Learn to pressure cook, one recipe at a time!

Beginner Basics: Learn to pressure cook, one recipe at a time!
If you would like to learn how to pressure cook but don’t know where to start, check out the best pressure cooking site on the web: www.hippressurecooking.com
On January 12th Hip Pressure Cooking will begin a recipe series for those who have been sitting on the fence and waiting for an excuse to start using a pressure cooker.

The 8 recipe series, Beginner Basics, is designed to teach commonly used cooking techniques and accessory use, one recipe at a time. A number of the recipes will preview the Fissler Vitaquick pressure cooker which will be introduced to U.S. consumers later in 2011.

Here is the post announcing the new series:
http://www.hippressurecooking.com/2010/12/beginner-basics-learn-to-pressure-cook.html

The step-by-step photos and descriptions will be more detailed than usual. Laura Pazzaglia, from Hip Pressure cooking writes that, “you will feel as if I am standing right next to you in the kitchen helping you to get started on your pressure cooking adventure.”

As the month progresses the cooking techniques and recipes will get just a little more complicated. By the end of the series Laura hopes to have given her followers the confidence to try any recipe on the website!

A new "Beginner Basics" recipe will be published every Tuesday and Friday starting mid-January. Here is the plan, and the recipes and skills that will be taught!

Mashed Potatoes - boiling

Steamy Veggies - steaming

Pasta Sauce- brown, boil and reduce

Bean Salad - the "quick soak" method

Roasted Chicken Pieces - brown, braise, deglaze and reduce

Chicken Stock - make stock or broth

Pot Roast with Veggies - multi cooking, one pot meal

Fruity Steamy Cake - water bath aka bain marie

Don't miss a single recipe lesson, sign up for the newsletter now! It’s free!

Need a pressure cooker? All the recipes in the series can be produced in the fabulous Fissler Blue Point, currently available all over North America!

East Coast and West Coast Korean Tacos

With days to spare, I finally checked something off my 2010 foodie to do list: I tried the local Korean taco truck here in Washington, DC. I had fallen madly in love with über chef Roy Choi’s paradigm-shifting creations at Los Angeles’ Kogi. A testament to Choi’s status as a modern food revolutionary, Food & Wine magazine named him one of the best new chefs of 2010.

Let me just come right out and say it: I am an elitist food snob. I dine out a lot. Most meals are adequately flavorful and basically acceptable, but it takes a lot to genuinely impress me. Choi’s tacos leave me speechless – literally. I can’t explain why I adore them. I have only a superficial understanding of Asian cooking and just a bit more knowledge of Mexican, so I don’t know what combination of ingredients is yielding the magical flavor. Whatev. Just bring ’em on.

With this backdrop, I was curious to try Washington, DC-based TaKorean. Alas, my verdict is rather extreme. There is no comparison to Kogi. TaKorean was adequate but fundamentally unremarkable. So there it is – curiosity satisfied, item checked off the to do list.

Pictured below are TaKorean’s three tacos: Bulgogi steak, tangy chicken and carmelized tofu.

The Drosselmeyer : Kitchen GadgetGals

Check out what the Gadget Gals have to say about The Drosselmeyer : Kitchen GadgetGals

A Taste of Native American Cuisine

Last week, people sat down to Thanksgiving dinners that ranged from traditional to contemporary, feasting on foods that reflect early American cuisine. (As an aside, this is an interesting peek at a turn-of-the-19th-century menu, via the New Yorker and Mark Twain.)

Before there were thankful Pilgrims, there were Native Americans. At the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, you can get a taste of indigenous cuisine (or, more accurately, a modern interpretation thereof). Acclaimed Mitsitam Café is a radical departure from the typical museum cafeteria, featuring native foods of North and South America. As stated on its website, “Mitsitam” means “Let’s eat!” in the Native language of the Delaware and Piscataway peoples.

Bison with wild mushrooms, root vegetable salad, wild rice and cranberry crumble was tasty, hearty and satisfying.

To learn more, see the complete description, fall menu and cookbook on the café website.

Hash Browned Potatoes!

I've discovered recently how incredibly fast and easy it is to make hash browns in a non-stick pan. Most of us think that cooking anything in the morning is too much work, when it's so easy to pour some cereal into a bowl. But the small amount of effort that goes into this is truly rewarded by a delicious, hot, crispy potato treat. And it's healthy too! You'll need a non-stick pan like the Fissler Protect pan, plus a box or flat grater and a nylon turner (don't use metal utensils on non-stick surfaces).

Easy hash browned potatoes

2 russet potatoes
1 Tbsp oil or butter
salt and pepper to taste

I start out by peeling the potatoes but you can make this with unpeeled potatoes too. Next step is to shred the potatoes against the shredder side of the box or flat grater.
Add oil or butter to the pan (or substitute a generous coat of cooking spray) and heat over medium high heat. Squeeze excess liquid out of shredded potatoes (discard liquid or save for soup) and spread potatoes over bottom of pan all the way to the outside edge. Thickness should be not more than half an inch. Sprinkle salt and pepper on top. To ensure that the second side gets browned nicely you can spray the top with some cooking spray (remove pan briefly from heat when doing this) before flipping. After the first side has browned, in five to seven minutes, carefully flip the whole thing over using your nylon turner. You may have to do this in two sections. Cook for another five to seven minutes over medium heat. That's it: you're done. Great with a fried egg which you can cook at the same time in a second non-stick pan.

Pressure Cooker Soups for Winter Warmth!

Check out this article with three great soup recipes from our friends at http://www.hippressurecooking.com
The author provides five tips that will help you make soup quickly and successfully in a pressure cooker like the Fissler Blue Point.

Day of the Dead Mole Poblano! In the Vitaquick pressure cooker!

Certain things came together recently, pushing me towards conquering one of the recipes that has always been one of the great culinary challenges: making mole poblano. The Mexican stew made with chocolate and chiles is infamous for having many tedious steps. But I was given a package of Kekua Mexican chocolate and a mole poblano recipe (this is the authentic Mexican chocolate used in cooking). And I heard Diana Kennedy (the "Julia Child of Mexican cuisine") interviewed on NPR recently about her new Oaxacan cookbook. And finally, I was also gifted with a bottle of Mar Azul chocolate flavored tequila. That wasn't going to go into the mole but I knew it would make a nice after-dinner drink following a mole poblano feast. On top of that, it's turkey season, the traditional main ingredient of mole poblano (though there may be more chiles than turkey in the dish). And finally, today is Dia de los Muertes, the Day of the Dead, celebrated in Mexico to remember the deceased, which seems like an appropriate time to prepare a feast food like Mole Poblano.

I took a few steps to make the preparation of my mole easier. The first was the use of a pressure cooker to cook the turkey. This cut the cooking time in half and kept the kitchen from getting hot and steamy. Since I'm the main Fissler Foodie I was able to get my hands on a preview model of the new Fissler Vitaquick pressure cooker that will be available in the U.S. in the spring of 2011. It's a deep pressure cooker with plenty of room for a big dish like turkey mole. Another shortcut was using store-bought roasted peanuts, so I didn't have to pan fry them. I also used canned, fire roasted tomatoes instead of fresh tomatoes. The best thing I did to make the preparation of my mole easier was simply reminding myself of what I'd read on many websites and in a number of cookbooks: that every Mexican cook has his or her own recipe for mole. There is no exact list of ingredients that must go into mole poblano. If you follow this recipe and you can't find every type of chile, or you have nutmeg instead of cloves, or you use fresh tomatoes instead of canned, or you use pecans instead of peanuts, it will still be mole poblano. It will just be YOUR mole poblano instead of mine.
My mole turned out not to be as difficult as I thought it would be and I had a huge sense of accomplishment when it was done. It came out great!

Fissler Foodie Mole Poblano

2 turkey legs

2 turkey thighs

2 Tbsps olive oil or coconut oil

1 can crushed or whole tomatoes (14 ½ oz)

1 can (7 oz) chipotle chiles in adobo sauce

1 quart stock (chicken or vegetable)

6 dried mulato chiles

10 dried ancho chiles

8 dried pasilla chiles

1 cup brown sesame seeds

2 Tbsps coriander seeds or cumin seeds

1 cup raisins

1 cup peanuts or almonds

1 white dinner roll (French bread type) crushed

1 fried corn tortilla (a tostada) or a handful of tortilla chips (optional)

2 red bell peppers cut into one inch pieces

3 cloves garlic

½ cup coconut oil

1 tsp cinnamon powder

½ tsp cloves

½ to 1 tsp anise or fennel seeds or star anise

2 tablets Kekua chocolate, each broken into four pieces

¼ cup sucanat or brown sugar

Water

Salt

1. Prepare your ingredients by slitting the chiles with a knife and removing and discarding seeds and stems.

2. Toast sesame seeds in a dry pan until very lightly browned. Add coriander and anise seeds (or substitutes) and continue stirring and toasting for a few more minutes until browned. Allow to cool (this can be done the day before). Process in food processor with S blade until finely ground. Set aside.

3. Process tomatoes and chipotle chiles in blender until smooth.

4. Heat oil in the pressure cooker over medium heat without lid. Brown the turkey pieces in the oil on all sides. Remove half the fat, then add tomato/chipotle mixture. Allow to simmer until reduced (about twenty minutes, while doing step 5).

5. Put one cup water into food processor with S blade.

Heat frypan with half of the coconut oil. Fry chiles in batches until lightly browned. After each batch throw fried chiles into food processor. When you have finished frying chiles, add the rest of the coconut oil to pan and fry raisins. Remove and add to food processor. Process until well ground up. At this point, add sesame seed/spice mixture to food processor. Continue processing. If your peanuts or almonds were roasted when you bought them, add them to the food processor. If they are raw, fry them in the oil until lightly browned, then add to processor and process. Fry crushed bread roll. Throw in remaining spices (cinnamon, cloves). The bread will absorb the oil in the pan. Add crushed bread to processor along with, tortilla, bell pepper and garlic cloves. Continue processing. Add water as needed to produce a smooth paste.

6. About twenty minutes into step 5 you should add the stock to the pressure cooker with the turkey and tomato mixture, bring to a boil, seal with pressure lid and bring to high pressure. Reduce heat and cook at high pressure for 30 minutes. Turn off heat and release pressure. Remove lid.

7. Turn heat back on and continue simmering. Add chocolate. Add half the mole. Allow to simmer and thicken. Balance flavor with sucanat/sugar and a little salt. At this point, taste and decide if you want to add the remainder of the mole, for a stronger, richer stew. If you decide not to add the remaining mole, put the rest in the freezer for future use. Continue simmering for another fifteen minutes or up to half an hour.
Serve with rice and/or tortillas and a salad. And for dessert; a glass of chilled Mar Azul chocolate tequila. If you can't wait until after dinner for a glass of this tequila, serve it as a cocktail on the rocks, mixed half and half with tequila reposada (aged tequila).

Win a Drosselmeyer nutcracker! Enter by 01/04/11

You can win a Drosselmeyer nutcracker! The same one that's featured in the November issue of Vegetarian Times. Just go to www.vegetariantimes.com and enter before January 4th, 2011.

Fall stew with turkey and pumpkin squash

One of my pressure cooker staples is turkey leg stew. Turkey legs are inexpensive, relatively lean, abundant in the Fall, and become falling-off-the-bone tender when cooked in a pressure cooker. You can vary the ingredients in your turkey leg stew to make a turkey leg osso buco (use canned tomatoes and white wine), or a traditional stew with potatoes, carrots and red wine, or this simple Fall stew/soup with acorn squash segments (I used an orange skinned acorn squash, as you can see in the picture above, but the green skinned acorn squash works fine too). You will be amazed at how easy it is to prepare, and how fast it cooks in the pressure cooker. The Fissler Blue Point Pressure Pan is ideal for this recipe because of the broad skillet design of the cooker. Large turkey legs fit easily inside the Blue Point pressure pan. Naturally, you could make this with four to six chicken legs instead of two turkey legs. Reduce the cooking time by 12 minutes though.

Here's the recipe:
2 turkey legs
1 large carrot cut into chunks
4 stalks celery cut into half inch pieces
1 small acorn squash or substitute a small pumpkin, seeds removed, cut into about six wedges
1 cup white wine
3 cups broth (any broth will do: vegetable, chicken, beef)
herbs such as bay leaf, parsley etc.
2 Tbsps oil

Heat oil in pressure cooker without lid, add turkey legs. Brown lightly on all sides on medium heat. Add carrots and celery. You can also add a chopped onion, if you like. Stir vegetables around for a couple of minutes. Place squash wedges between and around turkey legs. Add wine. Simmer for three minutes. Add broth and herbs. Increase heat to high. Put pressure lid on and close pressure valve. Allow to come to high pressure and then reduce heat to medium low. Cook on high pressure for 35 minutes. Turn off heat and release pressure. The meat will be very tender and the squash skins will also be tender and edible, although some people prefer to scoop the squash flesh off of the skin and discard the skin. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve. If you like the stew to be thick and not soupy, you can thicken with flour or cornstarch.

A pan pizza and grilled pizza in one

I am willing to begrudgingly admit that pizza is generally better in New York City than anywhere else. A New Yorker might tell you that the old, rusted pipes that carry the city's water supply magically imbues the pizza dough with flavorful qualities. Others might just claim that the ability to make a good pizza is genetically inherent in a New Yorker because the first pizza restaurant in America (Lombardi’s, in 189?) opened there, just as a World Series title is their birthright because one of their local baseball teams (the one not called the Mets) is able to carry a payroll four times the size of a Caribbean nation’s GDP.

After eating my fair share of pizza in New York this summer, I think I know why I prefer their pizza (hint: it’s not water) The superior quality is due to a properly crispy, yet chewy, crust. New York pizzerias inherently understand that the key to a good pizza is a proper dough that’s been almost incinerated under high heat. If it’s not a wood-fired oven, it’s a massive gas-burning oven that can reach temperatures of 800-900 degrees and can crisp up a pie in minutes.

This is why a pizza cooked at home is never as good as one we buy from a pizzeria; our ovens just aren’t hot enough. A new oven especially can’t get hot enough, the top temperature is 450-500 degrees (you can go higher, but your oven might start shaking as if possessed). That’s why a pizza stone is imperative if you want to make pizza at home. It’ll boost the temperature of the oven by an extra 200 degrees or so and will assist in properly crisping up your pizza. Even with a stone though, the stone will only get up to 700-degrees, which is far short of the 800-900 degrees a restaurant’s pizza oven can get to. This will lead to a puffed-up, bread-like pizza.

The best way to cook a pizza at home is to use an old gas oven with a pizza stone. If you pump up an old gas oven to it’s highest setting, then it’ll get to 700 degrees. With a pizza stone, you can get close to the temperature a pizza oven can get to. This will lead to a crisper, flatter crust.

If you don’t have an old, gas oven, then your best bet at cooking a pizza is grilling one. Over indirect heat, the dough will crisp up well. And you get the flavor of grilling in your pizza, which is never a bad thing. The disadvantage to this is that it requires you to set up a grill every time you want to make a pizza, and that’s not possible. More often than not, I’ll pan-fry a steak. With that in mind, I decided to “grill” pizzas using Fissler’s Crispy Steelux grill pan. This is really the only way that I can get the extremely high heat to cook the pizza dough without dragging out the grill or building a wood oven in my back yard (a friend of mine actually did that. He spent two months building a gas oven, made a few pizzas, then let the whole thing fall apart under neglect. It was sad)

I decided to use Mario Batali’s pizza dough recipe because he actually has a restaurant in New York dedicated to pizza cooked in a pan. Theoretically, Fissler’s grill pan should work as well, if not better because it has a higher peak temperature and the raised edges allow circulation underneath.

After making this recipe, I should note that the quality of wine you use is actually important. The wine flavor is pronounced in the dough and I wish I used a better quality than the $3 Charles Shaw I got at Trader Joe’s. Also, I'd use a pinch more salt than what the recipe called for. Honestly, if I could do this again, I’d just stick to a basic pizza dough recipe (flour, yeast, sugar, water and salt).

The first pizza I made with Fissler’s grill pan was a basic margherita pizza. It was overcooked because the pan got TOO hot. Within 30 seconds, there were burnt bits everywhere. The raised edges also meant that the part of the dough not in contact with the pan didn’t have enough time to develop any color. You essentially had a black-and-white pizza.

I turned to heat down to medium for subsequent attempts and it worked a lot better with the next pizza.

It only takes about 45 seconds to cook one side of the crust. Then you flip it over, top it, cover the pan and cook for another minute or so. There you go, pizza in less than 3 minutes. In less than an hour, I was able to turn out six pizzas.

This ended up being my favorite. It’s a pizza capricciosa (“capricious” pizza), which has mozzarella, tomato sauce, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, tomatoes, olives and olive oil. I added prosciutto and a hard-boiled egg, which is how the Romans eat one of the few pizzas that Italians load with ingredients.

I wish I got more color on the crusts. But the crusts were properly crispy and chewy at the same time. No, it’s not as good as a good slice of pizza from New York. But this is infinitely more convenient and economical. Even the Rangers can knock off the Yankees with less resources sometimes.

The Fissler Chef Tour has begun!

Fissler chefs are teaching classes across the country! Here's the Fall schedule. Read the chef's bios below. Fissler foodies unite, at your local kitchen store!

Jane Gaither

Oct 12 Kitchen Affairs, Evansville, IN

Oct 28 International Pantry, Norman, OK

Oct 29 Distinctive Décor, Duncan, OK

Oct 30 Savory Chef, Tulsa, OK

Lars Liebisch 

Oct. 30, Board and Basket, West Lebanon, NH

Nov 11, Cook’s Warehouse, Decatur, GA

Nov 12, Bread Beckers, Woodstock, GA

Nov 12, Cook’s Warehouse, Decatur, GA

Nov 13, Bread Beckers (2 events same day), Woodstock, GA

Chef Dez

Nov 16 Der Kuchen Laden, Fredericksburg, TX

Nov 17 Homewerks, San Antonio, TX

Nov 18 Gourmet Pantry, Lubbock, TX

Nov 19 Gourmet Peddler, Midland, TX

Nov 20 Le Petite Gourmet, La Grange, TX

Chef Lars Liebisch

Lars Liebisch is a charismatic German chef who obtained his classical training at a guesthouse of the East German government, where he cooked for prestigious government officials. After the fall of the Berlin Wall he worked as a chef at one of East Berlin's first Gault-Millau awarded restaurants.  In 1999, Fissler, Europe's No.1 cookware brand, asked Lars to join their elite team of demonstration chefs. With his enthusiasm, talent, and experience, Lars was hugely successful in German television cooking battles. In 2005, he came to Boston, where he worked in fine restaurants and at Jurys Boston Hotel.

Lars now works as a chef for corporate and private events and teaches a variety of cooking classes in New England.  He is also Fissler USA’s official chef, traveling the country to do cooking demonstrations and trainings.

Chef Dez                                                                                                    

                                                                                                                                              

When not writing his syndicated food column “Chef Dez on Cooking”, Gordon Desormeaux, better known as Chef Dez, is busy teaching cooking classes, performing live cooking shows, and writing cookbooks. Chef Dez has achieved Canadian certification as a Red Seal Chef. After many years in restaurants working with many different chefs, Dez has directed his broad knowledge and experience into a teaching performance that inspires people to cook. Being a father of four children has increased his understanding of the pressures of bringing daily meals together from scratch for busy families. When not cooking, he loves to look at classic cars and go for walks, but most of all to spend as much time with his family as possible. More about Chef Dez can be found at his website: www.chefdez.com

Jane Gaither

Though she wasn't born on a mountaintop, Jane Gaither has been a Tennessee girl all her life.  Nurtured by generations of farmers, orchardists, beekeepers, gardeners and good cooks, she struck out on her own after college as a baker, recipe developer and demonstrator and never looked back.   Jane develops recipes and menus based on old time country cooking, brought up to date with international adaptations.  Healthy eating and cooking convenience are principles Jane learned from her mother’s, and grandmother’s use of pressure cookers, one of Jane’s favorite kitchen tools. There's nothing hillbilly about the dishes she has created for her husband and the three little boys who love to help her in the kitchen - just deliciousness.  Appearing on local television, in newspaper features and at kitchen stores throughout the southeast, Jane loves to share her discoveries with her fans.  Accounts of her kitchen adventures can be found at http://gourmetgadgetgal.blogspot.com/

Fissler CookStar Induction Pro Giveaway: one week left!

Behind the Burner is hosting a giveaway of a Fissler CookStar Induction Pro portable induction cooksurface. Go here to enter now! Ends on Oct. 14th.