After a look in the fridge and the freezer to determine the balance of what needs eating up (I hate waste), what’s healthy (model parent), what The Things like (indulgent parent), and what’s quick (late for swimming parent) revealed a few goodies that I could test the blender with. The machine is, as you’d expect, nice and easy to put together: base, blender jug and blade attachment. You put your ingredients in the jug, simply screw on the blades and place it into the base. Hey presto pesto, we’re off!
First up, an easy-peasy pesto pasta dish:
- Boil pasta (amount as required) whilst you’re prepping & making the pesto
- 100g broccoli (leftover from Sunday dinner – florets & stalks)
- 250 courgettes
- 50g frozen spinach (frozen helps the consistency)
- 100g stale bread (no mould!)
- 100ml oil (sunflower or olive, not 2 stroke)
- Clove of garlic (do 3 or 4 for grown ups)
- 30 ml lemon juice from a squeezy bottle (could use the juice of half a fresh one but ours looked like it needed carbon dating)
- Slack handful of parmigiana (or any hard cheese) with more grated to melt later.
Chop up the ingredients (rough chopped) and pop three quarters of the oil in first, then the spinach and then the rest. I put this on high for about 40 seconds at a time until the consistency was right for us. That’s the beauty of these blenders: you’re in charge, none of this pre-packaged stuff. You know what’s gone in and you can make what comes out exactly as YOU like it.
Once the pasta has boiled, drain and stir in this utterly delicious pesto. Chuck some grated cheese on the top and proudly serve to your children (ensuring you leave enough to “test”, yourself!) Look on in disgust as your eldest smothers ketchup on the top. You can’t win ’em all!
The Morphy Richards Compact Blender also comes with a drinks lid. To use, you simply unscrew the blade base and add the drinks lid. In the interests of fully testing the machine (!) it fell upon me to test this out with a smoothie recipe. When I make smoothies I always use frozen fruit and I’d urge you to do the same, particularly with soft fruits. You can freeze your own at home (take fruit, chop, peel or dice, lob in freezer) or buy in bags from the supermarket). With smoothies now costing anywhere between £2 and £5 a time and many containing extremely high levels of added sugar, this machine will help you save money AND make healthier choices.
Here then, my summer smoothie:
- 200ml skimmed milk
- 70g frozen summer fruits
- 3 ice cubes
- 200ml Greek yoghurt (good protein hit)
That’s it. Put the ingredients in, in that order, blitz on high for 30 seconds and you’re done. You then just unscrew the blade, replace with the drinking lid, retire to the garden and enjoy the sun. Then remember those swimming lessons! We poured the remainder into lolly moulds and made utterly delicious lollies.
The expression “Does what it says on the tin” is extremely overused so I’ll simply say this to summarise: The Morphy Richards Compact Blender – it does what it says on the box.
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