Meatloaf with mushroom sauce

Meatloaf with mushroom sauce

I have made this meatloaf a few times, and it's always delicious. This is the first time I have made it with the mushroom sauce. I was quite impressed!

The first step is to make the meat filling for the meatloaf. I didn't have time to freeze my rump slightly first. I found that missing this step didn't make too much difference to the outcome of the resulting mince. I also discovered something new about my Thermomix during this process! When using a guided recipe, and it asks you to turbo something a certain number of times, up the top of the screen it counts the times for you so you don't have to keep track. I don't know why I had never noticed that before!

Before rolling

Once the meatloaf filling is made, you need to lay it out on strips of prosciutto. I do this on a piece of strong foil, add the ham and cheese filling, and then use the foil to roll the meatloaf firmly into a log. In the picture you can see I have left a bit of prosciutto without meat on it. This gives a little extra to go around when it's rolled, and helps prevent the filling from falling out.

The recipe does say to lay the meatloaf straight on the varoma tray. I usually leave it in the foil, so it stays together nice and tightly. It also ends up with less mess at the end!

This is where it become a kind of "all-in-one" meal, as the sauce is made in the bowl, using varoma temperature, while the meatloaf and vegetables steam in the top. I did actually increase the speed to speed 2 for this step, just to make sure I didn't have to add any extra time to the cooking. I also prefer to put my vegetables on towards the end of the cooking so they stay crisp. I don't like soggy broccoli!

Mushroom sauce

 

Once the sauce meatloaf and vegetables are finished steaming, the rest of the sauce ingredients are added. I did end up adding another splash of water to the mushrooms, because most of the liquid had evaporated - probably due to me increasing the speed.

I removed the sauce from the bowl, then added in some potatoes and followed the chip recipe for mashed potato. When I make mash, I usually don't add the butterfly until I need to whip the potatoes. The butterfly tends to fall off a it as it gets knocked by the raw potatoes, so it's easier to wait until the whipping stage before adding it.

While the mashed potatoes were cooking I heated up a frypan and removed the meatloaf from the foil. I put the meatloaf into the heated frypan and browned it, which made the prosciutto nice and crispy.

Sliced meatloaf after browning

Overall, it was a delicious meal and was enjoyed by everyone. I did cut my potatoes up a bit too big, and it was a little lumpy, but these things happen! If I had cooked it for 5 minutes more they would have been perfect. However I had a hungry little 5 year old hassling me for his dinner so we just had to be happy with a few lumps!

Happy thermomixing!

Broccoli Salad

Broccoli Salad

I'm back! It has been quite a while since I posted, having gotten a little sidetracked by life - family, work, my Thermomix business, going on a cruise holiday (so much fun), Christmas - the list goes on! I also had a little mishap with our computer dying when we returned from holidays, which is where I had my list of meals I had blogged from the Basic Cook Book. I have finally got around to replacing my computer, and ended up having to manually go through the blog to re-do my spreadsheet to see where I was up to. So, here I am!

I have also started a new way of eating - the 5:2 diet, or intermittent fasting. It involves eating 500 calories only 2 days of the week, and eating normally the rest of the week. Today just happened to be a fasting day. I usually try to drink water, tea, coffee and a miso soup through the day and save the majority of my calories until dinner. I had some leftover zucchini slice in the fridge, so decided to have that for dinner. It was only 192 calories for  slice, so I decided I would have a salad on the side. I had a broccoli in the fridge, so thought it was high time that I made the broccoli salad from the Basic Cook Book.

This is a very similar method to the beetroot salad and coleslaw (which if you have ever been to a Thermomix or two, you probably would have tried). All the ingredients get chopped into Thermomix sized chunks (pretty much small enough to fit through the hole in the lid - no need to get too fancy!). Add the yoghurt, lemon juice and seasonings and mere seconds later, you are done.

Ingredients before chopping

The salad was surprisingly tasty. I'm not really a huge fan of broccoli, but I will suffer through it because I know it is very good for you. However, I was quite happy with the raw broccoli in the salad. Mixed with the other ingredients and the light dressing, it had a lovely flavour. And so low in calories, I was well under my calories for the day.

I will definitely be doing this one again. Its a great salad to have in your repertoire when you need to whip something up quickly.