Tonight a few recent discoveries, none all that long, but each very pleasing.
The Vacuum Insulated Thermos
These have changed the nature of our domestic hot drink management. After the initial purchase we went on to obtain three more of various different sizes. Combined with a nice electric pot for boiling water, these things will keep you in hot tea and coffee all day without a lot of sweat and bother. Highly recommended. Note: eventually we settled on the 16oz/.5 liter bottle as the best size.
Goulash
When I was at Dartmouth, there was a guy there named Rudy who sold bratwurst and kraut sandwiches at the local farmer’s market. He cooked his kraut for like 48 hours before market day. Those were really good sandwiches. Rudy also made goulash. He would reduce the liquid in it to almost nothing and then freeze it and sell the blocks, telling you to add a bit of water to bring back the right consistency. He didn’t want to sell you the water.
Since then, I’ve tried to make goulash once in a while and always failed. Then Karen found a recipe on the net. If you read the page, the guy is so sure that he’s right you just have to try the recipe because it’ll either be great or completely awful. Either way you will have learned something. In this case, the recipe was top notch.
But, learn from our mistake. You might be buying paprika at the spice store and notice that there is something called Half Sharp paprika. You might wonder what that means. You might use some in your goulash. Be very careful. This stuff is like a hot chili powder, but with more kick. It makes great goulash, but you must be aware of your limits.
Pressure Cooker Chickpeas
A pressure cooker is one of those appliances I try to avod because it only really does one thing. But, when we got ours we reasoned that maybe we’d learn how to do those Indian lentil dishes in it like we saw my friend’s mom in DC do. This never happened. There is actually only one dish we do in the pressure cooker, which means every time I make it I have to remember how to use the device. Here is the outline. You take this stuff:
1. 2-3 sweet potatoes, cubed.
2. 1 small can of tomatoes.
3. 2 cans of coconut milk (remember to shake before opening).
4. Cayenne pepper.
5. Curry powder. I use a weird mix of stuff.
6. Salt and pepper.
7. 1 1/2 cups dried chick peas, soaked overnight.
Put it all in the cooker and mix. Put the cooker on heat. Cook at pressure for 15-20min. Open up the cooker and throw in chopped cilantro and test to see if you need salt and pepper and more hot sauce. Stir it around and mash up the potatoes.
Serve over rice. My friend Jim told me how to do this. Jim got the recipe from this book. Thanks Jim.
I’m shocked.
How can you claim wih a straight face that my beloved CocotteMinute “only really does one thing” when you (or could it have been your acolyte ? I’m sorry, I just can’t get myself to distinguish between the both of you) routinely advocate the purchase of a *rice cooker* ?
Seriously.
1. Rice cookers are different.
2. I’m sure the pressure cooker can do other things. I’m just too dim to have figured any of them out yet.
I guess I should have said that they are just a bit “specialized”. Although that doesn’t really help.
I had a rice cooker once. The only thing I ever used it for was steaming vegetables. I did a better job of cooking rice with a pot than it did.
Pressure cookers are excellent at giving you bad burns!
Pressure cookers are great for cooking an entire chicken in 20 minutes. I wouldn’t recommend it for chicken that is to be served whole or in pieces, but I use it when I make a vat of Paprikash or something else that requires loose chicken meat.
A canning insert (basically, a rack to keep the glass jars up off the floor of the vessel and prevent them from banging around into each other) makes preserving the excess garden harvest a cinch.
Also, a chef friend let me in on a dirty little pressure cooker secret: stock can be made in a few hours and is virtually indistinguishable from stuff that’s simmered on the range for 14 hours.
Hi, I’m glad you liked the goulash recipe -I’m so sure that I’m right with it because I’m Hungarian, I cooked it like thousend times and that’s how this dish is cooked by everyone in my country:) Zsofi
Hrmph. Apology accepted.
I believe even Alton Brown approves of pressure cookers and he hates anything that can’t multi-task in the kitchen. I have not been brave enough to give one a try though.
Pressure cookers are teh win. They’re generally better for doing the side dishes than whole meals, but they make many so easy. Mashed potatoes are the prime example: something that is a hassle to make normally, takes 20 minutes with a pressure cooker. (Same deal for butternut / winter squash.) Your lentil recipe is the same to make split pea soup. We don’t use it as much for main course stuff, though you can do a pressure cooker stew that’s about 75% as good as a dutch oven stew but takes a quarter of the time.
Eh, if you have so much spare time that you want to dedicate yourself to “cuisine”, a pressure cooker may not be your thing. But if you want to cook stuff in a short time, it’s the weapon of choice.