Mint sauce

(Recipe from this post)

The mint in my garden is growing rampant so I thought I’d give homemade mint sauce a go to accompany the lamb cutlets I made for Christmas lunch. I was thrilled with the result, it resembles that amazing mint sauce you get with tandoori chicken at a good Indian restaurant. Definitely giving this recipe another go. The only downside is that one recipe only yields a tiny amount of sauce, so if you like drowning your dish in condiments like I do, or you have a large of mouths to feed, I recommend doubling or even tripling the quantities. If you were buying a bunch of mint from the supermarket you’d probably get triple the mint needed for this recipe anyway.

Ingredients

5 sprigs of mint, stems removed
1 small shallot
1 small clove of garlic
2 tbs cider vinegar
2 tbs olive oil
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Method

– Bung all your ingredients in the TMX bowl and whizz for 7 secs/speed 10.

– Scrape down the sides, then whizz it again to make sure you’ve gotten it as smooth as possible.

– Done-zo!

French onion soup

We bought a house a couple of months ago, and my normal habit of cooking 5 nights a week fell well and truly by the wayside with all the packing we had to do. So once I finally unpacked the Thermomix at our new place, I was hellbent on using it for our first home cooked meal.

Now this recipe does involve a bit of time on the stove. I normally give recipes like this a miss, but because I like to keep my french onion soups in the fridge for a day or two, I simply cooked the onions in my soup pot, then once the recipe was done I just poured it back into the soup pot and woo hoo no extra washing up! I couldn’t find a simple enough recipe online so I just adapted my stove version to suit.

Ingredients

5 onions, quartered. I only used brown onions but a mix also tastes lovely.
50g butter
Small handful of sage leaves
1 litre of good quality beef stock
Salt and pepper to taste

Method

– Pop a pot on the stove, turn the gas on and dump your knob of butter in to melt.
– Chuck half of your onions into the TMX bowl and chop for 2secs/speed 5. repeat with remaining onions.
– Add your onions to the pot along with the sage leaves and saute for about 20 mins until caramelised.

– Pour mixture back into your TMX bowl and add the stock, salt and pepper.

– Cook for another 60 mins/100 degrees/reverse/speed 1.

– Pour soup back into pot, cool, then refrigerate overnight to enhance the flavour. Serve heated with crusty bread, some grated cheese if that tickles your fancy, and more cracked pepper.

I’ll be back

Sorry for the lack of posts to date! We have been moving house (just before a MASSIVE Christmas lunch at our place, I like a bit of a challenge) and broadband had only just come back up. But I have a number of soup, dip and condiment recipes to share with you in the coming weeks. Chat soon!