My first meal - shepherd's pie and chocolate custard

I had a big tm day today.  It started with a back to basics class which was great.  During the class, the consultants cooked a large range of dishes, including sorbet, bread, dip, soup, 2 salada and custard.  It was a really good way to cement what I had learnt at my TM demo.

Then, it was off to the supermarket and then home to cook dinner for my parents and a friend.  When I offered yesterday to cook for my parents tonight, they laughed!  I suppose this is fare enough, as I usually won't cook for myself, let alone anyone else.

My Dad chose the italian style shepherd's pie from the Every Day Cookbook (EDC) which came free with the TM.  I also decided to cook chocolate custard, as I had had 2 goes at cooking custard, and I like chocolate.  I also decided to hard boil 4 eggs for snacks during the coming week, and make some coleslaw for lunches.

The eggs went well.  They were the easiest hard boiled eggs I'd ever cooked.  All I did was put the eggs into the basket which fits inside the TM bowl on top of the blades, put 500 mls of water into the bowl, and cook for 14 minutes.  The only tricky bit was getting the basket out of the bowl with the hook on the spatula.  After 14 minutes of boiling, the bowl was quite hot, and it was hard to find the small hole in the basket without touching it.  I might try with potmits next time and dispense with the spatula all together.  I'll have to experiment a bit.

Then it was on to preparation of the ingredients for the meat sauce and the potatoes.  This wasn't too hard as it just involved chopping the ingredients, and peeling those that needed peeling.  I also decided to mince my own meat (because I can).  This was easy.  I just put in the cut up meat and pulsed it a few time.  Perfect mince!

Cooking the sauce was easy.  I just followed the recipe.  I chopped the vegetables, and then added some oil  I set the temperature and time specified in the recipe, and sauted them.  The smell was Great.

Then I added the meat and, 5 minutes later, the wine.  I was supposed to add 50 ml of wine, just over a tablespoon.  I poured the wine into a tablespoon, and then added a bit more.  Later, I remembered that the measuring cup that comes with the TM is 100 ml, and there is a nice raised line half way up.  I could have used that!  Something to remember for next time.

5 minutes later, I added the remaining ingredients.  Then I had 15 minutes to sit down and rest while the sauce was cooking.

I was running really late, so felt a bit stressed when my Mum returned with my Dad, and the other guest arrived.  (mum had been with me as I was preparing the ingredients, and starting off the saude, as I had wanted her there for moral support.)

Then it was on to the potatoes.  I grated the chees in the TM which only took a few seconds.  I put this aside for later, and cooked the potatoes.  The recipe said to add 250 g of milk, which I measured out to 250 ml in the measuring jug.  The potatoes ended up being a bit wet for me, so perhaps I'll use a little less milk next time.  Maybe it was the variety of potatoes I used, I don't know.  I'll go on the forum tomorrow and check.

I'm really not very good at scraping bowls.  The meat sauce came out OK, but I found it hard to get all the mashed potato out of the TM bowl.  More practice, I suppose.

While the pie was cooking in the oven, I made the coleslaw.  This was the easiest part, as all I had to do was put all the ingredients into the TM bowl and chop.  It turned out really well.  I think I might put a bit more lemon juice on when I dish out a serve to take to work tomorrow.  The recipe said juice of half a lemon.  I couldn't be bothered doing that, so bought one of those squeeze bottles of lemon juice.  I put 2 healthy squeezes in, but this wasn't quite enough.  Maybel I'll measure it in tablespoons next time.

The pie was cooked, and we ate.  It was really good.  My guests liked it as well.  That makes 2 nice tasting things I've cooked within a week!  (the stock will be really nice in recipes, but is way too salty on its own, so doesn't really count.)

Then it was on to the custard.  I realised that I had run out of sugar, so had to use splender.  The packet says to use the splender exactly the same way as sugar, i.e spoon for spoon.  However the TM recipes use weights rather than measurements, so I wasn't shure whether I should use the same amount.  I put 2 tablespoons of splender in, and hoped for the best.

Making a lot of mess, I weighed out the cornflour and cocoa into a bowl on my talking scales and put them aside.  I put the eggs and milk into the bowl, set the time, temperature and speed and then started cooking.  3 minutes in, mum eclaimed "you haven't added the flour!".  I stopped the TM, added in the four, and then cooked for a further 5 minutes.  I was convinced that the custard wouldn't turn out, but it did!!  It was a bit thicker than the last one I made, but it tasted great!  I'm glad I didn't put any more than 2 tablespoons of splender, as it was quite sweet enough.

All in all, it was a great first experience.  However, I'm absolutely exhausted!  I think I'll have to work up to this cooking caper gradually.  On the positive side, the only bits I found really hard were the scraping out for each dish.  There weren't any real problems with heat, and I wasn't afraid at any time.  I'm so happy I bought a TM.