This onion soup my mother used as a base for her Vranameer Chicken for many years. She, of course, didn’t use a Thermomix, so I’ve just adapted it for a simple, tasty, filling soup, perfect to eat as a soup, or as the basis for a casserole.
French Onion Soup Thermomix Recipe
Recipe Type: Soup
Author: Luschka
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4
My mother used this as a base for casserole dishes for many years. I’ve just adapted her recipe for the Thermomix. My husband and I have an ongoing argument about this soup. I think sweating the onion in the Thermomix is fine, but he thinks the first steps should be done on a frying pan. It’s a personal flavour preference.
Ingredients
25g butter
500g onion (about 3)
2 tsp sugar
2 garlic cloves, sliced
125ml white wine
500g vegetable, chicken or beef stock & water mixed depending on the stock you use.
salt & pepper to season
Instructions
Place the butter in the Thermomix bowl and add 500g onions, halved.
Mix at speed 5 for 5 seconds till they’re chopped, and put on speed 2/100C to sweat the onions for 4 minutes. (If you’re doing this step on the stove, fry until the onions are translucent but watch that they don’t burn. Add the sugar and leave to caramalise, about 5 minutes, but keep an eye on it.)
Add the sugar, and cook for 10 minutes, speed 2, 100C
Add the garlic, wine and stock and cook for 15 minutes, speed 2, Varoma.
Taste and season, and serve with fresh bread (although again here, my husband prefers it kept in the fridge for 24 hours, and then heated and served. I like it as is.)
It’s a ‘balmy’ 39 degrees Celsius in Perth today (that’s 102.2 F) and just thinking about cooking is enough to make me cry. I won’t be switching the oven or stove on today! Yesterday, however, was a much more manageable 32C, and having spent some time in the sea, I felt inspired to make a Spanish dish we enjoyed in Barcelona some years back – but adapted a fair bit to stretch it, and use what we have in the house too.
The original was a Chorizo and calamari in red wine tapas dish, but this summerified recipe includes Halloumi – you could probably use Feta too or leave out the Halloumi, but it adds saltiness, texture and flavour to the meal. And I’d include Halloumi in everything if my family allowed it!
The amounts in this recipe are a guide, really, and there’s no wrong or right. You can add ingredients – tomatoes would be nice, capers would be lovely too – or remove elements. It all works together beautifully, but none of it is essential.
The Chorizo in our local butcher isn’t very fatty. If it was I would have added the butter for the dressing to it, but as it didn’t leave any drippings, I added olive oil.
A versatile, adaptable, easy recipe that can stand the changes you might want to make to it. Feel free to personalise it. Amounts are an estimate and can be changed.
Ingredients
1 red onion, sliced
90g (1 bag) Rocket leaves
15g parsley, roughly chopped
250g chorizo, sliced
250g Halloumi, cubed
500g calamari, cleaned and cut into rings
60ml Red wine vinegar (1/4 cup)
For the dressing
50g butter
1 clove garlic
Instructions
Thinly slice one red onion, and pour over 30ml red wine vinegar. Set aside.
Heat up a frying pan to medium to high heat and add a dash of oil, just to prevent the food from sticking to it.
Empty salad leaves into a bowl, add the chopped parsley and set aside. Add any ‘extras’ you might want to use.
When the frying pan is hot, add the Halloumi and keep an eye on it so that it doesn’t burn, but browns on both sides. When it’s ready, remove from the heat and tip out onto the salad leaves.
Add the Chorizo, and the remaining red wine vinegar, and cook for about 3 – 4 minutes: just long enough to render the fat, but not so long as to make it hard and tough.
Remove from the heat into the salad bowl.
If the Chorizo left some fatty residue, use it, but if not, add some olive oil to the pan again. This time fry the calamari till it is soft and tender – about 3-5 minutes, depending on the quality and size of the calamari rings.
While the calamari is cooking, add about 50g butter and 1 chopped clove of garlic to a small pan (I chop the garlic in the Thermomix, then add butter, and melt for 90 seconds 50C) to melt the butter.
Add the calamari to the salad, and pour over the butter dressing. Toss the salad, serve & enjoy.
During my pregnancies I became very aware of what I called my Food DNA. It may have been mid-winter with snow falling around our home in the UK, but I was craving mangoes, litchis, kiwi fruit: seasonally appropriate for my Southern Hemisphere DNA. I find myself here again – not pregnant, thankfully – but wrapped and bundled in scarves and gloves, but craving salads and light suppers. I came across this salmon & egg salad recipe, designed by Sunrise’s award winning chefs, among a bunch of others regularly served in their care homes and it really appealed to me, but I’ve made a few minor changes to adapt it for the Thermomix. You can find the original recipe here, and you certainly don’t need any fancy kitchen machinery to make it. I’ll be in Australia for a while next month. I’m looking forward to a lot more salads and fresh, sun-kissed fruit – and will certainly be revisiting this one again.
Salmon & Egg Salad Recipe
Recipe Type: Lunch, Light Supper
Cuisine: Salad, Healthy
Author: Sunrise chefs
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4
A delicious recipe adapted from the Sunrise Care website for the Thermomix
Ingredients
4 eggs (hard boiled)
Small bunch of parsley
Pinch of salt
Pinch of ground black pepper
4 table spoons olive oil
¼ tsp French mustard
2 table spoons white wine vinegar
1 tomato – quartered
1 red pepper – seeded and halved
½ red onion – peeled and halved
¼ cucumber – cut in four
50g watercress
160g smoked salmon pieces
½ lemon
Instructions
In the Thermomix bowl, add 1 litre warm water and add the whole eggs in the internat steamer. Boil for 14 minutes/speed 2/ Varoma temp.
When it’s done, remove the basket and empty out the water.
In the bowl, add parsley , salt, pepper, olive oil, mustard, vinegar and stir for 10 seconds on speed 5.
Add the tomato, red pepper, onion and cucumber and mix speed 4 for 10 – 15 seconds. Keep an eye on it to see the size. You don’t want to end up with a smoothie.
Peel the eggs and halve.
Pour the salsa in a mixing bowl, a glass bowl is nice. Put the watercress on top, then add the strips of smoked salmon.
Dot the eggs around the top, and drizzle the lemon juice over the top.
When you’re ready to serve, mix the ingredients well, and make sure every plate gets a bit of everything.
This year I grew butternut squash in my garden for the first time. Between the slugs, the lack of sunlight and the fact that we’re moving soon, they’ve remained small, but perfectly butternut shaped. I’m quite pleased, actually!
Butternut Squash is perfect for this time of year – it’s light but filling, and can used in a variety of dishes.
Since we’re moving in a week, we’re trying to use up a lot of store cupboard supplies, and one of those is Risotto, so today I made this roasted butternut squash risotto for our lunch. It’s slightly different from my usual, in that I didn’t have wine or home made stock, but I was very pleased with how it worked out!
Thermomix Roasted Butternut Squash Risotto Recipe
Recipe Type: Main
Author: Luschka
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4
Ingredients
50 g parmesan cheese cubed
1 medium onion, halved
1 tbs white wine vinegar
1 tbs dried sage
50 g olive oil
400 g arborio rice
1000g stock/water
10g butter
1 Butternut Squash, sliced
salt & pepper to taste
*handful of fresh sage, if you have.
Instructions
Heat the oven to 190C.
Layer sliced butternut squash on a tray, drizzle with oil and salt, and cook for 30 minutes.
After 10 mins*, put the Parmesan into the thermomix bowl & pulverise for 10 seconds Speed 9 and set aside.
Place the onion and oil in the bowl & chop for 5 sec on speed 4.
Saute for 3 mins at 100C on reverse speed 1.
Add rice and white wine vinegar and dried sage into bowl & saute for 2 mins at 100C on reverse speed spoon.
Add stock and water and cook for 15 mins at 100C on reverse speed spoon.
Add butter and cheese and stir. If you have two bowls, swap over, otherwise empty the bowl and put half of the butternut squash in the bowl. Put the MC in place and pulse on turbo four or five times till it’s pureed.
Mix the squash into the risotto and season to taste.
Sprinkle with fresh sage leaves, if you have.
*Use those ten minutes to lightly fry sage leaves, if you have them. Set aside for topping.
There’s been a lot of chatter on the UK Thermomix Owners Facebook group about how to cook a whole chicken in a Varoma. As it happened, the day Maria of FeistyTapas set the challenge, I found a chicken reduced to £3 on it’s sell by date and decided it was a sufficiently cheap amount to ‘gamble’ with. Well, the gamble paid off, and the chicken was amazing! It was so moist and succulent, I couldn’t believe it, and I’m definitely a convert!
There are as many flavour combinations as chickens in the world, so you can change it up as you like, but what I did do that worked very well, was to add flavour to the steaming water as well as the chicken skin.
Obviously this is steamed chicken, so you’re not going to get a nice crunchy chicken skin, but 10 minutes at 200C in a hot oven crisps the skin up just fine if you want a roast-like bird. If you’re going to be chopping it up for other things, there’s no need, really, for that final step.
How To Cook A Whole Chicken In The Thermomix Veroma
Recipe Type: Varoma, Main Meal
Cuisine: Steamed
Author: Luschka
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4 -6
Add any flavours you like, to suit your accompaniments. You could steam potatoes or other vegetables with the chicken, but be aware of air flow and circulation around the Veroma, Some people put chop sticks in to allow for air flow, but I don’t. I just lightly steam the veg with the same water while the chicken is crisping up or resting.
Ingredients
1.3kg Whole chicken
Smoked paprika and salt for rubbing on chicken
2 cloves garlic
450g chicken stock (already mixed with water as per instructions)
Few drops fish sauce (Nam Pla)
Teaspoon soy sauce
Instructions
Clean out the inside of the chicken and if the feet are trussed, cut them loose.
Sprinkle smoked paprika and salt (or other herbs and spices) on the chicken and place skin side up in the Varoma. If you’re worried about sticking, oil the Varoma first.
In the bowl, chop the garlic 3 seconds/speed 6
Add the chicken stock, the fish sauce and the soy sauce
Place the Varoma on the Thermomix, and steam at Speed 2/Varoma/60 mins.
Pierce the chicken to see if the juices are running clear. If so, it is cooked.
If you want to crisp the skin, preheat the oven to 200C. Remove from the Varoma, and rub on some oil, and put in the oven for 10 mins or until it’s the desired crispiness.
In the meantime, steam your vegetables in the Varoma using the same, already hot water.
If you don’t wan to crisp the skin, set aside to cool down and use as desired.
Sometimes the most amazing things happen when you least expect it. This was one of them. I was looking round the kitchen thinking how I had no idea what I was going to make for dinner, when I remembered the asparagus in the freezer from a trip to a pick your own asparagus place with my girls.
I also have a huge supply of Risotto rice at the moment, so the obvious answer was Asparagus Risotto, a la the Fast And Easy Cookbook for Thermomix UK. But, I also had a left over bottle of champagne – that’s a bottle of booze that wasn’t finished the day it’s opened, don’t worry, a few years back I wouldn’t have known that either 😉 – and some prosciutto from our recent meat box delivery and chicken stock from the whole chicken I managed to make in my Veroma last week.
Well, this combination proved to be my favourite risotto to date. I hope you enjoy it too!
*If you don’t have a Thermomix you can still make this recipe using a traditional Risotto recipe, but substituting the wine for champagne, and the other additions for prosciutto and asparagus.
Asparagus, Prosciutto & Champagne Risotto
Recipe Type: Main Meal
Author: Luschka van Onselen
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4
I should warn you that this is a very rich dish, but it is beautiful. Just a rush of beautiful flavour, and I would encourage you to use the best quality prosciutto you can. This recipe is an adaptation from the Asparagus Risotto recipe in the Fast and Easy Cooking TM31 book.
Ingredients
80g parmesan
200g asparagus
20g olive oil
250g risotto rice
200g champagne of your choice
450g chicken stock
30g butter
8 strips of prosciutto
freshly ground pepper
Instructions
Run your Thermomix at speed 8, and drop 80g of parmesan cheese in for 5 seconds. Set aside.
Cut asparagus tips and add them to the cheese. Put the stalks in the bowl and chop 7 seconds/speed 5.
Add oil and cook for 3 minutes/100C/Speed 1.
Add the champagne, stock and risotto rice and cook for 15 minutes/100C/Spoon Speed Reverse, making sure the measuring cup is in to maintain the liquid.
When it’s done the rice should be firm but edible. If needed add another minute or two.
In the meantime, tear the prosciutto into strips.
When the rice is cooked, add the butter, parmesan, prosciutto and asparagus tips, and stir using a spoon.
Sprinkle freshly ground black pepper, and serve immediately.
I love Courgette Flowers (Zucchini Flowers). There’s something about them that just makes me think of long summer days in Italy… maybe because the first time we ate them was in Varazze Italy and a few days later on a long lazy afternoon in Rome. Some years ago we were camping in Switzerland but the nearest market was in a small town in Italy, so we drove there for fresh vegetables a few times, and picked up a big bag of courgettes attached to the flower. We took it back to the camp site and prepared our own stuffed courgettes. They are so delicious, I’m sharing the recipe with you as now is the time for them!
We have two courgette plants, two pumpkins and a marrow. Between them they make loads of flowers, but not enough for us to have a family meal off one crop, so I recently discovered that we can actually freeze the flowers. Just pick them, wash them and lay them on a tray without touching anything else. Pop them in the freezer for an hour or so, then transfer into a sealed container.
When you’re ready to eat them, take them out the freezer about 10 minutes before you need them. They’re so thin the defrost in minutes.
You can stuff courgette flowers with pretty much anything you like. We love mozzarella and anchovy, even if you don’t like anchovy, it’s great… it really just adds a bit of saltiness, which is delicious.
The secret with frying your courgette flowers is in having the tempura batter really cold. Once it’s mixed, split the batter between two bowl. Put one in the freezer, and use other to dip one round of courgette flowers. Swap bowls, and use the next bowl for the next round, then swap back. It may seem a faff, but having the batter ice cold makes it crispy and light, which is really what you want for this summer delicacy.
Simple Easy Stuffed Courgette / Zucchini Flowers
Recipe Type: Main, Starter
Cuisine: Foraged, Italian
Author: Luschka
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4
Ingredients
15 – 20 Flowers
Batter
1 egg
250g very very cold water
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
100g all-purpose flour
Filling
100g mozzarella
5 anchovies
Instructions
Hold each flower under a cold running tap. This helps open it up while washing it.
Set aside to dry.
In your food processor, add the egg, water, baking soda and flour.
Mix until it’s all blended (10 seconds, speed 5)
Put it in the freezer
Mix your filling and scoop into a piping bag
Gently fill each flower from the piping bag, and ever so gently twist the top of the flower to contain the filling.
Heat the oil
Pour half of the batter into a different bowl and return it to the freezer.
Take two – four flowers (depending on the size of your pot of oil) and dip in the cold batter, before putting in the oil.
Fry the flowers until they are golden.
Return the batter to the freezer and swap.
Dip the flowers, remove the cooked flowers and put them aside to drain.
Repeat until all the flowers are done. Remember the colder the batter the better and each batch of flowers should cook in 3 – 4 minutes.
This week I took part in the #MorrisonsMums challenge, to do my grocery shopping in their store, make a couple of recipes, and share them with you. You can read all about my account of shopping at Morrison’s here, but here’s the first of two recipes for you.
This is my husband’s own design, and he’s quite proud of it – it’s delicious, and I’ll admit, it does taste all the better because I didn’t have to make it myself. Either way, it’s such a tasty dish, and while it takes a little time to prepare, it’s totally worth it.
This meal cost £7.01 for four people, with leftovers for one more. That makes it £1.40 per portion – which is quite a lot really, but it is a quite a luxury, ‘nice’ meal for us, so worth it.
Martin’s Pork Tenderloin Meal
Recipe Type: Main
Cuisine: (Vaguely) Italian
Author: Martin
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4
This is a dish my husband prepares when I have a night off cooking. It’s simple and easy to prepare, but delicious.
Slice the pork into 1cm thick slices, trying to trim the sinew as you go. Combine the marinade ingredients in a bowl then place in a container with the pork slices, close the lid and gently shake the mixture around to ensure the meat is fully coated. Refrigerate for a few hours or as long as you can manage to allow the marinade to soak into the meat.
Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees and place the pork slices in a single layer on a wire rack placed over a baking tray. Coat the meat with some of the marinade, then cook for 15 minutes, turning the meat mid-way and coating with the remainder of the marinade.
Remove from the oven, then add some butter to a frying pan and turn to a high heat. Add the pork slices and fry for a minute or so on each side to add colour and sear the outside of the meat. Allow the meat to rest for a couple of minutes then serve.
Mushrooms
Add the wine to a small saucepan on a medium heat and allow the alcohol to boil off. Add the chopped mushrooms and a pinch of salt, then reduce the heat and cook gently, stirring regularly to avoid the mushrooms sticking. Once all juices have been absorbed, remove from the heat, add a little oil to lubricate the mix and serve.
Salad
Drain the mozzarella and tear roughly into chunks. Combine with the chopped tomato, roughly chopped basil and lettuce, mix in the salad dressing and serve in a large bowl – combine the wet ingredients with the lettuce as shortly before serving as possible to avoid the lettuce wilting.
I’ve been having major problems with my gall bladder recently, which is why these pages have been a little like tumbleweed, with nothing going on – I haven’t been able to eat much of anything, so I haven’t really been cooking.
Now that I’m able to eat again, I’ve been trying to focus a lot of my eating energy on gallbladder-friendly and cleansing foods, including a lot of ginger, garlic and lemongrass.
One thing I’m really missing at the moment is a good bit of meat though – so I decided a good meaty mushroom would have to do. Cheese is really high in fat, which with having to avoid animal fats at the moment is another thing I miss, but I decided to top these with Picorino cheese – less than half the fat of cheddar, a strong taste like Parmesan, but slightly more melty.
Garlic, Ginger, Lemongrass and Pecorino Stuffed Mushrooms
Recipe Type: Gallbladder Friendly
Cuisine: Vegetarian
Author: Luschka
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 1
The amounts for ginger, garlic and lemongrass here are suggestions. Add more or less as you prefer. I like them as strong flavours especially as part of a cleanse.
Ingredients
2cm ginger
2 peeled cloves garlic
1 stem lemongrass
5g olive oil
35g Pecorino or other hard cheese
2 large Portobello mushrooms
Instructions
In the Thermomix:
Put the grill on in your oven.
Place ginger, garlic and lemongrass in the Thermomix and whizz for 15 seconds on speed 8.
Scrape down the sides, drop 5g olive oil through the lid, and cook 4 min/ 100C
Add the cheese, 7 secs/speed 10
Scoop half the mixture into one mushroom, then the rest into the other
Place in the oven for 15 minutes, but watch from 10 minutes so that the cheese doesn’t burn.
Your mushroom should still be firm and meaty but soft and juicy enough to eat.
Regular way:
Put the grill on in your oven
Place ginger, garlic and lemongrass in a blender or chop finely
Add olive oil and cheese, grated or blended too.
Scoop half the mixture into one mushroom, then the rest into the other
Place in the oven for 15 minutes, but watch from 10 minutes so that the cheese doesn’t burn.
Your mushroom should still be firm and meaty but soft and juicy enough to eat.
A few weeks ago I answered a call for bloggers who wanted to participate in a competition – create a recipe that is based on the Flavour Forecast trends.
I thought it was a great idea, until the brief arrived and I realised that there was not one of the five categories we could choose from that was in my comfort zone! Nothing like an opportunity for growth, eh?
So, the UK’s leading herbs and spices brand McCormick is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year and have shared with us their Flavour Forecast – a new, annual prediction of what ‘flavours’ will be most popular in the cooking world. In 2014, global flavour leader McCormick, parent company of leading herbs and spices brand Schwartz, is celebrating its 125th anniversary. The yearlong celebration kicks off with the launch of the 125th Anniversary Edition of the Flavour Forecast and the Flavour of Together programme, with the goal of connecting people around the world as they share 1.25 million stories about the special role food and flavour plays in our lives through. Here are their five predictions for this year:
1. Chillies Obsession: Food lovers everywhere are seeking out their next big chilli thrill.
2. Modern Masala: Indian food is finally having its moment, breaking free of its traditional confines with modern interpretations.
3. Clever Compact Cooking: Proving that big flavours can come from small spaces, cooks in urban kitchens are making the most of what’s available.
4. Mexican World Tour: Mexican flavours are making their way around the globe, with people everywhere discovering new aspects of this bright, casual cuisine.
5. Charmed by Brazil: The world’s attraction to Brazilian cuisine is heating up, thanks to its seductive mix of global and native influences.
Now, as a family, we don’t really eat spicy food or beans, so that cuts out 1 and 4, and we’re not huge on curries either, so there goes number 2. I am a proud Thermomix Owner, so 3 is easy, but probably not what they were after – which leaves 5. Charmed by Brazil. I have one Brazilian friend, Yuri from Urbanvox, and I turned to him for advice.
He told me about Coxinha – a Brazilian street food, normally served as a street food and on the go. It’s essentially a chicken salad, fried. I decided to add some Brazilian sauces to the mix and create a dish that combines the street food classic, with what I’d imagine ordering in a pub lunch. The results were delicious. Here they are:
Regular readers will know that I love creating food from scratch. Of course, I could go and buy some mayonnaise and add garlic to it, but I love watching oil turn into rich, white, fluffy, additive free mayo. And I love the flavour too. The same goes for all the elements of this recipe.
The ingredient list on this dish looks really long, but if you have a supply of herbs and spices in the cupboard, you’re half way there. There will also be sauces left over, that can be used in other dishes later: think Vinaigrette omelet, hot sauce on anything, and mayo on… almost anything too. Extras won’t go to waste.
Then there’s the incredibly gorgeous hot sauce.The beauty of this sauce is that you can make it as hot or not as you like. We didn’t want it very spicy, so used just a few chilli seeds. We’re wooses like that. You can use different alcohols in this, but that will affect the flavour.
But in the end, you end up with a very delicious ‘juice’ sauce, that even as a non-chilli lover, I enjoyed. I think a sauce should be thicker, but this has a different consistency and provides a variant on the plate.
The next sauce was a Brazilian Vinaigrette – a super easy sauce that is a brilliant addition to this meal. It’s not sauce like we might think of, but more like a salsa, and delicious.
Just looking at this picture makes my mouth water. I might chop it all a bit finer next time, just to make it a little more ‘saucy’, but flavour wise, my husband thought it was the highlight of the meal.
Finally, some Garlic Mayonnaise – a classic with fried goods anywhere, it seems, and so very easy to make at home. I’ve been making it for years, even before I bought a Thermomix!
I just love watching oil turn into mayonnaise, and there’s no bought version like it.
Brazilian Coxinha And Three Dipping Sauces
Recipe Type: Main,
Cuisine: Brazilian, Street Food
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 8 – 12
Ingredients
Coxinha Ingredients
600g chicken breasts
5 cups of chicken broth/stock
1 carrot
2 onions, peeled and halved
2 bay leaves
2 tablespoons butter
2 cloves garlic
Juice of 1 lime
1 cup cream cheese
3 cups of flour
2 teaspoons oil
2 eggs
3 cups of very fine bread crumbs
Vegetable oil for frying
Salt and pepper to taste
Brazilian Vinaigrette Ingredients
1 green bell pepper
1 red bell pepper
1/2 onion
4 medium tomatoes
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
Brazilian (Almost)Hot Sauce Ingredients
1/3 cup white wine vinegar
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup cachaça (or other liqueur)
2 cloves
1 tsp whole coriander seeds
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 bay leaf
1 tsp oregano
sprig fresh basil leaves
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 tablespoon garlic, finely chopped
3 tablespoons onion, finely chopped
1 – 3 small hot chilli peppers,
Garlic Mayonnaise Ingredients
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped or garlic powder or granules
1 teaspoon salt
2 egg yolks
315 ml vegetable oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons wholegrain mustard
Instructions
In a food processor, blend bread and set aside 3 cups for later. Excess breadcrumbs freeze well.
Place the chicken breasts in a large pot – we use a wok.
Cover them with the chicken broth or stock, adding water if necessary to make sure the chicken breasts are covered by the liquid.
Add the carrot and one of the onions as well as the bay leaves.
Bring liquid to a gentle simmer, and cook for 15-20 minutes.
Set chicken aside to cool, and strain the broth, which you’ll use later. Set it aside to cool.
While the chicken is cooling, start on the Vinaigrette.
Roughly chop the peppers, onion (set aside three teaspoons of onion for later) and tomatoes, and add the white wine vinegar and olive oil. Mix well and set aside.
Return to the chicken – finely chop the second onion and garlic. Sauté the onion and garlic in 2 tablespoons of butter.
Shred the chicken into very small pieces – I use my Thermomix for this, a food processor will do.
Stir cream cheese and lime juice into the shredded chicken, and add the hot onions and garlic to the chicken mixture.
Measure 3 cups chicken broth. If you have less than three cups, add more stock to bring it to three cups.
Add 3 cups flour, oil, salt and pepper and stir together until smooth.
This next step is really important – without it you have a very wet dough… trust me: Set the saucepan over medium flame and cook, stirring constantly, until the batter forms a smooth mass and pulls away from the sides of the pan.
Chill the chicken and dough for at least an hour.(At this point you could leave it for another day too.)
Move on to the (almost) hot sauce
Put the white wine vinegar, water, cachaça, cloves, coriander seeds, peppercorns, bay leaf, oregano and basil and salt in a large pan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Let it boil for two minutes. Remove from heat, cover the pan and reserve.
In another pan, heat the olive oil, and gently fry the garlic and onion, without letting it burn. Add the chilli peppers as you’re using them. Add the vinegar mix pouring through a sieve to remove the herbs and spices.
Cover the pan and cook over low heat until the chillis are soft and tender. Remove from heat and reserve.
And make the Garlic Mayonnaise – mash the garlic, or use powder.
Combine the salt and egg yolks in a food processor until well combined. You can use a whisk too. Add the lemon juice and mustard.
Keep the food processor running, and very slowly add the oil, a few drops at a time initially and as the mixture becomes a thick mayonnaise, you can add it a bit faster. Cover and set aside.
By now the chicken should be cool enough for the final phase.
Flour your hands well, and break off a golf-ball sized piece of dough. Flatten it in your hand, into a rough round.
Place a tablespoon of the filling into the middle of the dough and wrap the sides up to encase the filling. Shape the dough into a drumstick shape if you can, but I found it easier to do during the next step. (My Brazilian friend later told me to brush some milk around the edges to make it seal.)
Take a coxinha and dip it in the beaten egg and let the excess drip off. Then roll it in the breadcrumbs and set it on a baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining coxinhas. Refrigerate for an hour.
Meanwhile, finish off the hot sauce.
Pour the reserved hot sauce liquid into a food processor or a blender. Blend until completely smooth. Remove the cover and let the sauce rest.
Deep fry the coxinhas in batches at 365°F/180C until golden brown, make sure to keep an eye on it so that it doesn’t burn, 3 to 4 minutes.
Serve hot with the three dipping sauces.
3.2.1271
Schwartz is looking for your own flavour stories. The company has pledged to donate $1 to United Way Worldwide and it’s UK partner Focus on Food, for every story shared on the Schwartz website, Facebook page or other social channels.
I was sent a £50 grocery voucher, and a hamper of Shwartz herbs and spices to participate in this competition.
