There’s recently been a new addition to my kitchen: a pressure cooker. Now, my memories of pressure cookers was of the great big one my Mum had, hissing away, I assumed that’s what pressure cookers did, made lots of noise and created lots of steam. I couldn’t tell you anything about how it worked or what she used it for. Since entering blogworld, I have read more and more blog posts, mostly from Indian food bloggers, utilising pressure cookers in their day to day cooking. They cook beans and lentils and all sorts in a matter of minutes in a pressure cooker, it sounded amazing and very useful. I would always prefer to use dried beans rather than tinned, but I was never comfortable with having the gas on for an hour plus to cook them, so I would cook large amounts of beans every time so that I made the most of using all that gas, and then I’d get fed up with having so many beans to get through!!!
I found this cute three litre version to use on my hob/stove. After looking at the box for a few days, then finally unpacking it and looking at the pot for a few more days and reading the instruction manual over and over, I got brave enough to try it out. I tried cooking amaranth in it first, a tiny little grain, the grains are smaller than a pin head, and the experience wasn’t what I’d call successful. Put it like this, I had to hoover those tiny grains up from every corner of my kitchen! As the water had come to the boil inside the pot, it started bubbling and a few bubbles of water and amaranth started to escape from the tiny valve on top of the lid…then a whole fountain of water and grains started erupting, everywhere!!! I had to quickly put the vent whistle over the hole and hope for the best!!
I can state that after two attempts now, cooking amaranth is a challenge..you really need a lot of water in ratio to the grains otherwise they come out quite porridgey…I’ll try again another time..
So I tried again with pinto beans which I’d soaked overnight; it was much more successful this time! And so cool, 250g pinto beans were fully cooked in under 10 minutes – amazing!
Ingredients
- 150g (dry weight) pinto beans, cooked and drained
- 1 red onion, finely chopped
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- ½ cup water
- 2 tomatoes, diced
- 1 tsp. oregano
- 1 tsp. paprika
- 1 tsp. chili powder
- 1 tsp. cumin
- 1 bunch chopped fresh coriander/cilantro
- Juice of one lime
- Salt, to taste
- Ground cayenne pepper, to taste
Method
Heat your choice of oil in a pan over medium heat, add the onion and the garlic and cook until softened, then add the water, tomatoes, oregano, paprika, cumin, chilli powder, and the beans.
Mix well together and mash the beans as it all cooks. Keep stirring and mashing until you get the consistency you want.
Cook until the mixture is well combined and heated through, the add the coriander/cilantro, lime juice, salt, and cayenne, and serve.
I ate these with some roasted purple broccoli – another new experiment, I just sprayed the brocoli with some spray olive oil and roasted them until the tops were crunchy and the stems were cooked, it was really good – and some butternut squash dip that I’d make this week too and the combination was lovely.
In my next post I’ll show you what else I did with them, I think you’ll like it…;) 
foodbod 