Excerpt
Instant Family Meals
IntroductionModern One-Pot Family Cooking On the same October day that my electric pressure cooker arrived on my front step, straight off the UPS truck, my parents were set to arrive from the airport for a visit. I had four lamb shanks in the fridge and exactly 48 minutes to get a hot homemade dinner for six on the table.
I unpacked my new toy, gave it a quick rinse, threw in the shanks, then added some carrots and celery, a handful of herbs, and a hefty glug of broth. I pushed a few buttons and crossed my fingers (can you guess that I barely read the instruction manual?). Exactly 38 minutes later, with 10 minutes to spare, I laid a warming bowl of polenta topped with melt-off-the-bone-tender lamb on the table— just as my parents pulled up to my door. Everyone at the table that night raved, convinced I’d been cooking all day.
I came late to the electric pressure cooker craze. Even as my cooking-world peers were swearing by them, I maintained—personally and publicly (in my three previous cookbooks)—that all you needed for good home cooking was a sharp chef ’s knife, a wooden spoon, and a few good sturdy pots. If the world needed an electric pressure cooker skeptic, I was happy to play the role. Did we all really need another countertop appliance? I loved bringing my beautiful, heroic-feeling Dutch oven, steaming with slow-cooked pork shoulder, from the stove to the table (and the silent bragging rights that came with it). Besides, I imagined numerous awkwardly shaped inserts to clean, parts to keep track of, or worse: anothe appliance collecting dust on a shelf.
I was wrong.
This is going to sound bonkers, but that electric pressure cooker has made me a better cook. It’s ironic, considering electric pressure cookers are largely hands-off and literally do most of the cooking for you (while you’re off doing something else). I don’t mean that it made me a more skilled cook or that it helped me understand flavor in new ways. I mean that it made me cook better meals, way more often. Having, and using, an electric pressure cooker meant more warm bowls of weeknight Cacio e Pepe Risotto (page 107). It meant less six-o’clock scrambling and more slurping savory bowls of fortifying Kimchi and Tofu Stew (page 78). It meant impromptu bowls of Saucy Beans and Eggs (page 32) for Friday work lunch, without missing a beat.
The fall that my family first got an electric pressure cooker (like, three years after everyone else), my oven was on the fritz, I’d just returned from a summer book tour, and my husband and I were embarking on another year as two fulltime working parents, suddenly with two kids in different schools—and all without a babysitter. And it was cold—like snowing-in-October cold. The kids were growing like weeds (and eating like elephants). We needed a break. Actually, what we needed most were hot, nourishing meals, not moments of sheer culinary brilliance followed by three nights of snacks for dinner (not that there’s anything wrong with a stunning snack dinner board—you know, cheese, charcuterie, crackers, olives, and raw veggies for dinner—but I was leaning hard on them). We needed consistently delicious hot meals that didn’t demand any bargaining with a certain stubborn four-year-old (who needs to convince a kid to eat a bowl of creamy parmesan-laced risotto?).
That fall, my electric pressure cooker and I struck a close bond, and I wanted to let the other busy parents around me in on this new (to me) trick. What if I could take what I already knew and preached (healthful and satisfying, delicious and decadent-feeling meals and moments with family and friends) and make them even easier—so easy, in fact, that there were literally no obstacles?
Suddenly, I was pulling out a bag of dried beans I’d been too lazy to cook and turning them into a tender and creamy dinner for my kids, as well as tomorrow’s lunch for the whole family. Then I started doing crazy things, like throwing three whole butternut squash in to steam (it works, but I don’t recommend it—picking out the seeds afterward was too much work), mixing two kinds of grains for porridge (jackpot! check it out in the breakfast chapter beginning on page 28), and pretty much not turning on my stove for 3 whole months (except to bake banana bread; some swear you can do it in a pressure cooker, but I wasn’t impressed). I tried just about everything in the electric pressure cooker, including cooking with minimal water (beware of the burn indicator); making glassy, flawless caramel flans (bingo! that’s in here, too, page 138); and stretching the limits to find everything it could—and probably shouldn’t—do.
Here’s what I learned:
• An electric pressure cooker is a family-meal game changer.
• Just because you
can make something in an electric pressure cooker doesn’t mean you
should.An electric pressure cooker can do lots of things—not all of them well. What it’s good at, though, it’s positively brilliant at—like tender braised meat, creamy beans, and luscious yogurt—making it easier than ever to adhere to my principle of homemade and wholesome most of the time. With our electric pressure cooker in the kitchen, we eat out less than ever, and I’m still able to cook the big-flavor, complex-feeling meals that keep my family satisfied, on most nights in under an hour.
Here’s the thing: I
love to cook, but standing at the stove all those years sometimes came at the expense of other things—namely, spending more time with the people I love most. What did I do with all that found time? I played with my kids more, cleaned out the baby clothes, redecorated my office, starting running,
finally watched
Star Wars (yes, all of them), and wrote this book for you!
There are a lot of fancy tricks you can do with an electric pressure cooker, but for my busy family, I need a dinner helper that makes mealtime super simple—like walk-away-andcannot- mess-it-up simple. These recipes are made for that. In this book, I’ve focused on recipes you can throw together in this one pot (without dirtying a heap of dishes) and still get a maximum flavor reward, as well as produce something visually appealing (anything too brown or monochromatic, no matter how delicious, will elicit a
yuck from my four-year-old). I’ve given you fresh, colorful garnishes that come together while the pressure cooker is at work and that do wonders to take a meal out of the
made-in-an-appliance category and into the delicious, restaurant-worthy corner—all with very little work.
In this book, I am not asking you to shape or stack things, or to use your electric pressure cooker to steam something and then clean it out and use it again for another part of a meal. There’s nothing wrong with that for folks who have the time, but if your goal is easier, better, faster, more delicious family meals—without a lot of shenanigans—this book is for you.
And—this one is super important—because you can’t open an electric pressure cooker to check on things during cooking, it’s crucial to have a trusted source of delicious, tried-andtrue recipes to turn to again and again. That’s exactly why I wrote this book—with recipes tested in multiple pots in many kitchens across the country—so that when you do open yours up, you’ll have something beautiful and delicious to serve the people you love most.
I hope these recipes are a big boost to your pressure cooker game and that you’re surprised and delighted by what you make from these pages. I hope you return here often for inspiration, guidance, and big, bold, satisfying flavors. Mostly, though, I hope this book helps you get back
more time with your family—time for doing the things you love, like playing with
your kids, taking long hikes, dancing in the kitchen, cuddling by the fire, or piling onto the couch for a good movie—without compromising on serving flavorful, nourishing family meals around your very own table.
