Sesame Salmon & Vegetables with Creamy Tikka Sauce

 

 

The other night I was so tired, and really didn't feel like cooking dinner. I was very tempted to just give in and buy fish and chips. But I pulled myself together and dug a couple of salmon steaks out of the freezer, popped them into some salty water to thaw out, and began chopping veges. In thirty minutes (yes, 30 minutes!) we sat down to this absolutely delicious meal. Thank goodness for my Thermomix. There's hardly ever an excuse to have takeaway when you have a Thermomix... you can have a restaurant quality meal in half an hour.

I thought I'd better write the recipe down so I remember what I did for next time. So here it is - try it next time you don't feel like cooking!

 

[Note: I had leftover cooked quinoa in the fridge, so I served the salmon and veges on that. You could even leave that out and just serve it on salad greens; or you could cook the quinoa in the rice basket while the sauce, fish and veges are cooking. An all-in-one meal!]

1. Cube salmon, drizzle with tamari and sesame oil, set aside.

- 2 or 3 salmon steaks, cut into 2 cm cubes

- tamari & sesame oil, to taste

2. Chop up some veges and place in Varoma dish:

- carrots, sliced

- broccoli, in small florets

- orange sweet potato, cubed (optional)

3. Place cubed salmon on top of veges. Drizzle a little more sesame oil and tamari over the veges if you like. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.

4. Pour into bowl of Thermomix:

- 400g coconut cream or milk

- 400g water

5. If you're cooking quinoa at the same time, weigh the dry quinoa into the rice basket, rinse well, then place in bowl:

- 350g quinoa

   Place lid on bowl, set Varoma dish on top, and cook at Varoma temp for 20 minutes, speed 4.

6. Check that everything's cooked, set Varoma dish onto its' lid (to catch drips), and tip quinoa into a serving dish. Add the following to the juices left in the bowl and whiz up on speed 9 for a minute:

- a handful or two of raw cashews (depending how thick you want the sauce)

- 2 cloves of garlic

- about a cm of raw ginger (optional)

- a teaspoon of vege stock paste

- a large tablespoon (or two) of tikka paste (homemade, from the *Thermomix Indian cookbook.)

- a teaspoon of Rapadura (or honey)

- a dash of tamari

*This is the best tikka paste EVER - you need the Indian cookbook even if it's just for this recipe!! Oh, and also for the awesome Butter Chicken recipe. :)

7. Serve quinoa onto the plates, top with some raw baby spinach, then the salmon and veges, then the sauce.

Vietnamese Fish Curry with Sticky Rice

Don't you just LOVE sticky rice? We do! I actually only tasted it for the first time a few months ago at a Vietnamese cooking course run by Geraldine of Rainforest Bounty, and came home and made it for my family, who were instantly addicted! First let me tell you a little about the Rainforest Bounty Cooking School...

Geraldine of Rainforest Bounty Cooking School -

environmental scientist and talented cook!

The Rainforest Bounty Cooking School is in the edge of the rainforest, close to the base of Bartle Frere, on the Atherton Tablelands (about 15 minutes drive from where I live). You can choose from Vietnamese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Laos/Thai, Middle Eastern or Mediterranean classes. It's a 'paddock to plate' class, beginning with morning tea and a chat about the wonderful bounty found in our north Queensland rainforest, and what it can be used for (including sampling Geraldine's gourmet Rainforest Bounty condiments). Then it's on with the gumboots and off to the garden and native fruit orchards to learn more about the local 'bush tucker', gathering what's needed for the class as we go...

 Ingredients for the class are from the rainforest orchard and kitchen garden, together with Rainforest Bounty gourmet condiments, as well as heirloom varieties of fruit and vegetables sourced from local organic farmers, fishermen, gardeners and artisanal producers.

Then it's back to the kitchen where the fun begins...

Making rice noodles and preparing banana flowers for the

banana flower with rainforest lemon salad.

(By the way, you don't eat the purple bits, they're for decoration.

Or the blossoms. Just part of the white, inner leaves.)

I highly recommend the Rainforest Bounty classes - they're a lot of fun and you'll learn heaps! Geraldine has lived, worked and travelled extensively in South East Asia, and is a great teacher. To see more photos, check out my Facebook page.

Anyway, back to the sticky rice... as you can see in the photo above, sticky rice is steamed, not boiled. This is the traditional way of cooking it - in a bamboo mat/funnel kind of thing over a pot of boiling water, with a cloth draped over it to keep the steam in. It must be soaked first for at least six hours. My friend Bel and I were watching the rice being cooked, and thinking there must be a way to do it in the Varoma (steamer) of the Thermomix. And there is! The great thing about it is that you can also cook your curry at the same time as the rice steams!!

I love all-in-one Thermomix meals that make the most of the Varoma, so I was very pleased to find a recipe in the Travelling with Thermomix cookbook that uses this method of cooking sticky rice. (If you're lucky enough to have a copy of this hard-to-get cookbook, the recipe is 'Stewed Beef with Tamarind and Sticky Rice' in the Thai section.) This is a great way to cook rice if you want to cook a lot - you can fit much more rice in the Varoma than you can in the rice basket. Of course, regular rice needs to be cooked in the basket where the water can whoosh through it, but sticky rice cooks perfectly in the Varoma as it only needs steam to cook. Don't forget you need to soak it for at least six hours first though, so plan ahead.

Here's my version of Geraldine's Vietnamese Fish Curry - I've changed a few of the ingredients to make it more to my taste, and converted it to the Thermomix... so it may not be quite so authentic now, but it's still very yummy! Hope you like it :)

Vietnamese Fish Curry with Sticky Rice

1. First, get the rice soaking. I soak mine in the Thermoserver all day, then cook this for dinner at night. You at least need 6 hours of soaking time.
- Glutinous rice (the amount is up to you - you can just use 300g if cooking for a small family, right up to the whole packet for a large family!)
- water to cover

2. An hour before dinner time, start preparing the curry. First you need to make the paste. Mix together in the Thermomix on speed 9 for 15 seconds:
- 2 medium tomatoes, halved
- 1 tsp Rainforest Fruits Jeowbong (this is a prize-winning Rainforest Bounty chilli paste which you can order online; or you could substitute it with a rich, fruity, thick chilli paste of your choice)
- 1 medium red chilli, deseeded (I leave this out as my kids don't like it too hot)
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 inches fresh turmeric (or 2 tsps dried turmeric powder)
- 1 inch fresh ginger
- 1 inch fresh galangal (if you can find it!)
- 2 tsp palm sugar
- 2 tsp chicken stock paste (great for flavour, but could use fish or vege stock paste)
- 2 shallots (white part only, save green parts for later)
- 1/2 tsp good quality fish sauce
- 1 tsp tamarind paste
- 1 tsp lemon aspen juice (or a squeeze of lemon juice)
- 2 Tblspns gf soy sauce or tamari

3. Pour half the paste into a bowl, and set aside the remaining paste in another bowl. Cube the fish, and leave it to marinate while you prepare the curry sauce:
- 600g fresh, firm-fleshed white fish (cut in 2cm cubes)

4. Heat the oil in the Thermomix on 100 degrees for 2 mins, speed 1:
- 1 Tblspn coconut oil

5. Add the remaining paste and cook for 4 minutes at 100 degrees, speed 2. Meanwhile, strain the water off the rice and tip it into the Varoma dish, poking a hole in the middle for the steam to get through.

6. Add pumpkin, coconut milk and lemon grass to bowl, place Varoma on top, and cook at Varoma temperature for 25 minutes, reverse speed soft:
- 500g pumpkin, cut in 2cm cubes
- 500ml coconut milk (you can make your own!)
- 2 stalks of lemon grass (white part only), bruised (not chopped - just crush with flat side of large knife)... OR, if you can't get lemon grass, chop up the green parts of the shallots and throw them in instead, saving some for the garnish.

7. Remove Varoma and check if the rice is cooked. It will be all stuck together, so don't stir it too much, just push the sides in a bit with a fork if they need more cooking, and re-poke the hole in the middle.

8. Add the fish and paste to the Thermomix bowl, replace Varoma, and cook for 5 minutes at Varoma temp, reverse, speed soft. If you're worried the fish may break up, you can insert the butterfly.

9. Serve it up... If you want to keep the rice 'sticky', serve it next to the curry, as it 'unsticks' once it gets wet. (The kids love to make balls of rice with their fingers and pop them in their mouths - that's half the fun!) Garnish individual serves with sliced shallots.

I hope you enjoy it as much as my kids do!!

Salmon-Rice Casserole

For those who can't handle milk, this is a deliciously creamy dish with a dairy-free white sauce. If you can handle some cheese, you can add grated Parmesan instead of the yeast flakes.

This meal freezes well, so I make a double batch and put half in the freezer for another day. (See instructions below.) If you don't want to make a double batch, halve everything except the water you cook the rice in. You'll still need to cook the rice and broccoli for the same time as below, but the sauce will only take about 4-5 minutes.

You can use fresh or tinned salmon for this recipe - if using fresh, cube and place on top of broccoli to steam while the rice cooks below. If using tinned, add to the casserole when putting it together. See the variation below for using quinoa instead of rice - quicker, and higher protein!

1. Weigh water into Thermomix, add rice basket and weigh in rice. Set to cook for 25 minutes at Varoma temp, speed 4:
- 1200g water
- 400g brown rice

2. Place Varoma on top of bowl, add broccoli (and salmon, if using fresh) to Varoma, and continue to cook for another 10 minutes at Varoma temp, speed 4, until all cooked through:
- 2 heads of broccoli, cut into small florets
- 2 cups fresh salmon pieces (optional - can use tinned)

 3. Divide the rice and broccoli between two casserole dishes, rice on the bottom, broccoli on top. If you're going to freeze one, line the dish with baking paper first. (You'll see why later...) Top with salmon and sprinkle with lemon juice. Set aside.
- cooked brown rice and broccoli (and cooked salmon if using fresh)
- 400g (14 3/4 oz) can salmon, drained (if using tinned)
- 2 tsp fresh lemon juice

4. Empty the bowl, rinse and dry well, and make the white sauce. Start by grinding up the rice and almonds for 1 minute on speed 9:
- 80g raw brown rice
- 80g raw almonds

5. Add water and pulverize on speed 9 for 1 minute:
- 700g water

6. Add remaining ingredients for white sauce and cook for 6 minutes, 90 degrees, speed 4:
- 30g ghee or butter or olive oil
- 1 Tblspn chicken or vege stock paste
  (chicken stock paste recipe here)
- 1 Tblspn savoury yeast flakes (or some grated parmesan)
- a pinch of cayenne pepper
- a pinch of ground nutmeg
- 30g cornflour (or other flour)
- herb salt to taste

7. Pour sauce over layers and top with:
- a couple of handfuls of chopped almonds (whole almonds chopped at speed 5 for 10 seconds in Thermomix) OR a couple of handfuls of roughly chopped pine nuts

Ready to go in the oven or freezer...

8. Either bake for 30 mins in moderate oven, or cool and freeze. Once frozen remove baking paper wrapped casserole from baking dish, and place in airtight bag and put back in freezer. When you're ready to bake it, you can remove the bag, and place the casserole back in the original baking dish, and it will fit perfectly! Bake unthawed casserole in moderate oven for about 1 1/2 to 2 hrs. (Uncover towards end of cooking time to brown.)

Variation: Try using quinoa instead of brown rice - here's a recipe for garlic quinoa which would work well, and the broccoli can steam on top. Place Varoma on top right at the start, as quinoa takes a lot less time to cook - you can check the broccoli part way through and take it off when you get it to the texture you like.

Fish Cakes with Creole Mayonnaise

A delicious fish cake recipe using fresh fish. You can use any inexpensive, coarsely grained fish in this recipe. (Adapted from Sally Fallon's "Nourishing Traditions".)

1. Fill Thermomix bowl with 500g water, then steam fish in the Varoma on top for 15 minutes, Varoma Temp, sp 2 (or until just cooked - depends on thickness of fillets):
- 700g (1 1/2 lbs) fresh white fish
Empty water from Thermomix bowl and dry. Set fish aside.

2. Grind up bread, cilantro/parsley and lemon zest on speed 9, until fine:
- 1 slice wholemeal spelt bread (or gluten free bread)
- 1 bunch cilantro or flat leaf parsley
- zest of 1 lemon

3. Add remaining ingredients, chop on speed 5 for 3 seconds, and season to taste:
- 2 eggs
- 2 small onions, halved (or onion & shallots)
- 2 Tblspns Dijon mustard
- cayenne pepper (to taste)
- sea salt or fish sauce and pepper

4. Add fish and chop 3 seconds on speed 3:
- steamed fish

5. Form mixture into patties. Saute until golden in butter/ghee and oil:
- about 1/2 cup butter/ghee
- about 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
(or can be steamed in Thermomix steamer)

6. Serve with Creole Mayonnaise:
Place ingredients into food processor/Thermomix and blend thoroughly on speed 7:
- 2 egg yolks (room temp)
- 2 Tblspns fresh lemon juice
- 2 Tblspns whey (opt.)
- 2 tspns raw honey (opt.)
- 1 tspn Dijon mustard
- 1 clove garlic
- 1/2 tspn sea salt
- 1/2 tspn dried thyme
- 1/2 tspn dried basil
- 1/2 tspn dried oregano
- 1/4 tspn paprika
- 1/4 tspn tabasco/chili sauce
- 1/8 tspn cayenne pepper
Scrape down lid and sides.

7. Insert the butterfly, and with Thermomix running on speed 4, slowly drizzle in oil:
- 2/3 cup oil (olive oil / sunflower oil / grapeseed oil or mixture)
Season to taste - may need more salt or lemon juice.

If you added whey, let sit (well-covered) 7 hours before refrigerating. Will keep at least 5 weeks refrigerated. Without whey, will keep about 2 weeks.