is no right or wrong combination so play around with your favourite flavour combinations and blends and have fun with it……

Beef Pie (filling)

I have made this a few times now and have been very happy with the result,  as usual I change things around a bit each time, but the principles remain the same.  The pastry you use is entirely your choice…. the first time I made it with a EDC shortcrust base and frozen flakey pastry top, the second was a suet pastry made from Tandaco suet mix as per the box instructions using the TM to mix together and kneed for 20 seconds.

With regard to filling again, feel free to change up according to what you have, I have done Beef and Mushroom, but the one pictured was tonights Beef and Fennel, the most important thing is the size of the diced beef, I buy pre diced beef but reduce the size by at least half until about 1 – 2cm chunks.  I use the glass lid from a casserole dish as my pie plate so it has a nice deep fill to it.  The casserole filling is very saucey but don’t worry as we strain it off to use as gravy……..yum…well we think so, let me know what you think!

Ingredients

1 Medium to large Onion

2 Garlic Cloves

Handful of Parsley or herbs of choice

Olive Oil

500g Diced Beef

300g Complimentary veg (Mushroom, Fennel etc) chopped

1 x 400g tinned chopped Tomatoes