Italian feast alla Thermomix

This weekend has been full of nothing but eating , cooking ,eating and eating some more ! Why is it when you decide it's time to buckle down and start to watch what you are consuming you eat the worst? I blame the weather all I am craving is rich home made pastas and bread , bring on summer!!!!

This wedding body is suffering terribly and with under 7 months to go things are not looking too promising! Haha but I have to say I have thoroughly enjoyed today and preparing tonight's dinner, it had taken me all day but was well worth every second and I find it so relaxing.

On tonight's menu we had a mixture of fresh ravioli served with my own tomato sauce base, I made the dough in the Thermomix and rolled out in the pasta roller. The ravioli was stuffed with garlic and minced beef, then I alternated and stuffed some with pumpkin and ricotta cheese. This was my first attempt at ravioli, it is extremely time consuming so allow plenty of time! 

I cooked some beef meat balls with the sauce in the slow cooker, and baked a plaited herb and garlic bread. 

Also just a simple garden salad on the side. 

I should also mention that I did cook up enough food for a army! There was more than enough to feed 3 adults with leftovers. I'd say this whole Meal would feed 6 People very comfortably. So you could half the ingredients, or do as I do and pop in freezer for those nights you don't have enough time to prepare dinner! Another note is this meal is garlic loaded! This Italian blood loves it! But not sure if you all feel the same or as comfortable with it as I am ;) again you can halve the garlic, and omit the chilli too! The choice is yours! ;) 

So I started with mincing the beef in the Thermomix. I had about 850g of beef chuck steak, it was partly frozen still which is perfect for mincing in the Thermomix, cube the beef into about 2cm cubes and mince in bowl about 200g at a time. I set dial to closed lid position and turbo pulse quickly about 3 times. 

I then minced In the bowl 3 garlic cloves and mixed into the beef mince that i set aside in a seperate plastic container, pop some glad wrap on and pop in the fridge for after. 

Basic tomato sauce 

In the bowl mince 5 garlic cloves speed 9 ,15 seconds 

Peel and roughly chop 2 carrots & grate in bowl with the garlic speed 7 ,15 seconds 

Peel and quarter 2 brown onions add to bowl and chop on speed 4 , 5 seconds 

Measure in 40g extra virgin olive oil and cook all above ingredients on varoma temperature ,reverse speed 2 , 2 minutes 

Wash and quarter then add to bowl once time is up 

9 large fresh tomatoes  chop on speed 4 , 30 seconds 

Add to bowl: 

1 tablespoon vegetable concentrate 

1 tablespoon dried basil 

2 teaspoons dried parsley 

Pinch dried chilli flakes 

Small pinch of brown sugar 

1/2 cup frozen peas 

1/2 cup fresh corn stripped off the cob 

1/2 red capsicum 

1 cup mushrooms roughly sliced 

Cook all the ingredients in the bowl on varoma temperature , reverse speed 2 for 20 minutes.

Quickly slice up about 1 cup of butternut pumpkin into small thin 2 cm pieces , place in the varoma dish and steam ontop of the sauce, by the time I finished cutting up the pumpkin there was 15 minutes left on the cooking time which was perfect for lightly steaming the pumpkin. 

Meatballs

As the Thermomix was already pre occupied cooking the sauce and pumpkin, I made the meatballs by hand, which is really easy to do but you could mix all together in the Thermomix before cooking the sauce but I wanted to get the sauce up and running ASAP. 

Firstly I separated the mince and set aside about a quarter in another bowl and set in the fridge to use in the ravioli later. 

With a fork push the mince to one side of the plastic bowl and crack 1 whole egg onto the other side and quickly whisk with a fork , 

Add

1 teaspoon dried parsley 

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 

1 tablespoon Parmesan cheese 

Salt / pepper to taste 

Pinch dried chilli flakes 

5 big handfuls bread crumbs ( I used my own bread crumbs that I make from the left over crusts from my mixed grains bread ) 

Using the fork combine all the ingredients.  If the mixture seems really sticky still add more bread crumbs, it should easily bulk up together and mould together when squished in the side of the bowl with the fork. 

Using clean hands , pick up small handfuls of the mince mixture and mould and roll into balls and set on a cutting board. 

By this stage the time should be up on the sauce, remove the varoma dish and set aside the pumpkin to cool.

Pour the sauce into a slow cooker and place the meat balls spaced out on top of the sauce. Pop the lid on the slow cooker and set on high heat for 1 hour. 

( will take longer to cook obviously but start out on high for 1 hour then set to low for 5 hours ) 

Beef , pumpkin & ricotta ravioli 

Making pasta dough in the Thermomix is so easy and quick! Not to mention the taste and texture is beautiful I will never ever ever buy pasta again.

I usually add spinach to my dough it makes it a light green colour which I don't mind at all and is a great way of sneaking some extra veg. If you decided against spinach I would recommend adding a extra egg to the mix. 

I used 2 portions of frozen spinach, I had some " homebrand frozen spinach" in the freezer

Blitz it in the Thermomix bowl,on speed 9 for 20 seconds, beware this is a noisy task so block your ears and turn your head the other way unless you want ringing ears for the rest of the day ;) 

It will blend into a fine powder like texture.

As this was my first time making ravioli I was a bit skeptical using all spelt flour as I was not sure how it would go and as we were having our friend Shay over for dinner I didn't want to risk it. So I only used a quarter of wholemeal spelt and the rest plain white flour. 

Add to the minced spinach in the bowl

100g wholemeal spelt flour

420 g plain white flour

1 tablespoon extra Virgin olive oil 

4 whole eggs

Put the lid on and turn dial slowly to speed 6 till well mixed, then put on closed lid position and knead for 1 minute and 30 seconds 

The dough will look like thick chunky bread crumbs , poke with your finger to see if the dough is soft and bounces back into shape. If the dough is kneaded into a ball it's too wet, so put on knead cycle again and add a teaspoon at a time extra flour till majority of it is looking a bit like this 

See how it looks a bit crumbly? Get a handful of the crumbs and see if it easily moulds in your palm into a ball , if so its the right consistency ,

Carefully pour the crumbs onto thermomat and roll into a ball picking up all the little crumbs. Spray the dough and Matt with a little spray oil and set aside. 

Now I prepare the fillings, mix up some light ricotta cheese in a small bowl with about a teaspoon dried basil , salt and pepper to taste. Set aside

Remove the other bowl of minced beef from the fridge and whisk a egg white and mix into the minced beef set aside . 

Collect the cooling steamed pumpkin and sit all the filling ingredients next to your work space.

Using a pasta roller machine ( mine is a manual machine ) roll out thin sections of the dough. On my pasta machine I rolled it out to the number 3 thickness 

Set a rolled out piece of dough on the thermo Matt and using a scone dough cutter , press into the dough to create the circles. 

Place 1 piece of pumpkin and a small dollop of ricotta cheese into the centre of one of the dough circles, them place another dough circle ontop and gently using your finger tips squish together the edges of the doughs to seal. 

As I was making a mixture of ravioli fillings , once I used up all the pumpkin and ricotta I then began on the beef mince ones, using the same techniques and adding a small dollop of the mince meat egg whites then sealing. 

Place the stuffed raviolis on a lined tray with baking paper , and sprinkle with some extra plain flour. Cover with cling wrap and pop in fridge for later. 

I baked some herb and garlic bread, following the same recipe for my Cheesey Bacon Bread  but omitting the bacon and adding a extra clove of garlic and also added extra herbs.

So using all the same ingredients and measurements and directions but adding 2 teaspoons dried oregano , 2 teaspoons parsley dried , 2 teaspoons dried thyme. 

Plaited and baked in the oven for 30 minutes. 

Once the 6 hours have passed with the slow cooker , gently remove the cooked meatballs from the sauce with a slotted spoon , and place in the thermoserver to keep warm. Turn heat off the slow cooker,give a good stir then replace the lid. 

To cook the ravioli , bring to boil in a big saucepan about 3 litres of salted water, 

Gently peeling off the raviolis from the baking paper , drop in the boiling water about 15 at a time. Let cook for a few minutes, once the raviolis and risen to the waters surface remove with a slotted spoon. I then popped them straight into the slow cooker into the sauce to keep warm. 

Once finished cooking all the batches of ravioli stir in the sauce still completely covered in the sauce.

And that's it! My cooking day was complete all that was left was to stuff our faces full of the goodness!

Serve the ravioli with fresh grated Parmesan , and as I mentioned before a small basic garden salad  to serve too, even though we ate too much of everything else the salad barely got touched!

I popped some left over ravioli into a plastic container in the freezer, to take to my grandmas to brag to her how good I am at making my own ravioli! She will be very proud, if only she knew just how easy it is with the Thermomix ;) 

The boys not too impressed I have my ipad out snapping for my blog ;) 

Left to right: my love Daniel , and his good mate Shay who always appreciates my cooking :)