Caesar Salad - Thermomix style!!!

To celebrate what I am sure is the last of our warm days, and the fact that this month incentive for purchasing a Thermomix is a free "Travelling with Thermomix" cookbook, I chose a recipe to try out of the cookbook.  This cookbook is not usually available for sale, so I didn't have a copy until the other night.  Flicking through, there are quite a few I would like to try and it is a really nice looking cookbook!  It features recipes from all over the world, some standard favourites.

I did make a few adjustments to the recipe as I was making it for the whole family as our dinner, so I added the chicken and bacon and cooked more eggs than the recipe asked for.

So here is the run down:

Place some eggs in the rice basket, put 500g water in the Thermomix bowl.  Steam for 13 minutes at Varoma temperature.

As soon as I put the eggs on, I started chopping my chicken.  If I had thought bit more, I would have chopped the bacon in the Thermomix for a few seconds before I started the eggs, but hence I did not.  So I quickly chopped the chicken (630g) and spread it evenly on the Varoma tray.  I then just put a few rashers in the Varoma bowl to steam.

So I probably took about 4 minutes to cut the chicken get it into the Varoma, so for the remaining time of the of the time, I started assembling the rest of my ingredients for the dressing.  Oil, anchovies, fresh lime juice, egg yolks etc etc.  I got out a salad bowl and broke up the cos lettuce to arrange in the bottom.  I also chopped some slices of bread into crouton cubes and put them under the grill for a minute or so each side (watch carefully!!!! They burn quickly)

Once the timer went off, I took the eggs out, ran them under cold water then put the chicken on for another 3-4 minutes - I actually think it was cooked already, but I am paranoid about chicken so always give it longer incase!!!  So while the chicken had another few minutes, I peeled the eggs (I did 4) and cleaned up some mess!

So once the chicken was finished, I took it off to cool for a couple of minutes while I cleaned out the bowl, then made the dressing - this took about 2 minutes, maybe a few seconds more ;)  I then sliced the eggs, pulled apart the bacon and added all of the ingredients to the salad bowl.  A drizzle of dressing and all done!

All in all, that is about what I did (I may have gotten some of the steps mismatched, but it is all about you and the Thermomix multi-tasking!!!)  But I did actually put the timer on and it took 38 minutes from getting out the first ingredients from the fridge (starting with eggs into the basket) to photographing the salad.  How great to serve a filling yummy dinner salad with freshly made dressing from scratch, including homemade bread croutons!!!

The kids and hubby all loved it, much tastier than our old bought dressing version, and usually I wouldn't have bothered with the eggs because I always lost track of time doing things on the stove, resulting in mismatched finishing times.  Hate that.  And using one appliance to cook all of the food at once (energy saving), then the dressing!  I would have usually spent the same amount of time, but nearly always burnt the bacon due to some distraction along the way (I know, I really don't sell myself as a great cook....)  I could have added a bit more bacon, another egg and more lettuce to make it go a bit further, but as it was, it was perfectly polished off with everyone satisfied!