The Complete Book of Pressure Cooking. L.D. Michaels
metres (1,000 feet) above sea level. This is because atmospheric pressure drops the higher in altitude one gets, and with it the boiling point of liquids decreases too. You have to compensate by increasing cooking time. At 2,200 metres (7,200 feet) water boils at 93°C (199°F). If you are climbing very high mountains, then you will need to have the valve on the cooker adjusted; write to the manufacturers and make enquiries.
A SUMMARY OF STEP-BY-STEP PROCEDURE
1 Prepare the food in the usual way. Small pieces cook more rapidly than larger ones. Place in the cooker on the trivet (if the method so requires). Season now or at the finish.
2 Fill the cooker no more than two-thirds to prevent clogging the safety valve. Half fill the cooker if cooking with liquids.
3 Add the amount of water called for – a minimum of 140ml (¼pt) plus 140ml for every 15 minutes of pressure-cooking time or part thereof.
4 Seal the lid down according to instructions.
5 Place on a high heat with the steam vent open until steam can be seen and heard coming through the vent.
6 Close the pressure valve by moving the valve or placing on weights.
7 Reduce the heat so that the cooker mutters or the indicator is just visible. You are now cooking at the required pressure and cooking will be maintained at low heat. Excessive heat will disperse moisture too rapidly.
8 Start timing, keeping a careful watch.
9 When the cooking time is up, reduce pressure either by plunging the cooker into cold water or, if the food is very delicate, by allowing the cooker to cool naturally.
10 Open the steam vent or remove the weight to break the vacuum.
11 Remove the lid. Don’t attempt to remove the lid while there is still pressure in the pan. (N.B. One or two models are specially designed to let you do this: follow the instructions carefully.)
12 Season or dress. If necessary, complete the cooking at normal temperature and pressure. Remove the food and serve.
THE RECIPES
In the next chapters of this book, which follow the usual “menu” order of foods and dishes, I have more or less followed a set pattern:
1 BASIC METHOD AND TIMINGS. Usually I will cover not only fresh food but also frozen, dried and freeze dried. Dried foods are those that have had their moisture taken away from them naturally, by exposure to the sun, such as pulses. Freeze-dried (dehydrated) foods have been treated to a rapid freezing technique and include things like “instant” dried peas, peppers, onions and so forth. Usually, dried foods take longer to reconstitute than freeze-dried ones.
2 TABLES
3 SPECIAL METHODS OF COOKING including nutritional recommendations.
4 MORE ADVENTUROUS RECIPES that you may like to try or which will inspire you to adapt and invent your own.
Good cooking begins with good buying. Pressure cooking can sometimes rescue slightly stale or “old” food, but the best results, as with the best of conventional cookery, come from fresh, good ingredients. Buy lively looking vegetables, properly hung meat and firm fish.
Timing is for cooking under pressure, after proper preparation, and begins when the cooker has been brought to the right internal temperature and pressure. Unless otherwise stated, this is at 15 psi (H), the normal operating level. Periodically I will remind you to adjust if your pressure cooker operates at a lower level.
What governs cooking time most of all is the speed of heat and steam penetration. Small pieces cook more rapidly than big ones. It is not the total weight of the ingredient but the size of the individual pieces that counts: 2kg (4½lb) carrots thinly sliced, diced or cut into matchsticks (allumettes) will cook more rapidly than a single carrot, whole and uncut, weighing 250g (9 oz). Make all the portions of any one ingredient roughly the same size.
Usually only pieces of meat and fish that are served entire (and of course cooked whole) are timed by weight.
Adjust all cooking times slightly for personal preference. Some people prefer their vegetables crisp (al dente), while others like them plump and juicy; the latter result takes a little more cooking time – you’ll soon learn.
I think it is worth paying a little attention to the final appearance of the food. The saving in cooking time gives you more time to cut up the vegetables into nice-looking pieces and shapes – carrots can become circles, ellipses, long thin sticks; celery can be cut into comma shapes. The extra effort required is minimal, but the effect on the final appearance on the serving plate is dramatic. Quick recipes don’t mean that the food has to be sloppy or unattractive.
Most of the recipes are for four people unless otherwise stated.
I really can’t remember when I last made a soup merely by opening an aluminium-foil pack containing powdered and dried ingredients, a can or even the luxury versions in waxed paper cartons – and that isn’t just cookery writers’ snobbery. There simply hasn’t been any point; not only are home-produced soups vastly better in every respect, but with a pressure cooker they need take hardly any longer to get to table than the so-called “convenience” versions.
Soups need not be the thin, ghostly apologies we are used to; they are marvellous appetizers when taken as clear hot liquids at the beginning of a meal, enlivening the taste buds for the things to come. They can provide a meal in themselves when thickened up with vegetables and meat chunks and with croutons floating on them. They can be used as an instant restorative after hard physical work, exposure to cold weather or illness – the hot fluid rapidly warms the body and the constituents are usually easily digested. The Chinese have broth at the end of a meal to clear the mouth and aid settling of the stomach.
Soups can be made from all manner of leftovers and oddments that would normally be thrown away. Most of the cost of commercially packaged soups goes into the packaging; then there is the advertising that the food manufacturers or processors have to invest in to get you to buy their particular product rather than their rivals’, the costs of distribution, warehousing and the retailer’s mark-up. Precious little of what you pay goes into the food itself.
Normally, soup making in the home, particularly if it involves meat, is a long process. The pressure cooker, optionally joined by the blender, has changed all this. No single category of food illustrates the versatility of the pressure cooker as well, or the variety of ways in which it can be used.
The pressure cooker can make you meat soups in 7–8 minutes, vegetable soups in 5 minutes; it can produce first-rate meat stock in 40–50 minutes, and even a marrowbone stock in 2 hours (against 12 hours by other methods). You can have clear soups and thick ones, and you can try your hand at unusual fish soups and even ones based on fruit (a particular favourite of mine). Soups can be hot, cold or jellied.
Degreasing
One technique within soup making (and it can also apply to stews of various kinds) you will need to acquire, if you don’t have it already, is degreasing. Cooked meat throws off fat and excess fat may also occur if you pre-sauté vegetables. To remove grease while still hot, roll up a length of kitchen paper and mop the surface of the fluid, snipping off the end of the paper as it becomes soaked. Better and easier, cool the liquid rapidly so that the fat rises to the surface – place in a bowl and stand in iced water. You can then use a shallow ladle to scoop from the top – there are ones designed specifically for the purpose and have carefully positioned slots. There are also specially designed separator jugs with spouts that decant from the bottom – some of these also have filters to trap small unwanted pieces of food.