Fiber Fool

It all started with the Dal Mahkani recipe in our new favorite Indian cookbook - 660 Curries. That as well as some other interesting looking lentil curries require the use of a pressure cooker to speed up the cooking process. Here, at nearly 5000 ft above sea level that is helpful as our lower pressure requires dried things to cook a bit longer and that is especially true of whole lentils and beans.

I had a pressure cooker as my mom had a couple things she always made in one so that was one of the first pieces of kitchen equipment I got. But, DH is vegetarian and those recipes are not so it had been relegated to the closet/pantry in the basement under the stairs where it has lived unloved for many years.

Well, a few months ago DH unearthed it and we bought new gaskets for it at the hardware store and made Dal Mahkani. It took a bit and we still aren’t having complete success with that particular recipe, but we had success enough that it got me to wondering what else we might make in it. I mean, if we’re going to take up that much space in the limited cupboards of the kitchen with this thing we should make use of it on a more regular basis.

So, I hit Amazon for a search of pressure cooker cookbooks and discovered that not only are there a few strictly for vegetarian pressure cooking, but our public library even had the top rated one in the stacks! I’ve now had Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure checked out for the maximum amount of time and we’ve tried several of the recipes in there with great success. I’ve even branched out into formulating some of my own recipes, which the books gives you some guidelines for.

As you can imagine, a lot of the recipes revolve around cooking legumes and grains. There are soups and stews of many varieties, as well as salads and even desserts in this cookbook. Mostly I’ve been trying the soup recipes. In the winter I love a hearty soup with some home baked bread for lunch or dinner and using the pressure cooker makes it quite a bit quicker. But, don’t trust the tag line of the cookbook that you’ll have “two-hour taste in ten minutes.” For us, it usually takes about an hour to make a recipe, including the prep and getting the pressure cooker up to full pressure. But much of that time is not hands on. You want to be in the vicinity of the pressure cooker so you can hear if anything is going wrong, but you can be reading or knitting while it cooks. The ten minutes probably applies pretty truthfully to the hands-on portion of most of the recipes. The recipes we’ve made from it have been quite good, though I have to confess to adding some more spices to most of those we tried.

What sold me most on this cookbook though is the endpapers. Both the front and back cover fly leafs have tables of cooking times and yields for 1 cup of various grains and beans. I was constantly referring to it. Having it in such a convenient location is fantastic. There is no need to leave a permanent bookmark in place and I can quickly find the information I need. Having renewed my checkout so many times and using the book quite regularly for at least reference we decided it was one worth adding to our shelves (yes, plural) of cookbooks.

An added bonus of this cookbook is that the food made from the recipes is quite economical - especially if you buy your legumes, grains, and spices in bulk from a food co-op. For meaty dishes in the pressure cooker you can often get away with lower cost cuts of meat too, or make your own lower sodium or salt-free broths. Even if you do not already own a pressure cooker you would likely make back the cost of buying one in savings on your grocery bill in relatively short order.

The photo at the top of this post is my own pressure cooker creation which I’ll share for those of you with unloved pressure cookers.

Kristi’s Pressure Cooker Wild Rice & Mushroom Soup

• 2/3 C Wild Rice
• 2/3 C Brown Long Grain Rice
• 1 Onion, chopped
• 1 Carrot, quartered lengthwise and sliced
• 2 Cloves Garlic, minced
• 8 oz Button Mushrooms, quartered
• 1/2 oz Dried Shitake Mushrooms, reconstituted and chopped
• 2 T Vegetable Oil of Choice
• 1/2 t ea of dried Sage Leaves, Marjoram and ground Savory
• 1 t dried Rosemary
• 1 1/2 t Organic Mushroom Better Than Bullion
• 4 1/2 C Boiling Water
• 1 C Milk

Directions:

1. Rinse rice until water is clear, then sautee in oil over medium heat. Add onion and sautee for about 3 more minutes, then add carrots and fresh mushrooms for an additional 3 minutes.
2. Add boiling water, Better Than Bullion and remaining ingredients except milk. Close and lock the pressure cooker and turn heat up to high.
3. When full pressure is reached, turn heat down to medium low (just enough to maintain pressure) and start timer for 20-24 minutes.
4. When timer goes off, quickly release the pressure by running cold water over the pressure cooker, then open carefully.
5. Add milk and salt and pepper to taste and let sit on the warm burner until milk has come up to temperature.

I like to serve it with some warm whole grain bread and some raw vegetables on the side. To punch up the nutrition you could also put some baby spinach leaves in the bowl and let the soup slightly cook them. It’ll add some additional color as well.

This version is vegetarian, but you could easily add a ham bone or some chicken to it as well. I’m sure the author’s non-vegetarian version of this cookbook which is being rereleased later this year, Cooking Under Pressure (20th Anniversary Edition) is as good as the one we bought. Being rerelased 20 years later is generally a good sign of a quality cookbook.