Meet My Bimby

Mamma Ida can whip up a six course meal with nothing but a butter knife, a wooden spoon and an old aluminum pot.  I am not such a minimalist.  I’m a firm believer that when it comes to technology in the kitchen, the more the better.  Got an energy-sucking, space-consuming, slicer dicer window washing egg scrambler?  Bring it on!

Which brings me to my Bimby.  Bimby is the affectionate name given by Italians to this food processor/cooker which is known as Thermomix just about everywhere else in the world.

I’ve already spoken about my darling Bimby here but a mere mention doesn’t do it justice.  Watch how it makes mushroom risotto and you’ll see what I mean.

For this recipe you will need:
dried porcini mushrooms
1 small onion
arborio or carnaroli rice
white wine
broth
grated parmesan cheese

A note on the rice:  The only rice that will make a nice creamy risotto is italian rice such as arborio or carnaroli rice.  Any other type of rice that you use will give you very dispappointing (non creamy) results which will leave you asking yourself “what the heck is the big deal about risotto?”  You are striving for a plate full of goo that has the consistency of thick oatmeal but looks much less appetizing.  In fact, you will probably want to garnish your risotto with some chopped parsely to assure your diners that it is in fact something that is meant to be ingested.  As far as the broth goes, just about any good broth will do including broth made with boullion cubes.  Just be sure that the broth is seasoned enough so that you won’t have to add salt to your risotto while it is cooking.

Before we begin, soak a handful of dried porcini mushrooms in warm water for about half an hour.

Peel the onion, put it in the bimby and press pulse which will chop it to pieces in about two seconds.

Add two tablespoon of olive oil, turn the heat to 100, speed 1 and set the timer to 3 minutes.  This will cook your onion while stirring it.  When the timer dings, insert the butterfly piece.

It slides over and covers the blades so that the bimby stirs but does not chop the food.  Add the rice and toast it by cooking 1 minute at temperature 100.  Add the white wine and again set the timer to 1 minute, temperature to 100 and speed to 1.  Add the broth-  same temperature and speed and set the timer to 13 minutes.  When the timer dings, the risotto is ready.

Despite it’s resemblence to something the dog left behind on the carpet, risotto is pure comfort food, Italian style.  Of course, it’s quite easy to make even without a bimby and I have put up the recipe here.

The Bimby is helpful to busy moms because instead of standing over the pot alternately stirring the risotto and adding broth,  you can use that precious twenty minutes of time to do any number of other things such as:

break up the kids umpteenth wrestling match before permanant damage is done to the furniture

feed the dog, cat, chickens, rabbits, ducks and fish

toss yet another load of laundry into the washer

hide in the bathroom with a good book until the Bimby’s timer dings, signalling that dinner is ready.

I normally opt for the last choice.

Buon Appetito!

Home Ec 101

Today I am offering a lesson in home economics.  Mom, please don’t laugh.

Once upon a time I lived in China.  I taught English in a school which in September of 1992 was in the countryside surrounded by rice paddies and by March of 1993 it was bordered by a superhighway on one side and a shopping center on the other.  As my chinese students were so fond of saying, “China is a developing country.”  The point being that during this feverish burst of infrastructural development the water and electricity at my school were often interrupted for something like three or four weeks at a stretch.  When the school officials finally decided that that they could no longer ignore the fact that the entire student body and faculty had no water, they arranged to have a truck bring water in every afternoon.  Everybody lined up and was allowed one bucketful of water per day.  Bear in mind that the students and faculty lived at the school so this one bucket of water had to suffice for drinking, cooking, cleaning house and personal hygiene.  So- first I took away about a liter of water, boiled it and bottled it.  That was for drinking and brushing teeth.  Then I took away the couple of cups of water necessary to make the evening rice.  The water that was left was divided with the smallest possible amount to rinse the dishes and the other part was used as bath water.  (Bath being a relative term since we’re talking about three liters of water here.)  Rather than dump out the bathwater, I used it to rinse out my clothes.  I hesitate to use the word wash as there was only enough water to sort of tickle my laundry rather than actually clean it.  The challenge was in getting as much use out of my five liter bucket of water as possible and organizing things so that I could actually reuse the “gray” water without ending up with hepititis.

Just I learned to use and reuse that one bucket of water, I’ve learned to use and reuse a chicken and can get three nice meals out of just one chicken- with absolutely no threat of hepititis.

The first meal is a nice whole roast chicken, stuffed or not as you like.  This is how I make mine:

You will need a chicken

some sage

some rosemary

and a couple of bay leaves.

Rinse and pat dry the chicken.  Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper both inside and out.  Shove the herbs up the…er, umm ..place the herbs in the chest cavity and put the chicken in a roasting dish just large enough to contain it but not so large that the juices will spread out and cook away.

Roast in a hot oven until your meat thermometer tells you that your bird is cooked.  After your family has thoroughly demolished the chicken  put the carcass back in the roasting pan until the next day.  The next day, pick off any remaining meat, place the carcass in a soup pot with a carrot, an onion, a potato, salt and a few grains of whole pepper.  Make a nice chicken stock which you can then strain and freeze for future use.  This stock makes a great base for minestrone, creamed vegetable soup, risotto or even just soup with dumplings.  That would be meal number two.  If you look in your roasting pan where you roasted your chicken you’ll find the drippings and quite a bit of chicken fat plus the leftover meat which you picked off the bones.  Heat up the pan so that the fat separates from the drippings.  Skim off as much of the fat as you can, add some cream, season with salt and pepper.  Whisk everything together until well blended.  Cook over medium low heat for just a few moments until the sauce starts to bubble a bit.  There won’t be a whole lot of sauce and it will be quite thin but it should be enough for about four servings of pasta.  Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and toss in some pasta (spaghetti is a nice choice with this sauce).  When it is al dente strain the pasta and put it in the roasting pan.  Toss well with the creamy gravy and bits of chicken, stir in lots of grated parmesan cheese and serve.  Meal number three!

Buon Appetito.

Lunch

My kids are living the good life, culinarily speaking.  A good portion of what we eat is either grown or raised in our backyard by Nonno.  No genetically modified food.  No pesticides. We have free range chickens and ducks, eggs (when you can find them considering that they are laid by the afore mentioned free range poultry),  fresh dairy products from a nearby farm…you get the point.

Since we live in northern Italy, we cannot produce our own olives for oil (don’t think Nonno hasn’t tried) so our oil comes from a cousin in the southern region of Basilicata.  He grows and presses his own olives and we arrange to have a barrel shipped up to us now and then which we decant into bottles.

Given the abundance of fresh healthy food at home, Nonno and Mamma Ida couldn’t for the life of them understand why I would force my children to eat  (gasp!) mass produced, reheated lunches in the school cafeteria…and suffer the added humiliation of HAVING TO PAY FOR THEM!  Mamma Ida was nearly ill worrying about whether or not the children were getting enough to eat and Nonno was constantly reminding us that an entire family of four could live for ten days on what it cost to buy a school lunch.

The upshot was that I signed a permission slip allowing the kids to come home every day for lunch.  Nonno picks them up at 12 and brings them back at two.  Yep, that’s right, Italian kids have a two hour lunch break.  Mamma Ida spends a good part of the morning getting ready for lunch and is careful to always tell me that the boys are big eaters and eat everything on their plates.  Of course, she only prepares things that my kids like to eat but  I diplomatically pretend not to know this.  My children, recognizing an easy mark, do not hesitate to place their order the night before for what they would like to find at lunchtime the next day.  Big boy wants polenta and little boy wants pasta?  No problem…Mamma Ida makes both dishes!  It’s enough that one of my kids looks sideways at his plate and Mamma Ida is up out of her chair and pulling all sorts of delicious alternatives out of the fridge.

Now, I grew up in a house where you ate what was put in front of you.  Period.  If you didn’t like what was for dinner you either ate it anyway or waited with an empty stomach until breakfast the next day. I firmly believe in passing this ethic along to my children.  As you may imagine lunch with Mamma Ida and dinner with Mommy are two completely different dining experiences bordering on schizophrenia.

Case in point:

The other night I made pasta with eggplant.  I was out of parmesan cheese so I grated some pecorino (which is a bit tart) to sprinkle over the pasta. My big boy (who navigates the often turbulent waters of a bicultural home with remarkable ease) slowly but steadily ate his dinner without comment.  He doesn’t particularly like eggplant so he sort of mashed it up with his fork and mixed it into the pasta so it wasn’t too noticeable to him.  Bless his little heart.  He knew the battle would be lost so he didn’t bother to engage the enemy.

My little boy, on the other hand, either doesn’t understand yet or simply doesn’t care that  Mommy isn’t running the same five star operation that his grandmother is.  The conversation between little boy and me went something like this:

L.B.  “What’s that?”
Me: “Pasta”
L.B. “Can I eat upstairs with Nonna and Nonno?”
Me: “No”
L.B. “I don’t want this.  Can I have a chicken sandwich?”

Unlike Mamma Ida, I don’t usually have a roast chicken just lying around in the refrigerator.

Me “No eat your pasta”.
L.B. “I want pasta with meat sauce”
Me “But I made pasta with eggplant.  Eat it.”
L.B. “What’s for second?”
Me “There is no second”

I got home at seven fifteen, for crying out loud, they’re lucky they got the pasta.

What follows is a back and forth between me and my six year old with both of us becoming increasingly agitated and stubborn.  Finally little boy puts a forkful of pasta in his mouth and with a theatrical performance worthy of a neopolitan opera star, starts gagging and spitting out the food.

Me “What’s wrong now?”
L.B. “Ugh” he says.  “You know I don’t like pecorino cheese.”

Let’s ignore for a moment that my first grader is able to tell the difference between parmigiano reggiano and pecorino romano.  (At six years old I thought the only cheese worth eating was Velveeta.)  The larger issue here is that my kids are getting treated a little bit too well at lunch time and my culinary efforts just aren’t making the grade.

But I have a secret weapon.  And I don’t hesitate to use it.  When I really want my kids to love me (and let’s not comment on how unhealthy it is to show affection with food) I make AMERICAN FOOD!  That’s right, my kids LOVE exotic foreign foods like sloppy joes, chicken wings, fried chicken strips, chocolate milkshakes and most of all waffles.  But their all time super favorite of favorites is (drumroll please) grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.  When I make that they think that I’m the best cook in the world.  And even though I can buy fresh bread at the bakery and fifty seven varieties of cheese at the cheese shop, I make my grilled cheese with regular store bought sliced white bread and processed cheese singles…but please don’t tell my six year old.

Buon Appettito!