The Demo

Milling
Firstly, Natarsha showed us how the Thermomix can be used to mill things like rice (to make rice flour), lentils, or anything.   This is something the Vitamix (VM) is excellent at doing, although with the VM you need to use the dry container.

We milled red lentils.  I was intrerested in seeing how the milling process worked, because I have quite a few wholefoods in my cupboards. I wasn't particularly interested in red lentils as I don't eat them. I like puy lentils, but not the red ones.

TOP TIP!

Natarsha said about using the milled red lentils as a thickener in soups and stews. She later added these to the soup, and it worked really well.  I'll definitely be using this moving forward.

Next, she milled some of the mixed seeds I'd put out to use in the bread.  As well as using whole seeds to make seeded rolls, she used some of the ground seeds to enrich the bread flour

TOP TIP!

Mill seeds to enrich bread flour
Mill other things (like the lentils) to enrich the bread flour

Bread Dough
This was really fast, much faster than I expected, and it looked like it had worked really well.  I'll be interested to see how well the machine works with other dough types (like sourdough,  foccaccia, etc). 
After proving,  we baked the rolls in the oven and had them with the soup.
 
TOP TIP!

Once the dough has been tipped out, put the bowl back and give it a quick buzz, This will flick the remaining dough off the blades.  That's really great!

Bread Crumbs
Next, two slices of fresh bread, a peeled clove of garlic,  some parmesan (including the rind) and some parsley were whizzed up.    It was remarkably quick (<15 seconds) and the results were much better than I expected.  The crumbs smelt fantastic, and I could see us using this type of thing for coating fish, or with pasta, or whatever  .
TOP TIP!

Freeze extra and use from frozen,

TOP TIP!

You can even use the parmesan rind

Fruit Sorbet
Some Ice, some fruit, some sugar. There was also a little bit of manual work required to churn the sorbet while the machine worked.     Result - a very acceptable sorbet,
Further blending and we had a very creamy one,
This worked much better than the VM, no need to get that vortex. But some manual effort was required.

Added an egg white (I'm always looking for used for egg white), switch to the butterfly whisk, and a very light and creamy result.

I wonder if it can make custard based ice cream?

Cheese Sauce 
Cheese sauce is very easy to make on the hob, but this was even easier...plus you don't have to stand and stir/whisk it.   The smell was heavenly.

Carrot and Coriander soup
This was amazing.  The soup was really good (although it didn't taste particularly carrotty). The texture was like velvet.  I hadn't expected to be particularly interested in the soup,  but it was really lovely.  MH ate all of his and really liked it.   He didn't like soups made in the VM because, although they were very smooth, they always tasted like hot raw vegetables

Steamed Veg
While the soup was cooking, we steamed vegetables on the top.  These were going to be used in a gratin along with the cheese sauce (and the crumb). 

Gratin
Oh, this was delicious.


During the demo, Natarsha also talked about other things the Thermie could do.    We were impressed by it's ability to mix as well as chop, and she mentioned making mixed salads.  This is definitely on my "to do" list.

At some point during the demo, I was sold.  I don't know when it happened, I thnk it was early on,

I could really see both myself and MH using it.  I decided that I'd take the plunge.  If another model was released in September, well,  I'd deal with that then. I emailed Natarsha the next day to place my order.  

Everyone at the demo was seriously impressed with it.  One of them might even place an order as well. 

I decided to make a list of all the things I wanted to try... and that's when I decided to start a blog.

Hopefully my machine will be here soon, and I can get started!