To celebrate the launch of our Less Waste, More Food with Thermomix® cookbook, we’re highlighting all things sustainability and sharing our tips for a ‘low waste’ approach to shopping, cooking, and eating, no matter the occasion.
Celebrations can be some of our most wasteful times, but they needn’t be! So, with Easter around the corner, whether you’re celebrating simply or creating a banquet to feed a crowd, a little planning ahead will help you not only save time and money but plan a more sustainable menu, too. It’s a win-win for everyone!
Here are some tips on where to get started:
Plan ahead
The Cookidoo® ‘My Week’ Planner is your best friend when it comes to shopping and cooking sustainably (and with variety, too!). It allows you to see all your recipes laid out with images across the week and to easily create Shopping Lists. You can remove any items you already have or will be substituting out from your Shopping List and even use the Created Recipes function of Cookidoo® to modify existing recipes to include the ingredients you have on-hand. You never know – you may end up creating a variation you love so it’s worth saving what you do!
What’s more – looking at your Easter menu as a weekly plan instead of a daily or weekend one, will indirectly help you to minimize waste as you can get creative with ‘leftovers’.
Side-step the packaging
Packaging can go through the roof when you’re buying a lot of shop-bought treats and other goodies which so often accompany celebrations. But, luckily, it’s easy to whip up a whole heap of delicious Easter recipes with your Thermomix® and avoid unnecessary plastic. Not to mention the benefits of enjoying home-made recipes made with whole ingredients. Here are some of our top tips:
1. Easy Easter eggs
It’s a really complex skill but, with Thermomix®, tempering chocolate is easy. Tempering chocolate is what gives chocolate that beautiful shine and satisfying crack when you break it, different to simply melting it down. To temper your chocolate, follow the recipe in this article on Cookidoo® and you can then make into whatever shapes you like.
Purchase some Easter egg moulds (available from many kitchen and homeware stores) and follow our Chocolate Easter egg recipe on Cookidoo® to make your own Easter eggs this year. It’s a super fun project and you can fill them with your choice of lollies, too.
Watch our video here with a step-by-step guide to making your own Easter Eggs.
For more tips on tempering chocolate, hear from dessert chef Christy Tania, here.
2. Hot cross buns
There is way too much to share about Hot Cross Buns so we’ve created a whole blog dedicated to them. Check out our ‘A Bun for Everyone’ blog for more recipes and ideas for Hot Cross Buns – both the making of and the repurposing of leftovers in mouthwatering ways.
3. Make leftovers a star
It’s not a great name, is it, ‘leftovers’? Doesn’t really sound like something you’d look forward to eating but the reality is, it’s all the same delicious food and ingredients we sourced for whatever recipe they were first used in. So, ditch the notion of ‘leftovers’ as being unexciting and instead get creative and plan ahead for recipes which will make those ingredients shine the second time around. Here are some ideas using some of the most popular core ingredients at Easter:
If fish is the star of your Easter spread, recipes like fish cakes and curries are ideal for repurposing any ‘leftovers’ in a truly delicious way.
Check out Mark LeBrooy’s Fish cakes with beurre blanc sauce from his Good Food collection on Cookidoo®. The recipe calls for boneless white fish fillets, but you can absolutely replace these with the same amount of any cooked fish you have, or a mix. Simply add your cooked fish at Step 2 and allow it to reheat in the poaching liquid.
Make this Coconut fish curry for curry night, using up any cooked fish you may have on hand in a totally reinvented way. The recipe calls for 750 g skinless snapper fillets. But again, feel free to use the cooked fish and make up the difference with other fish. Simply add the cooked fish in Step 8 for the last 5 minutes of cooking time or until fully warmed through, then proceed as per recipe.
Another great Easter Sunday favourite is roast lamb and again, cooked lamb is a really easy ingredient to use creatively and enjoy in a completely different recipe. The secret to successful leftovers is that they don’t resemble the original dish! Some ideas from us below:
Shred your leftover roast lamb in Thermomix® (5 sec/
/speed 4, maximum of 400g lamb)and use in the place of lamb mince (or to replace some of it) in our Lamb moussaka recipe. Simply add your shredded lamb to the Varoma with the mince (if you are using mince as well) at Step 7 to heat through, then proceed as per the recipe.
Curry is always a winner for leftovers, no matter the type of ingredient you’re looking to use so we’re adding a lamb curry idea too. Cut your cooked lamb into larger pieces and use in the place of the lamb rump in our Lamb tikka with spicy eggplant. YUM! Simply add the lamb to the mixing bowl in Step 7, with about 5 minutes left on the cooking time, to heat through.
Yes, we don’t think it’s possible but there comes a time at Easter when everyone has had enough chocolate. So, what to do with the off-cuts? Oooh… the options here are endless! Add chocolate pieces to muffins, cookies or desserts like our Chocolate volcanoes or even as the chocolate coating in our Chocolate caramel bars. One to try if you haven’t already!
