Purists - avert your eyes, the rest of us, once again.... 'all hail the king of the test kitchen' - Luke Dale Roberts, thanks to him, the pressure cooker is coming out of the closet.
Yes, you read right-it says so in the latest Taste magazine, that not only does he endorse a particularly nifty AEG cooker, but admits that those delectable stocks, braises and even a risotto- from award winning restaurant La Colombe, were made in a pressure cooker.
Not one to need further coaxing to knock a few hours off a meal, I went one step further to sacrilege and used my favourite chef's recipe- Peter Gordon's from The Sugar Club.
Goes without saying, I improvised as usual, tossed a few things- I should also mention Peter Gordon's originally from down under and used kangaroo tail... I think a good tail is a good tail?
Recipe- Toss sliced oxtail in seasoned flour and brown nicely. Remove from oil, add veggies, roughly a cup of each, diced carrots, butternut squash, red onion, 3 cloves garlic-gently brown, add some stock (used chicken) stir to get scrapings off the bottom of pot, return the browned tail, add a tin of puree tomatoes, 1/2 cup sage leaves, 100 g unpitted green olives, 1/3 cup fish sauce, 1/2 cup soy sauce and top with wine- pressure away!
Garnish the oxtail with fresh thyme and oregano and some robust red wine for your hand.
Yum.
ReplyDeleteA good tail is a good tail.
Indeed.
Snicker.
I know nothing about pressure cookers, though I was deathly afeared of my mother's when I was little. That valve thingy on top would begin to shriek and sometimes shot across the room at lethal speed.
But I like the idea of them. Except, that La Colombe risotto tasted like it came out of pressure cooker, in the sense that it was not stirred and stirred and stirred. It looked gorgeous but was horribly stodgy.
I was wondering about the risotto...now we know!
DeleteI just bought a new one, a cheapie prestige and the thing skriks me everytime, even though I'm expecting it, it's much louder than my moms and very insistent.
I'm emailing you now, on how you reached into my kitchen last night and saved the day xx
OK, I will avert my eyes...if only slightly because I need to get this recipe. Pressure cookers and I do not mix, and coming from a bunch of Cubans that's sacrilege since they use it a LOT. However, I've blown two up in my day and that's as far as I'd like to go in the bomb department...and I just adore a very long cooking stew in the cooler months, adore oxtail too so it's saved, yummy.
ReplyDeleteHahaa Amelia- my mom always warned me that the thing could blow up, must be a pretty impressive mess to witness!!
DeleteI never knew about Cubans and pressure cookers, but can see how it would be useful for those bean dishes, cut out the soaking and long cooking- gosh now I'm hungry...x
all the big chefs on tv are using them. guess they've changed a lot since I was small. we were all deathly scared of them - many stories about close escapes / peas all over the ceiling....
ReplyDeletebut I'm really tempted. another Karen friend made the best vegetable soup I have EVER eaten, in a pressure cooker. she served it over a dollop of buttery mashed potato.
oxtail... I drool.
xx
This is funny. We all have childhood pressure cooker fear.
ReplyDeleteWe might need to form a support group!
ReplyDelete