Wednesday, March 12, 2008

My First Food Processor

I pine for various kitchen implements. My amazon.com wishlist is full of muffin tins, hand mixers, gadgets, a Magic Bullet, cookbooks...is this a fetish? One thing that was on my list for a long time was a food processor. I live in a small apartment with a small apartment on a small budget, so I knew that whatever I ended up buying would have to be non-clunky and last for awhile. After reading reviews and weighing my options I went with the Hamilton Beach 6 cup food processor. It sat on my wish list for months and months while I dreamt of a time and place where my food processor and I could live in harmony.

I spoke recently of an impending move, but circumstances prevailed that have allowed me to stay in my current apartment. It is small, but it's my home and has great sentimental value for me still. Before living here I lived with over 10 different people in the space of three years, this place is mine and mine alone...mine and my cat's...and my kitchen stuff...where was I going with this? Oh yeah! So since I am staying, yet had gone through the effort of relieving my space of years upon years worth of things I no longer needed, I have a lot of open space in my hall closet just begging to be filled with kitchen things.

Enter the food processor. I'd never actually used one. I grew up with my mom's Proctor Silex (it had it's own bright yellow quilted cozy, adorables) but I was always irrationally afraid of it. But I like hummus, and I like pesto, so it was time to get over it and keep track of my fingers at all times. The me-friendly thing about this one is that it won't turn on if the cover and the bowl are not locked on where nothing can hurt me. Bonus!


The other night I made a roasted red pepper hummus from La Dolce Vegan! It's very delicious but opted not to be photographed.


Tonight I made the roasted garlic pesto and gnocchi from Everyday Dish after watching the webisode yesterday.



I am not entirely sure I did this right. I added the right amount of oil and basil, and it came out looking mostly like ground pine nuts with some basil thrown in, so I chose to add in 2 more oz of basil which made it much greener, I think it could have used more oil but I ran all out, so here is how it turned out eventually. There are some whole pine nuts at the bottom, I'm not sure if that would have been cured with more oil or not. It didn't bother me so much because I was planning to use pine nuts as garnish anyway.


The moisture on the gnocchi really helped spread it out. Even if the texture wasn't what I expected, the flavor was simply amazing! The roasted garlic with the fresh basil and the goodness, exquisite. But then I thought to myself, "How good would this be if you put some Karam's Garlic Tahini Sauce in it?" The answer to that question is, "It is fucking right on hell yeah good!" How could it not be, though? One of the ingredients in the sauce is love (no joke, it's on the label.)


look at that. you want it, it knows you do

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