No not happy and nice, you know me but instead Pressure Cooker. I was reading Volume 2 of Modernist Cuisine on Techniques and Equipment.

And they were big’n up Pressure Cookers, as a great way to make stock and cook other things quickly. The reason is in the name “Pressure” which raises the temperature of boiling water.

“When the gauge on your cooker indicates 1 bar / 15 psi of pressure above the liquid, the boiling point of water inside can be as high as 120C / 248F. Increasing the temperature of the cooking stock by 20C / 36F forces both the diffusion and the flavor reactions to run faster than they would in an open pot. The liquid in the pressure cooker will not boil, despite the elevated temperature”.

So on Sunday, I was shopping for a clock, but got sucked into a black hole which was labelled Kitchen Supplies. Morphy Richards has a new Morphy Richards 48815 Digital Electric Pressure Cooker.

I was always scared of having a ticking time bomb on my hob going clackity clack clack as the pressure comes out. Also the idea of being scalded to death by opening it too soon or Jamilu’s story of a lid being embedded into the ceiling kind of put me off. But this cooker is electronically controlled so you cannot screw it up, which is good for me. Here it is unboxed.

On the way home from picking this up from Tesco Direct (great service and prices) I stopped off at the local Sainsburys and picked up:

Onions (small)
Mushrooms (closed cap)
Celery
Carrots (look through the loose ones for the thin sweet ones)
Potatoes (medium roasting)

Here they are prep’d for the Pot Roast.

Then I wandered over the beef aisle, and luck would have it that they guy from the butchers counter was just putting down some discounts. I got over ½ kg of rump steak for £2, deal.

I am writing this in the lounge and there is about 15 minutes left on the Pot Roast and the smell is killing me… I am so hungry. It reminds me of when I was a child. My mother would get up on a Sunday morning and brown the beef and then prep the vegetables before church. When we returned from church opening the door to the house was heaven, and could not get out of my suit quick enough to go yuuuummmm (thanks for all those Sunday dinners Mom). This took my Mom about 4.5 hours to prep and cook. I am attempting to do the same in 1.5 hours today with my new PC.

A couple more prep steps. I boiled up some bottled water and added a beef stock cube to make up about 450 ml of beef stock. Then I enhanced it with a good glug of mushroom ketchup. I had been drying some bay leaves that had been knocked off my bay tree during the past storms and grabbed two leaves for the pot.

Another cool thing about this PC is that it has a browning setting. I put some salt and pepper on the meat on both sides. Started the browning setting in the PC and added some olive oil. After 5 minutes it was up to heat and I browned the beef on all side in the pan. This is good as you do not loose any of the goodness of the browning juices before you continue to cook.

Now I was ready to cook. Add the carrots, celery and onions. Pour in the beef stock and mushroom ketchup liquid. Put the potatoes on top of all the rest of the vegetables and meat. Put the bay leaves into the liquid on either side.

Now it is time to put the lid on tight and set the pressure valve. I set the timer for an hour and it is off heating. Ok something is wrong as there is too much steam coming out and it has been 10 minutes with the time on 1 hour. Back to the manual. Ahhhh now I see the steam valve is 180 degrees the wrong way

WRONG

RIGHT

I am such a dumb ass.

Here it is plated up, wow yuuuummm

So how was it? Well it is still really, really good because the house smells of Sunday Pot Roast and I am taken back to my childhood every time I walk into the room. The device worked perfectly and I felt safe using it, bare the user error with the valve. It is quiet no clackity clack clack.

The jus had a fantastic flavour. I saved it off to make gravy with the leftovers. I like taking the carrots, onions and potatoes and frying them in butter while heating the meat in the gravy which makes it really moist. To be honest left over Sunday Pot Roast is almost as good as the first time. The other thing you can do is grind the beef and mix with raw onions, mayo and horse radish to make beef salad which is to die for.

Because I boiled it at the beginning for 10 minutes, and the fact I had less meat than the recipe called for I believe that it was a bit over cooked. The veg was pretty mushy, but that is pot roast. The meat fell apart under the knife, but that is also pot roast. Next time I am going to try it for 45 minutes and make gravy with the jus, in memory of my father who finished Sunday Roast with left over gravy on bread, now that is pudding!

Here is the key thing. After work I can serve up a Sunday Pot Roast taking only an 1.5 hours including prep and cooking which used to take 4 hours and was almost as good as me mums.

And because it is still light at 9:30 PM, I am going to include a picture of Stonehenge, as it is the summer solstice.

Well I had some time on my hands and some fresh eggs and stale bread so I decided to go Modernist and make some scrambled eggs on toast. One of the cool things about the Modernist Cuisine recipes is that they give two measures for a recipe. One is a weight or volume the other is a percentage of the main ingredient. I did not have 8 eggs, or want to eat 8 eggs myself so I used the percentage measurement of the recipe. Here is the basic recipe on the kitchen computer.

So used 4 yolks which measured to 64 grams. Then every other ingredient was a percentage of this ingredient. Interesting was that I threw away quite a bit of whites that produced these yolks. The other problem was that trying to spoon whites was like herding cats. Spoon in and lift and get half the bowl or nothing at all. Here is the mixed ingredients.

I then needed to prep the Sous Vide to 162F

Bag it up ready for Vac Packing

I then hung the bag off of the edge of the counter and put the open end into the Vacuum Sealer. This allows liquids to be vacuum sealed without sucking the liquid into the machine.

I put some mushrooms on a really easy recipe, to accompany the scrambled eggs. I put some butter into a pan that has a lid that seals really well. When it is sizzling add some button mushrooms, give it a stir then put the lid on. Turn it down to the lowest heat setting and give it a shake every 5 minutes. These can be cooked for ½ hour to hour without any problem.

The eggs went into the Sous Vide for 25 minutes.

I had some bread that I made on Friday and with fresh bread 3 days is about the limit. So I took a couple of slices and toasted it.

The eggs were cooked so they were removed from the Sous Vide.

I filled my Hot & Cold Whipper for Cream, Sauces, Froths and Mousses with hot water to heat it, kind of like when you heat a tea pot before making tea. I then cut the corner out of the bag of scrambled eggs and squashed them into the canister.

I charged the eggs with a cylinder of nitrous and gave it a good shake. I then exploded the eggs onto toast with the pressurized cylinder, wow that was a rush.

I plated it up with toast on the bottom and extruded eggs on top. I then put the shrooms on the back of the plate and chutney up front. Here is the finished product.

How long did it take to cook –it took about 2-2.5 hours to do this from start to cleaned up kitchen. This is a lot of time.

Was it worth it – yes as the whole experience including the eating was very interesting.

Was it good – yes, but it did not taste like eggs. It was more like buttery savoury custard, which is a new flavour / texture, but I am not sure if it is what I expected.

If you have a look at my about page this picture is of a course I went to at Waltham Place Farm to learn how to make sausages. I also signed up to be a friend of Waltham Place because they sell Organic Soil Association meat. They have it butchered locally and vacuum pack it so you can store it in the fridge or freeze. If you decide to freeze please see, the section on, freezers are for storing food and not freezing it. OK enough already, so what’s with the Shakespeare quote in the title of this entry? Hold on, hold on, just a little more background first. My daughter and I love to watch MAN V. FOOD, and in one of his shows he had the ultimate hamburger which was made with beef, but not beef as we know it! They used ground veal instead of ground beef. If you have stuck with me so far then here is the reason for all of the background

I was notified this week that Waltham farm was doing some butchering and they would have some Rose Veal available for purchase. What is Rose Veal? It is a by-product of two things. The first is that to produce milk, dairy farms need to produce baby cows. Girl cows good, boy cows not so good to a dairy farmer. They usually only have one big bad boy in the yard, unless they use the kitchen baster method then it is an all girls school. The second issue is what do you do with the boy cows if you don’t want them? The answer is Rose Veal to some farms. Give them a balanced diet of grass and milk and then let them party in the fields. One quote I saw said that they don’t live a long life, but it is still a good one.

A good burger starts with a good base, so into the bread maker goes:

¾ tsp yeast
400g strong white flour
1 tsp sugar
15g Butter
1 tsp salt
280 ml of water

Program your Panasonic Breadmaker for bread dough. This will make 6 buns. 2 ½ hours later the beeping in the kitchen tells you the dough is done and it is time to get messy. The machine has done its work and produced a ball of dough.

WARNING: before you get covered in dough and flour, get your baking tray out and spread some butter on it. Then get your pastry board or marble slab out and dust down with flour. OK now you can continue…

Get some flour; you will need the bag if you do not want to wear the dough as gloves. Don’t be afraid of flour, as soon as things get a little sticky chuck some more on it. Sprinkle some around the edge of the pan between the dough and the pan and then some on top. Dust your hands with flour and punch down in the middle and grab the paddle that is in the bottom of the pan and pull it out. Make your hand flat and shove the flour you sprinkled around the edge down to the bottom of the pan all along all four sides, and when you are at the bottom pull the dough up to release from the pan. Flour both hands again and then you should be able to pull the dough ball out of the pan. Pat it into a ball adding flour to any stick bits. Now grab the big ball in the middle with the thumb and index finger squeeze to make two balls. Repeat until you have 6 balls. Now get some flour and cover one of the balls and proceed to push your thumbs up into the bread as you pull back on the top with your fingers until all the air bubbles are removed. Use more flour if it gets sticky. Then pull and flatten and pull the dough out to a round shape.

Video on: How to Make Rolls

Off they go to a warm place or your airing cupboard if you live in the UK. They will be in there for about 30 to 45 minutes (ok I have to say the baking catch phrase…) or until about doubled in size. They never get that big until they are stuffed into the oven so just put them somewhere for 30 minutes and get on with dinner. Now turn your oven on to GM7 or 220C or 425F and put a shelf about ¾ way up the stack. BTW now is a good time to do some dishes as heating the water will help the airing cupboard to warm up and raise the bread.

When the oven gets to heat it is time to put the dough in for 15 minutes, and they should be brown on top and cooked through.

At about 40 minutes before trough it is time to make the French Fries. Yes I said French Fries and not chips as they say here in the UK. As you can see the Chip Maker has two dies, one for Americans and one for Brits.

The key thing when using the ActiFry is that you need to remove starch and also have very dry potatoes. Wash them really well in cold water to remove the starch.

Then use a tea towel and push them around to make sure they are dry.

Now at 30 minutes before dinner the potatoes go into the Tefal ActiFry and cover with at most a tablespoon of olive oil. This will produce French Fries at less then 3 percent fat and that fat is olive oil, so almost good for you.

At 20 minutes before the fries are done put a grill pan on the stove at medium heat. Add some olive oil and with a paper towel cover the pan with a thin layer of oil. Put the burger on the hot pan and adjust the heat until you can just hear it sizzle.

This meat cooks very slowly compared to standard mince. You need to watch the cooking move up the sides of the burger and turn it when it is about ¾ way through. Then cook for about another 5 minutes. If you want cheese then add at about 2 minutes left and then cover with a lid. I cooked my burger for 3 minutes when I turned it over and it was probably a bit rare for most.

While the meat is sizzling in the background it is time to make the special sauce. I use a mixture of 2 parts mayo to 1 part Tomato Chutney from my local farm shop. The chutney is not the acidic vinegar style, but instead sweet. Mixed they make a great burger sauce.

French Fries are cooked and ready to eat…

So lets plate this sucker up and EAT it!!

My opinion is hmmmmm. Not as astounding as I thought it was going to be. The texture was very nice and the burger melted in your mouth. It took a long time to cook compared to normal minced beef which kind of freaked me out, as you are seeing the second attempt here. The first one was shockingly raw inside. I am not really sure what is going on as I used my normal burger cooking method. The other thing that is counter intuitive and made me think was that I sacrificed flavour for texture. There was a faint taste of beef, but nothing like a properly aged bit of beef, so I guess my expectations were kind of set wrong. I did not rest the burger either so if I would have put it on a plate with a lid over it for 5 minutes the rareness may have been less. I have another ½ pound to play with so I will update this entry with further enhancements to the trial.