One Girl and her Thermie

Enter your email address to receive latest offers and recipes:*
How to purchase a Thermomix®?

Recipes

Yoghurt

Homemade yoghurt

There are a million different ways to make homemade yoghurt. You can order a starter or use a commercial yogurt as your starter. You can use a dehydrator, heating pad, crockpot, yoghurt maker, or oven to act as your incubator. However, this Thermomix recipe will knock your socks off every single time producing the most delicious yogurt.

There are a number of reasons why making your own yogurt is great, but I’ll give my top three reasons.

  1. Homemade yogurt is about half the price of buying plain yogurt at the supermarket. You can do the math yourself.  Milk is the main ingredient in yoghurt, so see how much it costs for a tub of yoghurt versus a pint or litre milk where you shop.
  2. You have more control over homemade yoghurt.  You can choose what type and brand of milk you start with, which yoghurt cultures or store-bought yoghurt to use as a starter, and you don’t need to put in any additives. No sugar. No nasties.
  3. It’s good for the environment.  There is no more need to buy so many little plastic cups of yoghurt.
Credit: This recipe has been slightly adapted from the Indian Cookbook which I sell in the online shop.
Pumpkin and apple soup

Apple and pumpkin soup

Autumn is a feast of riches when it comes to fresh produce. With the last of summer fruits and plenty of root vegetables coming into season, it’s no wonder autumn is seen as bountiful season. A warming apple and pumpkin soup like this is a perfect to use the wonderful pumpkin and squash that is plentiful at this time of year.

Between Halloween and Thanksgiving, pumpkin is quite possibly the poster child for autumn seasonal produce. With it’s hard orange skin, perfect for carving, and sweet flesh, it is the most famous of the squashes. The British season runs from October to December, and not only are pumpkins great for carving, but they are ‘scarily’ good for you too, as an excellent source of fibre, vitamins and minerals.

This apple and pumpkin soup can use any leftovers from Halloween carvings or for the perfect bonfire night party. Perfect to carry in a thermos and produce just as everyone’s fingers and toes are starting to go numb.

Mock Cauliflower Couscous

SW Cauliflower Couscous

Cauliflower couscous? That was my first thought when my colleague first introduced me to this recipe. Of course nothing beats wheat couscous, steamed and flavoured to perfection but when avoiding wheat or trying to eat more speed foods, this is an amazing addition to your side dish repertoire; mock cauliflower couscous.

Making cauliflower couscous in your Thermomix is super easy. You just grind up fresh cauliflower florets in your until they resemble couscous. Add some other vegetables such as red and yellow peppers for colour, onion and dates for flavour, a bit of white wine vinegar and olive oil and then serve.

Credit: This recipe has been slightly adapted from the  Cookidoo Platform Collection Alternative Sides. Link to this recipe on Cookidoo for guided cooking is here 

Sambhar Masala

Sambhar, also spelled sambar or sambaar, and pronounced saambaar, is a lentil-based vegetable stew or chowder, originating from the Indian subcontinent, cooked with a tamarind broth. It is popular in South Indian and Sri Lankan cuisines. Sambhar in South India is the equivalent of dahl, in North India, miso soup in Japan or potatoes in the UK. The best way I can describe it is the best side dish that goes with all of the regions food.

The aromatic flavours of this traditional South Indian dish are truly irresistible. The speciality of this sambhar is that it is made with minimal oil and loads of vegetables which enhance its nutritive value. When served hot with nutritious Idlis or paper thin dosas, it makes a meal that is very hard to resist. Alternatively, relish this sambhar with steamed rice to make a wholesome meal.

As a North Indian, I would only really eat sambhar in restaurants until my housekeeper, Anitha came to work for us. She’s originally from the south and now this is a staple in our household. Anitha, using her many years of experience as a cook, kindly converted her home recipe for the Thermomix. And no, not for the Thermomix community or me in particular. She makes this dish so often that using the Thermomix, it reduces her time in the kitchen.

Please see my later post for Sambhar, but first I thought I’d share the recipe for the Sambhar Masala. Don’t be deterred by the preparation time, that’s mostly getting your spices out of the cupboard rather than cooking time.

Credit: A version of this recipe can also be found Indian cookbook produced by India when the they sold TM31. The Indian Chef, Shamim Ahmed worked at the Australian High Commission in New Delhi for 24 years as the Head of Mission Cook was instrumental in producing this book.  I was convinced when my Mum’s cook made this dish. I thought she had taught him how to convert her recipe to the Thermomix and she said, “No, it’s in the basic book that was given to us when we bought the Thermomix”. When Vesta Appliances lost the distribution license in India for selling Thermomixes when the TM5 launched, I bought their stock and now sell them in my shop. The rest is history.

N.B. If you are a VIP One Girl Customer, you can also purchase a discounted version on my VIP Shop.

SW Coleslaw

Coleslaw is a classic dish to accompany many meals including BBQ, jacket potatoes and perfect both in the summer and winter. This Slimming World (SW) coleslaw is full of their ‘free’ food and therefore in SW-speak, syn-free.

I have to admit, I’ve recently joined Slimming World. My son is nearly 7 years old and I just haven’t haven’t lost the baby weight. It’s got to do with a combination of things; working too hard, eating all the recipes that I cook for my Thermomix business and way too many cakes/ desserts that my children love and not exercising as much as I need to, to keep the weight off. In fairness, I do go to the gym and a have a personal trainer and whilst I feel fitter and healthier, I feel big.

When we’re in our teens and twenties, losing weight is often as simple as turning down that extra scoop of ice cream or adding some occasional exercise to our routines. However, as our age increases, our metabolic rate has a tendency to plummet, turning what used to be an effective diet and exercise plan into a recipe for serious weight gain. For women in particular, hormonal changes after age 40, including menopause, can make it harder to lose weight and keep it off.

So I’ve decided to do something about this and whilst I make home cooked food daily, incorporating Slimming World (SW) recipes into my daily routine shouldn’t be so bad, should it? Well, having joined on a whim just this lunchtime, with BBQ ribs marinating for dinner, while the rest of the family enjoy ribs with fries, I’ll be having mine with delicious homemade SW coleslaw.

NOTE: Everyone really enjoyed this recipe, including my fussy Thermo-hubby. Syn-free but super tasty too.

Gajrela

Carrot Halwa (Gajrela)

I’m sharing one of my family favourites – carrot halwa, otherwise known as gajrela. This sticky Indian dessert is perfect for those with a sweet tooth and  a very simple recipe to make in the Thermomix and one I’m delighted to share with you.

Eaten at any time of the year, but especially on Diwali we make this at home. Diwali is a golden opportunity to crack out a few regional specialities from around the subcontinent – syrup-soaked mung beans, Rajasthani cream fritters, rice flour doughnuts and many, many others – but halwa is a near-universal treat: a sweet, buttery pudding made with everything from mung beans to pineapples, but which is often carrot-based.

Carrots are grown in abundance in the UK and are cheap and healthy, so gajar ka halwa offers the perfect excuse to crack open the celebratory sugar and ghee. As Meera Sodha puts it in Fresh India: “If eating carrots as a pudding strikes you as odd, remember how good a spiced carrot cake is. This isn’t too distant a cousin.”

And just in case, you want to impress any of your Indian friends who celebrate Diwali, here’s a Diwali greeting for you too.

May you have all the joy your heart can hold, all the smiles a day can bring, all the blessings a life can unfold, May you get the world’s best in everything.

Chapati

Where do I start? Firstly, I think by naming it. Chapati (alternatively spelled chapatti, chappati, chapathi, or chappathi), also known as roti, safati, shabaati, phulka and (in the Maldives) roshi, is an unleavened flatbread from the Indian Subcontinent and staple in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, East Africa and the Caribbean.

Chapatis are made using a soft dough comprising atta flour, salt and water. Atta is made from hard gehun (Indian wheat). It is more finely ground than most western-style whole wheat flours. Traditionally, roti (and rice) are prepared without salt to provide a bland background to our highly flavoured main or side dishes.

Traditionally, chapati dough is typically prepared with atta, salt and water, kneaded with the knuckles of the handmade into a fist and left to proof for at least 10 or 15 minutes to an hour for the gluten in the dough to develop. This is where as a Thermomix owner, life gets easy. In just one and half minutes, all that needing is done.

Credit: This recipe is from the Indian cookbook produced by India when the they sold TM31. When they lost the distribution license I with the TM5 launched, I bought their stock and now sell them in my shop. The Indian Chef, Shamim Ahmed worked at the Australian High Commission in New Delhi for 24 years as the Head of Mission Cook was instrumental in producing this book.  If you are a VIP One Girl Customer, you can also purchase a discounted version on my VIP Shop.

Asian Salad

This Asian salad is one of my favourites. We used to make this recipe as one of our cooking class dishes and time after time, after a class, I’d come home and repeat it for the family. It has a fantastic fusion which is bold, fresh and crunchy that is perfect on it’s own or as an accompaniment to any meal.

Credit: This recipe is from our “First Class with a Thermomix” cooking class created by Thermomix UK. If you would like to attend this or any of the classes, I am involved in, please go to my Events section on my website.

Chocolate Guinness Cake

This wonderful recipe for Chocolate Guinness Cake was used in our Thermomix Christmas Classes in 2017; originally from Janie Turner, on her Cook with Janie website and very similar to the Chocolate Guinness Cake recipe on Nigella Lawson’s website too, which Janie did credit it too.  Whichever fabulous lady takes ultimate credit, it doesn’t matter.

Guinness in a cake? Yes, this Guinness chocolate cake is perfect for any celebration and has become a favourite choice for birthdays. This cake is magnificent in its damp blackness. I can’t say that you can absolutely taste the stout in it, but there is certainly a resonant, ferrous tang. The best way of describing it is to say that it’s like gingerbread without the spices. Perfect for a Christmas celebration cake too.

Leave it un-iced for the natural look and taste or cover with either chocolate ganache or cream cheese frosting for that beautiful finishing touch.