My piano tuner told me about the “Spiralizer.” He recommended the one by Benriner, a Japanese maker.
It’s fun. It’s a julienne machine on steroids. It takes a large round vegetable and makes strands out of it - or flecks - of a few different possible sizes. I thought that beets always had to be cooked, but found out that they’re edible raw after going through the machine.
The machine needs to get a good grip on the top of whatever you put in it, so whatever it is has to have a large enough flat surface area on top of it for the upper teeth of the machine to grab. I had a couple of fails due to inadequate flatness and bad traction.
Large roots, tubers and heads seem to work the best in it.
I had leftover fragments of fennel, beet, onion, etc, and put them in the chopper the next day, and poured hot chicken broth over them for a fantastic “raw soup.”
Meanwhile, here’s an adventure with the spiralizer, some leftover chicken fried in its own leftover fat (skimmed from pan stock) with anise and mustard seed, then served with the raw vegetables and some pot stock from cooking the chicken bones down with onion, fennel, celery root and seeds.
There's some sweet potato spaghetti here. After reading up on it, it's not the best thing to eat raw - but I bet this sweet potato spaghetti would come very close in texture to wheat spaghetti if steamed. Stay tuned!
Last night’s roast chicken created a supply of protein, fat and savory elements to make the raw vegetable core very appealing and satisfying… and all nutritious. Yes, chicken fat is good!
