The Food Processor Edition

I’m sure you used to be able to buy cookbooks that were focused on the appliance rather than anything else, like 150 Meals from Your Rice Cooker, Feed Your Family with a Stick Blender or A Two-Course Meal Courtesy of a Food Processor I Recently Inherited. This is an exclusive edition of the latter.

Thanks to my veg box (#blessed) I got a large bag of rocket but also an enormous lettuce, so eating the rocket as salad before it went soggy was out because all my salad-eating energy had to be concentrated on the lettuce. (current status: four bowls and counting)

So, rocket pesto. Cupboard check: pine nuts? no. parmesan? also no. various things that will probably be ok in pesto? sure. I have never tried this before so don’t feel qualified to give general advice, but some kind of greenery + some kind of nuts/seeds + some kind of cheese + a bit of acid + a bit of oil + garlic seems like a reliable combination.

My cupboards and fridge yielded: almond butter, a ridiculously small amount of walnut pieces and dust, lime juice, garlic, Comté and olive oil (not pictured).

I also completely winged the process so don’t trust me on this either.

In the food processor, gradually chop the greens finely with a bit of oil.

Chop the other ingredients a bit with a knife before adding them. This is how much I used of each and it came out fine (the almond butter is on a soup spoon for scale).

Everything will turn to a lovely mush that your phone camera can’t focus on.

Next, make sure that you went on holiday to Naples in January 2019 and in the best tradition of buying food while you’re on holiday you haven’t eaten your fancy orecchiette yet.

Side note: I bought this pasta at Di Martino, which is a shop downstairs and a restaurant upstairs. When my best friend and I had dinner there the night before, I was given a MENU WITHOUT PRICES BECAUSE I AM A WOMAN.

Anyway, the orecchiette are good - mix with the last cherry tomatoes from the previous week’s veg box and that’s your main course!

For dessert, you need to have got a melon in your veg box the week before. Use your food processor, this recipe, icing sugar you don’t remember buying, the lime juice already featured and a lot of patience with repeated whisking to make melon sorbet while losing in a fictional text-based cricket tournament (optional). (Prepare 24 hrs+ in advance.)