Modern Pressure Cooking: The Comprehensive Guide to Stovetop and Electric Cookers, with Over 200 Recipes

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Stefano Arturi, of the Italian Home Cooking blog, adds: “I can make dishes that would otherwise take hours [stews, chickpeas] in a fraction of the time, and with no loss of flavour – in fact, pressure cooking intensifies how things taste. In the late 90s, or possibly early 2000s, a new generation of pressure cookers seemed suddenly to be available, and when I rhapsodised about them to my late mother-in-law, she was amused at their comeback, telling me of her pressure cooking years in the distant past and the particular glory of her pressure cooker crème caramels. Phipps shows that high-pressure cooking isn’t only quick and economic, but a tool to treasure flavour. Pressure cooking is a wonder cooking method: you can make meals in minutes (on average, a third or less of the time of other cooking methods - risotto takes 7 minutes! Pasta and rice can be made from scratch in less than 10 minutes; thrifty cooks can tenderise flavoursome cheap cuts in just 20 minutes and pulses can be cooked without having to soak them.

Catherine Phipps is an altogether calmer exponent: “This book”, she states in her introduction, “is aimed at people who want to cook. So if you’re doing gentle custards, crème caramels, anything like that, they’ll cook really quickly and efficiently.I don’t see them as a gadget, but just as a saucepan with a specially adapted lid,” says the author of Modern Pressure Cooking. Dried fruit (in our Pressure Cooker Christmas Pudding video, Catherine and I used: raisins, sultanas, currants, chopped prunes, chopped pears, a mix of orange and lemon candied peel and yuzu, zest of one orange, we would have added quince too but to be honest we totally forgot! As any pressure-cooker enthusiast — or perhaps, post-Instant Pot, I should say pressure-cooker evangelist — will tell you, there is almost nothing you can’t cook in one, and very often, not merely faster than by using traditional methods, but with better results, too. An expert in pressure cookers with a big focus on stove-top pressure cookers, Catherine Phipps lives in London with her family. Celebrity chefs are not exactly waxing lyrical on TV cooking programmes in the way they are embracing the Thermomix and Pacojet but the blogosphere is hopping.

They both, save time and energy, do wonders for cheap ingredients and have made it possible to make homely comforting food, seems to me it’s time to go rooting in the garage or to invest or re-invest in these two unlikely heroes of our time. Royal Mail received the package from the seller on 22nd September, but took till 30th September to deliver it. Add all the ingredients for the spice blend and fry until they start to splutter and smell aromatic. SALTING BEANS If you are cooking dried beans of any kind, adding salt to the cooking water – especially if you live in a hard-water area – will help cook the beans more efficiently so you have a creamy interior and the bean keeps its shape.Either leave in the basin if you don’t need to use it or wrap up sterilised muslin followed by some thicker fabric - eg, tea towel. Cook for five minutes for a very soft set (I favour this), or 6 minutes if you want it slightly firmer, then remove from the heat and release pressure quickly. It is a method I highly recommend - you don’t have to switch the oven on and the pressure cooker is so good at intensifying both flavour and colour.