When this book came out (hmmm…maybe 3 years ago) I literally felt like it was written for me. I have always loved going on culinary adventures and cooking different things. I remember traipsing all over Melbourne years and years ago (pre kids and Thermomix) for some specialty ingredients so I could make a Butter Chicken and Rogan Josh from scratch. I got home, back to our farm and was too scared to cook them. These ingredients were precious and I wanted to wait for the “right time” to use them. You know…have a fancy dinner party or something like that.

I eventually made a Butter Chicken from scratch in my tiny tiny kitchen. I had pots and pans and gadgets everywhere but wow…cooking an authentic butter chicken was a taste sensation. Then I moved into a house with an even crappier kitchen and had children. No more cooking how I wanted to. It just was not appealing.

Fast forward to having a Thermomix and this book being released and I remembered how much joy cooking like this gave me and how much I loved the aroma of this kind of cooking. I want my children to have food memories like that. So now…we take ourselves on culinary adventures to India via this book all the time. And it’s soooo much easier with a Thermomix.

My sister and her husband visited not long after the release of this book and we had an Indian feast. We found a Spotify playlist with some Indian music, poured some wine and cooked up a storm. They were vegetarians (now they’re vegan but I will talk about that in another post) so I got even more adventurous with our menu. We cooked Vegetable Filled Pastries (Lukhmi). I don’t know how to get creative with my descriptions of these dishes but these were so good. Cooper who was probably 3 at the time looooooved them. We made Cucumber and Mint Raita to dip our vegetable pastries in. I’m drooling remembering how good this was. We made Baingan Ka Bharta which is an eggplant curry, Chhole (Chickpea Curry), and Paneer Tikka. The Paneer Tikka was probably my least favourite but if you’re into cheesy stuff you’d love it. Oh and we can’t forget the Garlic and Coriander Naan!!!!

I searched my Insta for photos from this feast and I couldn’t find any. (We must’ve been too busy eating) So you’ll have to settle for these pics from Cookidoo…

Screen+Shot+2020-08-05+at+10.50.13+am.png

Screen+Shot+2020-08-05+at+10.49.46+am.png

Screen+Shot+2020-08-05+at+10.50.27+am.png

Screen+Shot+2020-08-05+at+10.56.25+am.png

Screen+Shot+2020-08-05+at+10.56.45+am.png

Screen+Shot+2020-08-05+at+11.00.22+am.png

Let’s talk Butter Chicken…

In the Thermomix world there is quite often a hot debate about which is the best Butter Chicken recipe. The one from Flavours of India (Murgh Makhani) is hands down the best one in my opinion. I will have to get my act together and write a plant based version of this recipe. It’s so delicious and authentic.

One of my FAVOURITE Thermomix soups is the Indian Spiced Sweet Potato Soup. Here is a video showing how easy it is to make.

Plant Based Tweaks

The main changes I make when cooking Indian is to use oil instead of ghee, coconut yoghurt instead of greek yoghurt, and instead of meat I use vegetables (sweet potato, cauliflower, peas etc) and a can of chickpeas or lentils. Please reach out if you have any questions about tweaking these recipes to suit a vegetarian/vegan diet. I’m all about ensuring you don’t miss out on these fabulous recipes just because they have meat and dairy in them. x