Sausage Casserole with DumplingsServes 6A good, old-fashioned 'comfort food' meal - I love dumplings! 
1. Place in Thermomix and chop on speed 5 for 3 seconds:
- 1 onion, halved
- 1 or 2 garlic cloves
- 2 carrots, quartered
- 1 celery stick, quartered
- 1 red capsicum, halved
2. Add and cook at 100 degrees, 4 minutes, speed 1:
- 1 Tblspn sweet paprika, ground
- 30g olive oil or butter
3. Add to bowl:
- 1 tin crushed tomatoes
- 2 Tblspns (or so) tomato paste
- 1 Tblspn vege stock paste
- 2 Tblspns balsamic vinegar
- 1 Tblspn Rapadura
- 200g water
4. Place Varoma on lid of bowl and place sausages inside:
- 700g thin beef sausages
(Space sausages apart to let steam through and place lid on top.)
5. Cook on Varoma temperature for 20 minutes, reverse speed 1, or until sausages are cooked through.
6. Cut sausages in half and remove to a large casserole dish. Pour sauce over sausages and cover with lid or foil. (Casserole shouldn't come above halfway up sides of dish, or it may overflow, like mine did!) Turn on oven to 200 degrees C and place casserole dish in oven while you make the dumplings. (Rinse and dry Thermomix bowl.)
Dumplings:
1. Grind grain in Thermomix bowl for 1 minute, speed 9:
- 200g spelt grain
2. Add and process on speed 9 for 10 seconds:
- a large handful of fresh parsley
3. Add and mix for 5 seconds, speed 5:
- 100g white spelt flour
- 4 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp fine sea salt
4. Add and mix on speed 5 until just mixed:
- 180g rice-almond milk (or other milk)
- 60g oil (olive/macadamia/grapeseed)
5. Take casserole out of oven and drop heaped tablespoonfuls of dough onto top (using a tablespoon and butter knife), cover with lid (or loosely with foil), making sure there's room for dumplings to rise, and return to oven.
6. Cook for 20 minutes then remove lid/foil and cook until done and lightly browned on top. (Pull two dumplings apart in centre with forks to check if done.)
Enjoy!
members' commentscathy79 - Jo, this is divine! The girls loved their "sausage and cake" dinner and we all loved the hearty richness of the sauce. I used a zucchini and half a head of broccoli instead of the carrot and whole wheat grain instead of spelt. Fantastic adaptable recipe, perfect for this cold weather. A great way to stretch 6 sausages to feed approx 5 people.
snoozie - Absolutely delicious. Another winner!!! I think I overdid the parsley though as my dumplings are green!
Carrie - Omgosh this recipe is yum, thank you Quirky Jo. I did it a little different due to what we had on hand - I used all plain flour, had no celery so used a leek instead. Had no tomato paste so just omitted it, made no difference that I can tell! DS who normally doesn't like 'saucey' things, before even tasting them, declares "I don't like it" .... well he loves this. Especially the "dumpings".
CC - we all thoroughly enjoyed the meal. I only used 1Tbsp of balsamic vinegar and 1tsp of dark brown sugar in the sauce. Halved the dumpling recipe as there is only three of us. Delicious.
