Butternut squash ‘columbo’, homemade coconut milk & my pressure cooker..

I was watching the an old Nigel Slater cookery series recently, and he said exactly what I have said many times: that recipes are not necessarily there for you to take word for word, but to provide inspiration. I think this is so true. When you first start cooking, you do follow all the instructions to the letter, I know I did, but as your confidence grows and you start to feel bolder and more experimental, you realise that you can take a recipe as a suggestion and a guideline and play with it – I literally threw together a loaf of bread this week, which worked beautifully and made me inordinately proudly!! I’ve been doing a lot of that this week, there’s been lots of dishes being made and played with in my kitchen…

However, when it comes to pressure cooking, I’m still going by the book. My confidence is growing as I understand the science more, but for now, I’ll still refer to some instructions..

As some of you may recall, I only recently ventured into the world of pressure cooking; I am definitely getting to grips with my cute little pressure cooker, and recently purchased a new cookbook to help me along. After several searches and reading reviews, I decided to buy ‘Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure‘ by Loran J. Sass.  

It’s become my pressure cooker bible, it’s filled with tips and tables as well as recipes, and has made sense of using the pressure cooker for me. The book also includes some useful incidental recipes, not necessarily using the pressure cooker, like the coconut milk one above that I followed yesterday, to support your cooking. 

This is a really useful recipe if you want to make sure your coconut milk isn’t full of nasties, or if you just can’t buy it where you are. Or if you don’t want to open a whole can – I just ratioed down the quantities for my uses, used my Nutribullet and it worked fine. 

I decided to try out the Squash Columbo recipe as it contains so many ingredients that I like: butternut squash, tomatoes, ginger, spices…what’s not to like?? And all cooked in 6 minutes!! Very cool 🙂   

I don’t think it’s fair to share Lornas entire recipe with you, you should buy her book for that really, but you get the idea above. I also added some chopped coriander when I ate the dish. 

The fear of pressure cooking is definitely lessening, and now that I know that you can always replace the lid and put the pan back over the heat if things aren’t cooked enough, I’m definitely happier! I thought that if you opened the lid and it wasn’t cooked, that was it, job done, no second chance, but no, you can replace the lid and pressure cook for more time, or just cook it on the heat minus the lid if it needs a bit of finishing.  

 I ate more of the squash dish the next day with some added roasted baby plum tomatoes and garlic over the top..a very tasty addition! 

 

And with the rest of it, as is my wont, I threw in some tahini and blended it to see what it would be like as a dip! Also, VERY tasty!  

    There’s always so many things you can do with one dish, push it and play with it, I say! As Salt ‘n’ Pepper sang in all those years gone ago ‘Push it, push it real good!’ 

If you’d like to know more about the author of my book, Lorna actually has two blogs on wordpress as well as a facebook page ‘Lorna Sass is My Home Girl’ and all the usual social media. When I contacted her last week about sharing her book with you all, she responded very quickly and was so very friendly 🙂 

Lorna Sass

QUEEN OF PRESSURE COOKING

http://www.lornasass.com

http://www.pressurecookingwithlornasass.wordpress.com/

http://www.lornasassatlarge.wordpress.com