Yoghurt and Raspberry Cheesecake

I made this a couple different ways, the first was with dried blueberries, which are like sultanas or currants, but nicer (and heaps more expensive).  Then I made it with raspberries - frozen ones.  The raspberry version is my favourite.

200g malt biscuits
160g butter (I use salted, but unsalted would be fine, whatever your preference is)
300g thick Greek yoghurt
3 eggs
170g brown sugar
300g ricotta
2tbsp plain flour
raspberries, or other berry of your choice

Preheat oven to 160 degrees

Line a lamington tin with baking paper.

Blitz biscuits in the thermomix, 10 seconds at speed 8, then check.  Make them nice and fine.
Melt butter in microwave, then add to biscuits.  Give it a quick whizz, then press into prepared tin.  Refrigerate while you do the rest.

Give thermo a tidy up, you don't want biscuit crumbs in your cheesecake mix.

Combine eggs, yoghurt, ricotta, sugar and flour in thermo bowl.   Give it a quick blast, 5 seconds speed 6, then check, and do it again if it needs it.  It's a surprisingly wet mixture.  Pour over base, then scatter berries over the top.  I just put as many as I felt like on, and I felt like quite a lot.

Bake for 30 - 35 minutes until set and just a little bit golden around the edges.  Cool, then refrigerate.

This is before it was baked, but it gives you an idea of how I feel about raspberries :).

Portuguese Tarts

I make these a lot, I make them in mini tart size, and man size.  We all love them, and it's a great way of using left over bits of eggs that I have from other things.  This morning I made raspberry friands, which used 4 egg whites.  So this time, I used the 4 left over yolks to make the custard.  They are pretty forgiving when it comes to messing around with quantities.  I wouldn't be using all egg whites and no yolks, but sometimes I will use 2 whole eggs, instead of 3 egg yolks.  I did put a wee bit more milk in this morning (about 20 grams).

Ingredients
For the custard -
3 egg yolks
2 tablespoons of corn flour
1 tsp vanilla
400 mls of milk (you can also use a combination of milk and cream, but my cream was whiffy this morning, so it went in the bin instead of in the custard.
80 g of sugar (regular or caster, either is fine).

For the pastry - I used three sheets of puff pastry, and then did some cheese tarts with the left over bits.

Put all the custard ingredients into the thermomix, cook at 90 degrees for 8 minutes on speed 3.  It is absolutely fine to cook this on the stove, it's just that it's so super easy in the thermomix, I never bother anymore.  I like cooking, but I'm not really all about being hands on with processes like this.  I'm perfectly content for the thermo to be working on the custard while I move on to the next task.  And sometimes that task is to sit down and play Crossy Road for 8 minutes.

In the meantime, cut circles out of your pastry and push them into a medium sized muffin tin.  I use the pie top cutter from my pie maker.

When the pastry is done, apparently you should let it cool completely before spooning it into the pastry shells you've made.  I don't do this, it cools for maybe 5 minutes while I wash up, then into the pastry and into the oven.  This disregard for proper process usually works out fine for me.

Cook tarts for 20 - 25 minutes at 180 degrees.

Cool on a wire rack.  They come out of the oven all puffed up, then the pastry gently sinks back into the shell. 

Raspberry and Coconut Friands

I do like a friand, sweet, delicious cakies they are, so moist and nutty (by the way, knowing that people don't appreciate moist as a word, I ran it through the thesaurus, and my alternatives include dampish, muggy, steamy and sweaty, none of which works for a friand, so moist it is).  But I don't make them very often, because I forget how much I really do like them, but today, in my chocolate free house, I wanted to bake, so I had to stretch myself a bit, and I wanted to use the ground almonds I bought last week.  I found the following, but then changed it up a bit, because I can't help myself.

Ingredients

40 g almond meal
120g butter
80g sugar
75g SR flour
40g coconut, dessicated
4 egg whites
frozen raspberries, I didn't measure these, I just shoved a heap into the top of each friand before I baked it, probably 6 or 7 in each.

Melt butter (I did this in the thermo, 2 minutes at 90 degrees speed 2).

Add almonds, sugar, flour, coconut and egg whites, Combine for 30 seconds on the interval setting.  Or fold in gently if you're doing it by hand

Spoon mixture into 6 hole friand tin.  Mine almost filled the holes, and then rose just a little bit, no dramatic spills.

Press raspberries into the top of each one.  I love raspberries, so I did load them up pretty well.

Bake at 200 degrees for 25 minutes.  This might be just my oven though, I started checking them after 15 minutes, but they were a bit runny still.

Enjoy with a cup of coffee.  I am teaching kindergarten tomorrow, so I will save one for tomorrows recess, I may need it then.

Truffle, Parsnip, Pork and Sage Risotto

This is one of my absolute favourite meals.  In fact, it's everyone in the houses favourite meal.  Everytime I cook risotto now, my 11 year old wants to know if it will be served with burnt sage butter.  It is divine.  And a great one for the thermomix.  Try it now, you will love it.

Ingredients

500g pork mince
2 tbsp olive oil
 8 small parsnips (or 4 medium sized ones)
1 L chicken stock
70 g butter
1 onion
400g arborio rice
80g white wine
60 g sour cream
80g parmesan grated
a bunch of sage leaves
truffle oil

In thermo, process mince for about 8 seconds on speed 7, I often add a bit if fennel in with it.  Roll the mince into balls and set aside on an oven tray.
Peel parsnips, and cut off the skinny bits at the top, toss these in olive oil and bake in the oven with the pork balls for 10 - 15 minutes.

Grate remaining parnsips and set aside

In thermo, chop onion, 5 seconds, speed 5.

Add 40g butter to thermo and cook with onion on 100 degrees, speed 1 (reverse) for 3 minutes.  Add grated parsnip, and cook for another 3 minutes at 90 degrees.

Add rice, cook for another 2 minutes 90 degrees, same speed and still reverse.

Add stock, put in the butterfly and cook for 17 minutes, speed 1 reverse at 90 degrees.

Add parmesan and sour cream, mix gently and let stand for 4 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a frypan, melt remaining butter, and fry sage leaves gently until they are crispy and the butter has turned a lovely light brown.

Serve risotto into bowls, top with parsnip, meatballs and a drizzle of truffle oil.

I try not to cook this too often, so we don't get sick of it, but it is truly wonderful, and I don't know how long it would take of having it every week for me to be bored with it.

I've been able to buy truffles in a jar from Aldi occasionally and have sliced these and cooked them through the risotto, also delicious.

Eggs Benedict

Last weekend we had Hospitality Weekend at church.  Usually we eat dinner together once a month, but this month, to mix it up, we went visiting one anothers houses.  You got to nominate if you would be a host or guest, and then organised a meal together.  We hosted, and our guests had very small children, and our schedule was a bit full over the weekend, so working out which meal to do was slightly problematic.  Until we hit on the brilliant idea of Brunch.  What an under appreciated meal time this is.  Brunch.  I don't think I've ever been anywhere for brunch.  Never hosted one before, but it truly is a winner.  Late enough that you sleep in, early enough that it doesn't eat up your whole day.  And so easy to cater.  Bacon, eggs, croissants, mushrooms, sour dough toast, good coffee and juice.  So simple.

To make it look like I'd made more effort, I made eggs benedict.  I've never made hollandaise before, but the thermo just makes it for me, so no drama there.  Here is the recipe I used for the hollandaise, so yummy.  And I love poached eggs.

Hollandaise

4 egg yolks
130g cubed butter
20g freshly squeezed lemon
sea salt and black pepper

Insert butterfly, put all the ingredients into the bowl, cook for 8 minutes at 90 degree on speed three.  Serve poured over poached eggs.

I had leftovers and decided to microwave it the next day with my eggs, but it separated and looked horrid.  Tasted great, but looked dreadful.  The recipe is in the Everyday Cookbook.  Some of the EDC recipes are a bit Womans Weekly circa 1980, however, there are a few gems in there, and this is one of them.

Pork Sausage, Green lentil and Red Wine Braise

This is another one from a Delicious magazine, that I changed up a bit.  I used the thermo as an extra pair of hands to chop the onions and garlic.  I think my onions were extra strong - when I took the lid off the thermo, it felt like someone had poked something into both eyes, hard.  The fumes were dreadful.

So, ingredients:

1 tbsp olive oil
40 g butter - salted, unsalted, I don't think it makes a massive difference
3 garlic cloves - these seem to have become massive just lately, so I think I used one, but it was a monster
100g serrrano ham, or pancetta or bacon
1 carrot
2 celery sticks
2 cups red wine
2 lemon thyme sprigs - I prefer lemon, and thats what I have growing
1 400g tin of lentils, you could use 2, the recipe says 2, but I didn't want to freak the family out by overdoing it.  Subtlety is the key as far as legumes are concerned at our house.  Rinse and drain them
600g of pork sausages, whatever kind you prefer, we got pork and fennel.
Mashed potato to serve

Use thermo to chop onion and garlic cloves.  8 seconds of speed 5 and check.  I'm less proscriptive now I'm comfortable with the machine.  Or hand chop them, if you prefer, either is fine, I just hate chopping onions.

Fry up the onion and garlic and ham/pancetta/bacon with oil in a heavy pan.  You could do this in the thermo, I didn't because I wanted to use it for something else, and because I like onions fried on the stove. About 6 minutes

Chop carrot in the thermo, try not to turn it into carrot juice, a lower speed (5) is better than blitzing it into oblivion.  You want bits, not mush.

I chopped the celery with a knife, it's neater and I'm less likely to make celery juice by accident.

Add carrot and celery to the onion mix and cook gently for 8 or so minutes.  Mixture should be lightly brown

Add red wine and bring to simmer, cook for 6 - 8 minutes until liquid is reduced by half.

Add thyme and lentils.  Cover with a lid and cook gently for 20 minutes, until lentil have absorbed most of the liquid.

Remove from heat and stir through a tablespoon of butter.

While the lentil mix is cooking, fry up the sausages separately and organise mashed potato and any other veges.  Slice sausages and stir through the lentils and serve.

I always forget how good this is.  Will the kids eat the lentils?  Will I like the sausages?  But we always like it, and we're always hugely surprised by that.  Maybe now it's here on the blog, I will remember.