We headed out of the city for a Sunday drive at the weekend, Daylesford-bound. We arrived there just on grazing hour so headed into Frangos & Frangos to fix the hunger pangs. They did an admirable regional tasting platter for two which I followed with stuffed zucchini flowers. Fortified, I called into Avant Garden Bookshop to see what bargains I could find this trip and ended up with Bill Buford’s Heat and Eating Up Italy by Matthew Fort.
We returned to Melbourne via Bacchus Marsh and stopped by Fruits of Life for some fruit and vegetables.
Having discovered how the citrus press made short work of squeezing lemons last month, I bought a large bag of oranges for juicing then decided it was time to give my Kenwood FP920 food processor’s centrifugal juicer a workout on other produce. I came away with some pineapples, grapes, carrots and watermelon to play with.
Tackling the juice experiment round the time I should have been preparing dinner last night wasn’t such a good idea. The clue to this lay in the instruction manual. The juicer was easily assembled and I had chunks of carrot ready to process. Under Important was warning: “If the processor vibrates, switch off and empty the strainer. "
I started juicing and observed that the carrots were pushed down the feed tube onto a rapidly rotating disk where they were rasped into a fine pulp which was flung against the walls of a strainer and the juice was extracted by centrifugal force. Pretty soon the processor moved into vibration mode, which apparently happens if the pulp becomes unevenly distributed. I was given a bit of a shake-up myself as I clung to the beast and turned off the motor.
Emptying the strainer soon righted things – for a while.
As I progressed from carrots to pineapple I had to repeat the emptying procedure several times with everything getting increasingly sticky. By the time I had dealt with the knob of ginger and the huge slab of watermelon, I had a large collection of skins, and pulp but a correspondingly small quantity of juice. The bench was a mess, the sink was a mess, the chopping board was a mess.
I can’t blame it all on the food processor. I can be a messy cook some days. It was time to quit and prepare dinner.
The oranges can wait till this lot of juice runs out. It’s delicious and very refreshing and would make a great cocktail with a slug of vodka, maybe. The fresh ginger gives a pleasant tang. I gave up on processing the grapes. The rasping gizmo didn’t like them so I didn’t persevere.
Will I use the juicer again? Maybe. I drink very little juice, apart from tomato juice anyway. I might try it with a few other vegetables like celery or some apples. We'll see...
Exploring my food processor gadgets
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
Exploring my food processor gadgets 3
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