More adventures with the Thermomix. On Thursday night I cooked up a batch of an old favourite – spaghetti bolognaise. This time however, the sauce was made from scratch and the vegetables were bought whole. I combined two recipes, versaceyoyo’s vege laden pasta sauce and Master Moderator’s Best Bolognaise Sauce.

I put in huge chunks of broccoli and carrot, and after five seconds of chopping, they came out looking like this:

I removed the veggies, and then Thermie chopped and sauteed the garlic and onion before I added the rest of the ingredients (substituting 500g minced beef for 300g tofu mince and 200g chopped veggies, and adding an extra 70g of tomato paste), then Thermie mixed them all up for 35 minutes while I was out of the kitchen.

I was very happy with the result, and we had enough for two more huge serves of leftovers. It wasn’t as tomatoey as I am used to with a jar of sauce, but it tasted great and I think it will make it into the weekly rotation.

For dessert I made rice pudding, which was pretty good. I think some extra sultanas or other dried fruit would have made it more interesting.

I am glad that I had a few successes under my belt, because the next night was a bit of a disaster. I tried to cook cookie1′s Bacon Leek and Tomato Risotto without the bacon. Once again I was impressed with how quickly it is to convert whole vegetables into diced ingredients (obviously I have never owned a food processor before).

One second later…

However, in my hands this risotto came out too runny and very bland. I think the next time I will increase the rice to 230g, and maybe add some truffle oil or stronger cheese or sundried tomatoes to give it a bit more flavour.

I mixed some eggs into the leftover risotto mix and the next night I made fried rice cakes with Simone’s Mushroom and Wine Sauce. Edible, but also not one to be repeated.

At least Thermie is easy to clean at the end of the night.

Next week I’m going to try Phad Thai and Aloo Gobi.

Yesterday a magnificent machine arrived into our home. As a belated wedding/housewarming gift, my mother sent us a Thermomix kitchen machine. I had never heard of one before she mentioned it, but it’s basically a food processor that also heats and weighs. I immediately unpacked it and set it up in our kitchen – we have a teeny tiny bench space, so I was glad to see that it takes up just a little more room than a toaster.

Another great thing is that the recipes are so easy to follow – “cook for 3:00 minutes at 90 degrees at speed 4″. The instructions read like a science protocol, but have so far been far more forgiving in my hands than a Western Blot. My aim is to have a healthy meal on the table 30 minutes after I’ve first stepped into the kitchen. At the moment I make dinner most nights with the use of pre-cut veggies and pre-made sauces. With the Thermomix, I hope to improve on old favourites (like spaghetti bolognaise with home-made sauce) as well as utilise this machine to expand my repertoire (like risotto).

For my first meal, I was looking for something simple and easy that would also take full advantage of all the capabilities of the machine. I decided on “Bangers and Mash” from Full Little Tummies. While the onion/garlic/mushroom gravy is being blended and heated in the mixing bowl, the steam from the process cooks the potatoes in the rice basket, and the (vegetarian) sausages and vegetables in the steamer Varoma unit on top. It was great to hear little Thermie working diligently away in the kitchen while I was able to chat with Adrian and play with Hayden. The instructions were so precise and easy to follow – never has it been easier to add exactly 50 grams of butter and cook at exactly 100 degrees, and the meal came our tasting delicious. The potatoes were especially nice – for the first time I produced perfectly steamed tots bursting with flavour. I think next time I would thicken up the sauce with a little more corn flour, but I think this dish will enter our weekly rotation.

For dessert I made custard from scratch (milk, egg, flour, sugar, vanilla) in seven minutes. It was even easier than using custard powder. So far, Thermie is two for two.

Today we spent the whole day at Club Med Bintan Indonesia. We started the day with a nature walk through the thick jungle that surrounds the resort. We spotted a wild silver-leaf monkey, a centipede, and some carnivorous pitcher plants.

At lunch we let Hayden play with a few more foods. He can now pick them up and wave them around, and sometimes he will almost accidentally shove them into his mouth, but he really doesn’t seem that interested in eating and seems quite happy with his liquid diet.

We have been eating so much fresh fruit here – pineapple, watermelon, dragon fruit, snake skin fruit, guava, coconut – for every meal it’s freshly sliced and waiting for us in abundance. Hayden gummed on some coconut but didn’t seem particularly impressed.

It was a little drizzly, which meant that some activities were cancelled, a great excuse to curl up with Hayden and read our books while sipping on some cocktails. Hayden modelled the seahorse t-shirt that I painted for him the day before. Even though I chose an extra-small shirt, it is too big and he looks a little like an American footballer. Poor little bear is even too small for the Petite Club.

In some ways this place is very baby-friendly. They have plenty of high-chairs and changing stations with Johnson & Johnson products, and the buffet has a whole fridge full of pureed baby foods. We have a baby bath, a bottle warmer and steriliser in our room with more complementary baby skin care products on offer. However at 14 years old the resort is showing its age, as there are stairs everywhere and it is impossible to wheel the pram anywhere without assistance. We saw one little girl in a wheelchair, and she must be having a very difficult time getting around.

Overall we have enjoyed our time here. During monsoon season the beach and the weather are not spectacular, but it is warm and relaxing and a great excuse to spend some quality time together. Tomorrow we catch the ferry back to Singapore and the next day we fly back home.

I wandered through the local supermarket a few days ago. Firstly, I was astonished by its size – easily four times the size of our Supermarché. Secondly, it was astonishing to see the abundance of items that we pay a fortune for at the Australia Store in London. The rows of cordial (grenadine in all the flavours of the rainbow), Milo (malted powder that never properly dissolves in cold milk), Weet-Bix (vastly superior to Weetabix breakfast bricks), and the wide array of TimTam chocolate biscuits.

I bought Hayden a small jar of “my first Vegemite” to try on his first birthday. Though Adrian says that the reduced salt will detract from the true Australian experience.

There are some downsides to shopping in Australia, though. This is the extent of the foreign beer selection:

And if one takes a close look at a bottle of Stella:

It’s made by Fosters.