Pressure cooked polenta

I love polenta, the fact is it’s a pain in the ass to cook, it’s not hard or complicated, but standing there stirring a pot of something that ultimately wants to spurt and bubble and cover you in all sorts of pain just doesn’t do it for me. Heck even the 6 minutes of bubbling hell that “instant” polenta takes is about 5 minutes too long for my liking. It may seem like a strange attitude for someone who seems to spend an inordinate amount of time fussing about in the kitchen, but life is too short to suffer third degree burns for a bowl of creamy polenta. I guess you could say that it is fortunate that I now have a method that no longer involves any camping out stove side and the most hard work is sieve pushing or mouli turning, if that, you do need a pressure cooker though.

1 part (by weight) polenta (not instant).
5 parts liquid
Butter, cheese, oil, or anything else you want to enrich with.


Place about an inch of water in the bottom of the pressure cooker and place in a trivet. Mix together the polenta, liquid and fat in a bowl and then place the bowl into the pressure cooker. Cook on high pressure for 30 minutes, let the pressure drop naturally. I like to pass the cooked polenta through a sieve to ensure a smooth consistency. Once passed, you can fold in more butter or cheese to really enrich it, or if for example you’re serving it with a roast, I'd add some of the cooking fat/liquid. Taste and season with salt.

Pressure cooked meat sauce

This is one for the pressure cooker club, if you’re not a member I guess you could slow cook it, but it’s really not the same, there is something about cooking under pressure and using next to no added liquid that really pumps up the flavours in the sauce. If you’re on the fence about owning a pressure cooker and have heard nothing but horror stories, the days of exploding pots of hell are well and truly over, the modern pressure cooker is quite unlikely to erupt, and heck you can even get set and forget electric models which are great for freeing up a hob and not adding to the heat in the kitchen, not a bonus on a cold day though.

Melt in the mouth beef nestles into the indentations of the orecchiette pasta, giving an almost perfect ratio of meat/sauce/pasta with each mouthful. It’s definitely my go to quick and easy sauce. It’ll make you think twice about cooking up a batch of mince based sauce again, primal cuts give better flavour and texture, you get to control the fat going in, and as it’s slow/pressure cooked it breaks down to melt in the mouth tender pieces.


500 g Chuck steak, cubed
2 Onions, diced
200 g Tomato purée
1 Carrot, diced
1 Bulb of garlic, peeled
Handful of parsley, chopped
3 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
3 Tbsp Tomato paste
Salt
Pepper
Hot sauce, to taste, or chilli flakes

It's dead simple, put everything into the pressure cooker and cook on high pressure for about 40 minutes. Let the pressure drop naturally. Use a wooden spoon to break up any lumps of meat. Taste and season with salt, pepper and white wine vinegar. Stir in another handful of chopped parsley. Serve stirred through orecchiette.

Mister rabbits last meal

Ambition and vision seemed to come into alignment, and as usual I probably went a little overboard on a dish for two, and maybe put in a few or more hours into it, just as well I like spending time in the kitchen I guess. I didn’t have a clear idea when I first saw Mr Rabbit inviting me to take him home from Moore Wilson as we madly dashed around the store on a rather freezing cold morning, rushing home to get a panel heater installed. Not so much a recipe as such, but more a list of what was what in roughly the order it happened.

Rabbit Broken down, loin removed, belly removed, legs removed and deboned.


Bones and scraps into a pan (pressure cooker) with baking soda, carrots, onion, caraway, juniper, peppercorns, thyme and parsley, 1 cup of water and 1 cup of dry suffolk cider, cooked on high pressure for 45 minutes, let to release pressure, strained without pressing the bones and vegetables.




Leg meat was cured in salt (2%), juniper and thyme overnight. Sous vide confit with duck fat for 4 hours at 70ºC. Roughly pulled apart and formed into a torchon, wrapped firmly in layers of cling film. Refrigerated overnight.


The leg “torchon” is sliced in half, and one half in half again, the intact half rolled in flour, egg yolk, panko crumbs, yolk and then finally crumbs again. Left in the fridge for at least half an hour.


Carrots peeled, sliced and cooked in enough water until tender, passed through a mouli, then a fine sieve, returned to pan and cooked with some butter until enough water has evaporated and a thick purée is left, seasoned.


Sauce, red onion, thyme, butter, cooked until the onion is tender and 1 cup of dry suffolk cider is added, reduced to 1 quarter, strained, 1 cup of rabbit stock added and reduced to 1 third of a cup, seasoned and enriched with a little butter to thicken and add shine.


Radish is sliced thinly then placed in an ice bath. Brussels sprouts broken down to individual leaves, blanched in boiling salted water then transferred to ice bath.


Leg quarters are seared on one side in butter and left to heat through. The crumbed half is fried in butter, spooning over the foaming butter to help create an even golden brown coating, drained on paper towels, and sliced in half on a bias just before serving.

Loin, pan seared and spoon with butter until medium.

Parsley and thyme picked over for garnish.

Plated with what one could call a skid mark of carrot purée, loin sliced in half, then the uncrumbed leg, crumbed leg, radish and sprout leaves arranges, and dressed with the rich sauce, and a scattering of herbs.

Grapefruit marmalade

Having a pressure cooker comes in handy sometimes, from speeding up cooking times, eliminating the need to soak dried legumes, meaning you can whip up a batch of hummus from dried chickpeas in no time at all, or braising meat, wonderful pulled pork without heating up the house and not taking hours on the stove or oven, it makes congee a effortless affair, it’s ideal for medium sized batches of stock, and you can take advantage of its unique cooking method by making things like caramelised carrot soup or hamine egg.

Recently I’ve added marmalade to the list of things to use the pressure cooker for over the traditional method. The most time consuming process of this recipe is slicing the fruit and removing the seeds, the total cooking time should be around 20 minutes, depending on the amount of sugar and liquid used, maybe another 5 minutes if you want to process your jars to make them shelf stable.

The quantities below, are enough for two 500 ml jars. Another advantage of this pressure cooked method is making small batches, or experimental batches more viable time-wise.

750 g Grapefruit (about 3 medium)
1 kg Sugar
2 cups Strong brewed Earl Grey Tea

Slice the grapefruit thinly, about 2–3 mm, a mandoline is invaluable for this. When the grapefruit have been sliced, pick out the seeds from the slices, piling them in stacks as you go. Cut each stack into four so you end up with piles of quarter slices of grapefruit.

Scrape the grapefruit into the pressure cooker, making sure to get as much of the juice from the board as possible. Add as much tea as your pressure cooker needs to get up to pressure, at least one cup, I used two, but keep in mind how much liquid you add now will increase the amount of cooking time after you add the sugar. Cook on high pressure for 10 minutes.


Remove the pressure cooker from the heat and let the pressure drop naturally. When the pressure has equalised, remove the lid, and pour in the sugar, stirring until dissolved. Place the cooker back on a medium heat, and simmer until the temperature reaches 104°C, about 5–10 minutes. If you don’t have a candy thermometer you can drop a small spoonful of the mixture into a saucer of ice-cold water, if it gels up, it should be ready.


Pour the marmalade into sterilized preserving jars, screw on the lid, but not too tightly. Place a trivet on the bottom of the pressure cooker (now clean), or other pot big enough for the jars, pour enough water to come a few centimetres up the side of the jars, bring to the boil, place on the lid (if using a pressure cooker, make sure the valve is open so pressure DOESN'T build up), simmer for five minutes. Carefully remove the jars and leave them to cool on bench. The lids should ping, and become concave, if this doesn’t happen by the time the jar is cool, reboil the offending jar(s) for five more minutes.


The processed marmalade should last years in the pantry, and once opened a good month or two in the fridge . If you don’t want to boil the jarred marmalade, it should last about a month in the fridge.

Puff Pastry

Plans dreamed up during the day in the odd moment I have spare, rarely end up as that night's meal, either lack of ingredients or time. I had great plans of making a dashi-chicken broth, whipping up some of McGee’s alkaline noodles, and serving with a hamine egg and shredded chicken, but it just seemed a bit too much for a Monday night after work. So instead I whipping up a couple of oxtail pot pies, a thick rich stew topped with a pastry shell.

The stew was a pretty simple, chuck together of oxtail, red wine, swede, potato, carrot, onion, garlic, anchovy, brandy, caraway, bay leaf, thyme, mustard, salt and pepper. Just brown up the meat, then the onions, deglaze with the brandy and wine, then add the rest, put it in the cooker on high pressure and wait, or simmer away on a stove until the meat is tender and the cooking liquid reduced to a thick luscious gravy.

So while the meat was cooking, I got onto the pastry. I’ve never made my own puff pastry, I make shortcrust quite often, but I always thought puff must be hard, anyway I had the idea of pot pie, I wanted a pastry crust, and like heck I was going to buy it. After some research, I was pleasantly surprised just how easy it seemed, the main theme I read, was to make sure to keep the dough cool, so the layers of folded pastry don't meld into each other. Apart from that it seemed like any other pastry, just folded and rolled a bit more.

Ingredients
200 grams Flour
1 tsp Salt
200 grams Butter (unsalted)
120 ml Water (Cold)

Dough

1. Sieve the salt and flour into a bowl.
2. Work the butter into the flour with your fingers, you want a large bread crumb type texture but still have some large pieces of butter in there.
3. Pour in about half of the water and work it into the butter/flour mixture, adding more water if needed, you want a firm dough that's not too sticky.
4. Cover and put it in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Rolling
Roll the dough out in one direction, keeping the edges straight, and trying to make it as rectangular as possible.


Fold the bottom third up, and then the top third down, and roll out again to the original size. Repeat two or three times more, on the last repetition stop before re-rolling, cover and place in the fridge for another 20 minutes. If the dough gets too soft during the rolling process pop it back in the fridge for a couple of minutes.


Remove the dough from the fridge and roll out to a couple of millimeters thick. Cut out the desired shape with a sharp knife, you don't want to pinch the edge together with a dull knife as it won't puff properly.

The amounts in the above recipe was more than enough for the two pies, and a healthy number of Palmiers.

Pork hock cake with pickled rhubarb

It started with a tweet, and I immediately knew I wanted to try pickled rhubarb. It is a foreign idea to me, something I should of heard of, I grew up with rhubarb in the garden and have had it many different ways... ok mainly stewed. So the next visit to the vegetable shop, I made sure to pick up a good bunch of stalks. I sliced them up, and put them in a jar with vinegar, sugar and spices. But now what?

So with a freshly made jar of pickled rhubarb in the fridge, and totally riffing off (not ripping) Chris Cosentino’s tweet of trotter cake, I rang the butcher to set aside some porky feet. No luck, but no matter the pickle wasn’t going to go off, or run away, anytime soon. I stopped off at the supermarket to pick up some essentials, and walking through the chilled meat area, I spotted a decent looking pork hock, not a big one, but big enough to at least try out an idea.

So, pressure cooker time again, but a normal slow cooker, or dutch oven would do the trick, they just take a lot longer. I took the hock and browned it all over, then chucked in a sliced carrot, juniper berries, garlic, salt, pepper, cider vinegar, and quarter of a cup of water. I cooked it on high pressure for 1 hour, and then let the pressure drop naturally. After lifting off the lid, I separated the meat from the bones and set aside. Then strained the liquid and put it back in the cooker with the bones and cooked on high pressure for 15 minutes. While the liquid was cooking for a second time, I pulled apart the meat, letting it tear naturally, not turning it into mush.

After the stock has had its second go at cooking, take a spoonful of it and put it on a plate, and place it in the fridge. After about five minutes, check to see if it has set. If it hasn’t, reduce the cooking liquid by about a third and check again. When the liquid is ready, wet the shredded meat with it, just enough to coat it, you don’t want it swimming in liquid. The leftover cooking liquid is a great stock for soups.


Now the easy part, and totally environmentally friendly, yeah, OK, you’re going to need quite a bit of plastic wrap, but it is easyish. Roll out a good foot and a half of wrap on the bench and spoon the meat out into a rough log shape, use the plastic to roll up the meat, folding up the sides to keep the shape. Use another layer of plastic wrap to re-roll the meat log, tightening it to hold its shape. Put it in the fridge overnight to firm up.


You know, it’s not as simple as take it from the fridge and eat, or even cook and eat, it’s going to go back in the fridge again, but hey, you’ll at least get to eat it on the same day. So take the log and slice off medallions, take each medallion and coat in flour, dip in a beaten egg; water; salt mix, and coat in bread crumbs (panko). Place the coated medallions on to a sheet-pan, and then back into the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Putting it back in the fridge gives the coating a chance to set, and means it won't fall off when cooking.


Remove the pan from the fridge about 10 minutes before you want to cook. Get a heavy based pan on a medium-high heat, with a good coating (5 mm deep) of rice bran oil (or other neutral high smoke point oil), fry the pork cakes 30 seconds per side flipping twice (1 minute per side total), place the cakes on some paper towels to drain.


Serve with a nice leafy salad, rocket would be ideal, and some rhubarb pickle.


Pickled Rhubarb
Slice up enough rhubarb to fill a jar.

Put a pot on medium heat with 1 cup cider vinegar, 1 cup of brown sugar and some spices (allspice, ginger, cloves and star anise), bring to a simmer. When all of the sugar is dissolved, remove from the heat and pour into the jar, make sure to get all the spices in.


Seal the jar, and let it cool. Store it in the fridge, it should last a month, but it’ll be best for a week after a week of storing.

Pressure cooked mustard

I've been meaning to make pressure cooked mustard seeds ever since I got my hands on a pressure cooker. The original method by Dave Arnold can be found on Cooking Issues (about half way down the page).


Get a couple of pots on to boil.


Blanch 1/2 a cup of mustard seeds in 3 changes of water. Strain the mustard seeds and add to the pressure cooker with 1 litre of cider vinegar. Cook on high pressure for 20 minutes.


Strain the mustard seeds and season. I used some honey, whiskey and flaky sea salt.

Confit Garlic

I came across the recipe for confit garlic on the Modernist Cuisine blog the other day and I had to make it. It seemed like a great thing to have sitting ready in the fridge, and the idea of caramelised garlic goodness mashed on crusty toasted bread was too irresistible to pass up.

So on the way home I picked up an extra bottle of olive oil (the alternate suggestion of duck fat sounds pretty good too) and half a kilo of garlic.


Fill a Mason jar three quarters of the way up with garlic cloves, a sprig of rosemary and some thyme. Fill almost to the top with olive oil and screw on the lid, do a quarter turn to loosen it so steam can escape from the jar.

Place the jar on a trivet in a pressure cooker and pour enough water in to come 2 cm up the side of the jar. Cook for 2 hours on high pressure.


The cloves turn an amazing deep caramel brown and smell of deep slow roast garlic. I have a feeling this will be a staple in my fridge (they should last 2 months in the fridge).

Check out the Modernist Cuisine blog post for a heap of tips and information and more detailed recipe.


Modernist Cuisine - Pressure Cooker Safety : Garlic Confit from Modernist Cuisine on Vimeo.


I made up another batch of Garlic Confit and got a video of the jars just as I pulled them from the pressure cooker, the jars are sealed and still under pressure, the boiling stopped as soon as the lids were removed.

Barley

I don't know why I haven't used barley as main part of a dish before, I've used it in stews, soups and cordials, but never as a main component. The only reason I can think of is that it takes a long time to cook and is suited for slow cooked stews and soups.

But with the pressure cooker I no longer had the excuse of time, so I cooked the barley until it was almost cooked through, drained and set aside.


Finely dice up some carrot, onion and celery. Soften in a hot pan with a dash of olive oil. When the vegetables are translucent and beginning to caramelise around the edge, deglaze the pan with a little red wine vinegar, pour in the cooked barley and add a cup of good beef stock.


Simmer until the barley has finished cooking, season with salt and pepper and add a good handful of chopped parsley.


The young leafs of celery are very tasty but get bitter the older, bigger and greener they get.

Caramelised Carrot & Peanut soup

I've had this recipe on my mind ever since I heard about it, and got my hands on a pressure cooker (which is essential). The pressure cooker along with some baking soda (which increases the pH and in turn speeds up the Maillard reaction) enable the carrots to caramelise.

You can find the original recipe by Nathan Myhrvold at www.foodandwine.com, and in his book Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking (which would make an excellent Christmas pressie). I have altered it slightly, by using vegetable stock instead of carrot juice, olive oil in place of butter and a touch of peanut. So the original recipe is all about the carrot, my tweaks use it as a base flavour.


Peel and chop 500 grams of carrots place in a pressure cooker along with 3 tablespoons of olive oil and 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda. Cook on high pressure for 15 minutes. The strength of the caramel aroma is quite surprising.

Once the time is up release the pressure (if electric use the pressure release valve or traditional run it under cold water to lower the pressure). Pour in 500 ml of vegetable stock (make sure it's not too strong flavoured, as you don't want to muddy the flavour of carrot. Dilute it if you have to), add 1/2 teaspoon of salt (coarse/kosher) and purée with a dash more olive oil and a spoon of good peanut butter (by good I mean an ingredient list that has only peanuts and salt) don't overdo the peanut butter as it will over power the soup.

Once puréed pass it through a fine sieve, and then warm through before serving. Garnish with caraway seeds, flaked dried chilli, olive oil and natural yoghurt.

The pressure cooked shin

Pulled out the trusty pressure cooker for stewed beef shins.

Firstly, get you're vege ready, a fine dice of carrot, mushroom and onion, roughly chop some garlic. That's for the sauce.

Turn on the pressure cooker (mine's a plug in one), and set it to browning, brown your beef shins with a little olive oil until a nice golden crust forms. Then remove from pot.

Heap in your prepared vege and let them soften, then deglaze with a shot of brandy and once that has evaporated pour in about half a bottle of red wine, a couple of bay leaves, some thyme, pepper (salt at the end) and mustard. Reduce until you have about 1/3 of a cup of liquid left.

Once reduced put the beef back in, lock the lid and cook on high pressure for about 25 minutes.

While the meat is cooking cut up some mushrooms and carrots to bite size pieces, turn a few small potatoes and slice up some fresh herbs.


When 25 minutes is up, let the pot release its pressure naturally for 10 minutes then release it manually. Remove the beef and if needed reduce the liquid further.


Then add the new vege to the pot and cook on high pressure for 5 minutes and at the end release the pressure manually.

Round up with photos

Pork Shoulder with Braised cabbage
Braised cabbage:
Use a heavy pan, soften some sliced onions then add a grated apple (granny smith is good), a spoon of mustard, glug of wine, a couple juniper berries, enough cloves, salt and pepper & 1/2 of a cabbage shredded.
Cook on a low heat until soft.

Pork: score skin, oil and salt heavily, cook at 220-230°C for about 20 min to get the crackling going then down to about 160°C until internal temp is about 65°C (about 25 min per 500g).

Oven Thermometer
Recently got around to buying a thermometer for our oven, and found out that our oven is 20°C hotter than what we set it at! I always suspected it was hotter, but didn't realise by that much, on the plus side it can hit 270°C.

Pulled beef pitas
Rubbed spices over the beef and gave it a heavy sear in the pressure cooker and set it to high pressure and let it cook till tender and falling apart.

While it was cooking made up some Hummus (chickpeas, Lemon juice, garlic, a drop or two of sesame oil (as didn't have any tahini), olive oil, paprika, yoghurt and salt. Puree, add more yoghurt or oil if it's too thick, place in bowl, sprinkle paprika over it, drizzle with oil, and munch away with pitas)

And also made up some aioli to toss with some shredded cabbage, I make mine with a stick blender in a fairly tall narrow measuring jug (not much bigger than the foot of the blender). Put an egg yolk, garlic, mustard, lemon juice and dash of cider vinegar in the container, start blending and when it is pale yellow and increased in volume slowly start pouring in oil (a mix is nice, soy oil and olive just olive is too strong). once it is all blended check the seasoning and adjust with salt and lemon juice or vinegar.

We Toasted some pita's (bought not made, lazy) stuffed them with the shredded beef, hummus and slaw, and a spoon or 3 of jalapeno jam. Very tasty, and filling.

Pork Belly (AGAIN!!!!)
Well the pressure cooker has been getting a work out, and I'm trying to find the ultimate pork belly. So thought I'd try it in the new toy.

I cut a couple of onions in half and placed them cut side down in the pan starting to caramelize them, I also put in half a lemon to caramelize, after they had taken on a tasty brown colour I poured in a glass of wine, a dash of cider vinegar and some mustard and let that reduce to almost nothing.

The pork (scored and seasoned) was placed in the pan using the onions as a trivet, and then cooked on high pressure for about 45 minutes. After that time I took out the pork and let it sit until it was cool enough to handle.

Once the pork was cool enough, the bones were removed from the underside, and the bottom half was wrapped in foil with the skin still uncovered, the skin was then patted dry and a bit of salt gently rubbed in to it (it's very fragile when pressure cooked), the oven was set to 230°C on grill (broil) and the meat place slightly above the middle of the oven for about 20 minutes.

Well, it tasted great, and the crackling was perfect but there are problems, the main issue was the fat didn't render out, it was very soft and had the texture of very lightly set jelly, so was easy to scrape off. And the meat wasn't 100% melt in mouth, I think 5 more minutes in the pressure cooker would of solved that, or perhaps letting the pressure drop naturally.

I'm not sure why the fat didn't render out of the meat the temperature should be more than plenty for it to happen. I will have to investigate further because I like the idea of pork belly in an hour rather than my other method of slow cooking for 3-4 hours.

Things I have to try
I've found a great way to make some crackling at ideas in food and is something I have to try, but I need a dehydrator first. They basically pressure cook the skin in liquid to make a pork skin stock for other uses, then take out the skin, gently scrape the fat off and dehydrate, then deep fry.

Still have to try Stock, caramelized eggs, garlic in milk and egg bread in the pressure cooker,