Hope wrote:

> I was given a Moulinex Odacio 3 food processor recently. I've always
> wanted one, but now I'm a bit daunted by it and the couple of times
> I've used it it hasn't done quite what I expected. Before I go back
> to my stab blender and big knife :-) can I ask if there is anyone here
> who is a virtuoso food processor user who can offer me a few tips?

Food processors are one of those appliances that most people can live
without, but once in a while there are things for which they are quite
handy. I use mine for making bread crumbs out of stale bread. If I didn't
already have the FP I would probably just buy them and give the stale
bread to the birds.

I also use my FP for slicing Seville orange peels to make marmalade. That
saves me a lot of time when I look after than annual chore. I have also
used the pulse on the FP for chopping fruit for jam.

If you have a lot of cheese to grate it may be worth getting the FP out
and cleaning it. For small amounts of grating a hand grater is much
easier. My wife likes to make meat loaf in the FP. She likes the finer
texture that she gets. Besides, she has arthritis and doesn't like dealing
with the cold meat in her bare hands.

> Even with teh blender. I tried to puree some cooked
> chickpeas/garbanzos in the blender (there's a blender as well as a
> food processor bit) and it was really hard! They kept kind of
> avoiding the blade. Then there's the tiny little blender for small
> quantities- that didn't work for the garbanzos either. I'm sure that
> it's me that's the problem. I feel like a new computer user saying "I
> can't get it to do anything!" about a new PC.

Try pulsing it. Sometimes when the blades are running they are slicing
through without stirring the stuff around. When you use the pulse mode the
initial jolt stirs things up a bit more.