Big cooking day

Today's post will be a longer one.  I tried to set up e-mail blogging, and sent through 3 posts yesterday, but none of them worked.  So today's post will be the combination of all 3 of yesterday's.

I had a bit of a hitch with Saturday's rendang.  Just after I finished typing my last post, I went over to the TM to check how things were going by way of a sneaky sniff.  Just as I placed my hand on the TM, it stopped working and started beeping (not in it's usual "I've finished" way either).  I turned it off and then on again, and it continued beeping.  It was then that I realised that the TM bowl wasn't hot.

In a pannic, I phoned my Mum and asked her to come over, as she only lives a few minutes away.  When Mum got there, she said that the TM was displaying "LOAd" on the display.  I told her about the bowl not being hot, and she checked the meat and discovered that it was still raw!  I obviously had forgotten to put in the temperature, and the TM had been happily mixing the raw Rendang for 40 minutes!  I later read in the instruction manual that this happened when there was too much in the bowl.  This is to rpevent the motor from overheating.  While I didn't have too much in the bowl as I had followed the recipe, I suppose the TM objected to mixing raw meat for 40 minutes.

We decided to take the TM over to Mum's place, as that is where we would be eating the Rendang.  I would have another go at cooking it there.  Everything else when uneventfully, and the Rendang, once cooked, was really nice.

Yesterday afternoon was another big cooking afternoon.  I started with the beetroot salad out of the EDC.  I wasn't even sure whether I liked raw beetroot, but it sounded interesting so I decided to give it a go. 

I didn't have half the ingredients (the coriander, carrot and apple), so decided to experiment and use cellery and cabbage. 

The recipe said to peel the beetroot, which I did.  It reminded me a bit of peeling a potato.  The recipe said to quarter the beetroot, but didn't say anything about whether to cut off the top and bottom of the beetroot.  After peeling the beetroot, I decided to cut off the top and bottom, as they were kind of hard and chunky.  As you can probably tell, I'm not very familiar with raw beetroot, as I've mainly eaten the canned stuff.

As with the coleslaw, I put in all the ingredients, chopped them for a few seconds, scraped down the side of the bowl with my fingers (I've found this works better than using the spatula), and chopped again.  The result was delicious!  Surprisingly delicious!

I decided that I wanted to cook some dishes that I could eat during the week.  I thought that it was all well and good cooking for friends, but it was frustrating when there were no leftovers for me to have during the week, as the point of getting the TM was to cook for myself.
After some discussion with Mum on the phone, we decided that I should cook Chilli Con Carne, and Beef Goulash.  Mum bought all the ingredients and came over, as I also wanted her to help me label my modular mates (tupperware containers for the pantry).

The Chilli Con Carne was so easy!  It only took about 15 minutes to make, and was really just a matter of adding everything and cooking it.  The only hitch was that Mum had bought whole canned tomatoes, which the recipe asked for.  At the end of the cooking process, these were still whole.  I don't really like whole tomatoes, so decided to whis the Con Carne up in the TM for a few seconds.  Alas, I ended up with Chilli Con Carne pure!  Oh well, it will still taste good on rice.
I had varying success scraping out the TM bowl with the spatula.  I seemed to do a lot of scraping, but still had food left in the bowl.  I decided to see what would happened if I scraped out the bowl with my hand, wearing a silicon potmit.  This is quite hygenic, as it can go in the dishwasher afterwards.  It seemed to work, although the Con Carne mostly poured out of the bowl anyway.  I'll give this a go with something else, and report on the results.

Next, I moved on to the Beef Goulash.  This was much more complicated, as it had many more ingredients.  I didn't have any of the herbs or spices, so used Mum's.  I expect I'll get more of a collection of these as I cook.  Mum did help a bit with this one, by measuring the spices, and preparing the lemon rind.  I think it would have taken me twice as long if she hadn't!  It was a good lesson though in measuring the ingredients and laying them all out at the start, rather than measuring them as they are needed.  It turned out really well.

One thing that did happen though, much to Mum's amusement and my discomfort, was that, while the 300 grams of onion were sauteing in the butter for the Goulash, I decided to take off the measuring cup and have a sneaky sniff.  I'd done this in the past, and had really enjoyed the aroma of the frying onion.  Unfortunately, this time, my sniff was a bit enthusiastic and I got a nose full of onion gasses!  I coughed and sneezed, and my eyes streamed.  I suppose it serves me right, as I bent right over the TM and just about put my nose in the hole in the middle of the lid!  I won't do that again!

While the Goulash was cooking, Mum helped me to label my modular mates.  For those not familiar with Tupperware, these are containers of varient shapes and sizes, designed to keep dry ingredients in the pantry.  I discovered ingredients I didn't know aI had, and trew away some I would never use again.  Now I have empty containers for all the new ingredients I will need with all this cooking I'm going to do!

At the end of the cooking and labelling, I was exhausted again!  I hope it will get to a point soon where I don't feel this way after an afternoon of cooking.  It's a really good type of exhausted though, and I finished with a real sense of achievement.  I really think of the TM as my good friend, as it does all the hard things that I don't want to do, like chopping, and stirring hot ingredients.  I'm really enjoying getting to know it better.