Pressure Cooker

Pastry covered pressure cooker beef brisket and roast pumpkin

Posted by Gary

Dear Reader,

Well, here we are. It’s the middle of January. The days are warm, and the lovely La Niña has kept me moist. Oh, La Niña, how I wish you’d stay forever. That said, I’m sure those experiencing destructive floods do not find La Niña attractive.

Dark clouds over Lake Ginninderra
Lake Ginninderra

Last week I bought myself a couple of large lumps of beef, and I’ve been enjoying leftovers each day. I still have a good-sized chunk of brisket, and I wondered how to finish it off.

Beef Brisket Green peppercorn sauce
Beef Brisket Green peppercorn sauce

I haven’t been out most of today because of work, so I thought I’d put together some random things for dinner. I had store-bought puff pastry in the freezer, so I thought I’d wrap the brisket in the buttery goodness.

I massaged the brisket with mustard and coated it with pepper for extra flavour. I lined the pastry with some chopped onion and parsley. 

Ingredients

  • Leftover beef brisket which has been cooked in a pressure cooker
  • Parsley
  • Onion
  • Mustard
  • Black pepper
  • Puff pastry
  • Kent pumpkin
  • Rice bran oil
  • Marmalade
  • Rocket
  • Walnuts
  • Feta
  • Extra virgin olive oil
  • Instant gravy

Instructions

  1. Get all the refrigerated items out.
  2. Cut the pumpkin into chunks and massage with oil and marmalade.
  3. Put the pumpkin onto a baking sheet and put it into a moderate oven.
  4. Remove the pumpkin when a sharp probe can penetrate it easily and slide in and out of the flesh.
  5. Allow the pumpkin to cool.
  6. Rub the brisket with some mustard. It doesn’t really matter what type of mustard you use. The mustard is being used to bind the pepper to the meat. Mmm…mustard makes me want a pickled gherkin in my mouth.
  7. Grind some black peppercorns and spread them on a plate.
  8. Gently roll the meat in peppercorns and coat all the sides and the ends.
  9. Chop some parsley and onion together.
  10. Prepare the pastry as per the instructions for use.
  11. When the puff pastry is ready, line the surface with the parsley and onion and then wrap the pastry around the meat.
  12. Seal any gaps and brush the surface with melted butter and sprinkle some coarse salt over the buttered surface.
  13. Put the brisket into the oven and cook until the pastry is golden brown. 
  14. Pull the meat out and let it rest.
  15. While the beef is unlikely to be moist like a slow-cooked piece of brisket, it will be tender given it’s already been cooked in a pressure cooker.
  16. Add the pumpkin, crushed walnuts, feta, and rocket to a bowl. Douse with a little EVOO and season with some salt.
  17. Slice a nice thick slice of meat, add it to a plate, and pour gravy over it. Add the salad on the side.
  18. Give thanks to the Lord and inhale the meal.

Thoughts

The supermarket shelves are still a bit random. The last time I looked, there was no chicken, minced meat, and a scarcity of snags. Like last week, there were many good-sized pieces of beef and lamb ready for roasting or slow-cooking.

Leaving the current wave of COVID-19 caused by SARS-COV-2 Omicron Variant aside, life has been good. Work is busier than ever, and non-work life is going very well.

It’s good to be happy and being hopeful.

This meal was pretty good. The meat cut easily and on the tooth, it was tender yet firm enough to keep its body. The marmalade was fantastic on the pumpkin.

Final thoughts

  • How’s life for you?
  • Do you prefer your meat to be soft and moist or a bit firmer, chunkier, and better feeling between your teeth?
  • What’s the coming week hold for you?
  • Puff pastry Pressure cooker Beef brisket
  • Pastry covered pressure cooker beef brisket and roast pumpkin salad
  • Pastry covered pressure cooker beef brisket and roast pumpkin salad

Pressure cooker duck breast and crispy skin

Posted by Gary

Dear Reader,

Happy New Year for 2022.

Pressure cooker duck breast with crispy skin served with peppercorn instant gravy and a red onion, red cabbage, fennel, and cucumber salad.

This post is a quickie. While in Brisbane, I gave my eldest daughter and her partner a fast, slow cooker. We got talking, and I wondered out loud how autoclave cooked duck breast might taste.

I chose two nice plump breasts and skinned them with a boning blade because it is sharp, and the distance between the knife back and the edge is short.

I made a mistake not flattening the skin between two heavy pieces of metal while cooking in the oven. Oh well, I’ll know next time. I think the way it turned out was okay. What do you think? Do the curly skin bits look okay?

Rather than a regular recipe post, I’ll share how this came together.

I cooked the breasts sans skin and fat in a pressure cooker for 20 minutes, along with some master stock and black peppercorns.

I put the duck skin on a baking sheet, rubbed it dry with some kitchen paper, and seasoned it with coarse iodised sea salt flakes. I cooked the skin for about 30 minutes on low heat to dehydrate it and get it crispy. The skin curled, but they didn’t turn out too badly, as you can see in the photos.

I made some instant gravy stirred through the cooked peppercorns.

I made a salad with red cabbage, red onion, and fennel. I dressed the salad with lime juice and olive oil.

Check out the photos and let me know what you think.

Happy new year, and may 2022 be better than any you’ve experienced thus far.

  • Duck breasts
  • Dick Boning kinife
  • Dick Boning kinife
  • Duck breasts sans skin
  • Duck breast skin
  • Pressure cooker duck breast with crispy skin served with peppercorn instant gravy and a red onion, red cabbage, fennel, and cucumber salad.
  • Pressure cooker duck breast with crispy skin served with peppercorn instant gravy and a red onion, red cabbage, fennel, and cucumber salad.

Pressure cooker speck three-ways

Posted by Gary

Dear Reader,

Happy Saturday. I hope you’re well and you’ve enjoyed the past week. I’ve enjoyed a brilliant week apart from the worst week of hay fever so far this year. Praise God for antihistamine drugs 🙂

During the week, a member of the Facebook group “Cooking meals for one,” Merryn suggested I write a post about the speck I’d cooked.

For readers who don’t know, speck is smoked pork belly. I usually describe it as fancy bacon.

The easiest way to cook it is in a pressure cooker. I cut the block of pork into three thick longitudinal strips. If you didn’t use a pressure cooker, I’d recommend stripping away the rind, which can be a little chewy. Because speck is pork belly, it feels fatty and dense in your hand. I use a sharp knife to slice it safely due to the denseness of the pork. For example, I use my Dick butchers knife.

For flavouring and to balance the nutritional value, I usually add some lentils, whole peppercorns, Chinese-five-spice powder, star anise, and master stock.

For a small block of speck, I cook the meat for 30 minutes under pressure.

The three strips make a minimum of three meals for me. This week, I got four meals out of the three strips.

Pressure cooker speck and pork belly with lentils, peppercorns, potato mash, and baby green peas.

Wednesday evening’s meal.

Pressure cooker speck and pork belly with lentils, peppercorns, potato mash, and baby green peas.

Pressure cooker speck, lentils, and peppercorns wrapped in puff pastry with a salad.

Thursday evening’s meal.

Pressure cooker speck, lentils, and peppercorns in puff pastry with a salad

Pressure cooker speck, lentils, and peppercorns wrapped in puff pastry with smokey barbecue sauce.

Friday’s lunch.

Pressure cooker speck, lentils, and peppercorns in puff pastry with smokey barbecue sauce

Pressure cooker speck, lentils, and peppercorns cooked in pumpkin soup.

Tonight’s meal consisted of a pumpkin soup made with roast Kent pumpkin, coconut cream, along with the lentils and peppercorns blended into a soup. I broke up the speck and added it to the soup.

Ingredients

  • Leftover cooked speck, lentils, and peppercorns
  • Kent pumpkin
  • Olive oil
  • Iodised salt
  • Dark brown sugar
  • Coconut cream
  • Vegetable stock

Instructions

  1. Lovingly sharpen your cook’s knife (as iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend Proverbs 27:17 NLT).
  2. Remove the seeds and the connective tissue of the core of the pumpkin.
  3. Carefully cut the pumpkin into chunks approximately 8 cm³. Leave the skin.
  4. Gently rub oil over the pumpkin chunks with your hands.
  5. Rub in some salt and then rub in some of the dark brown sugar.
  6. Place the pumpkin pieces onto a baking sheet and place them into a hot oven until the pumpkin is soft enough to pierce with a sharp probe. The aim is to penetrate the pumpkin’s flesh, and on withdrawing the instrument, no pumpkin residue should be on the metal surface. It should go in and out smoothly. Ideally, the caramelisation of the surface of the flesh with the aid of sugar will have occurred.
  7. In a saucepan, add the cooked pumpkin, coconut cream, stock, lentils, and peppercorns. 
  8. Bring the soup to a simmer and cook until the coconut cream begins to thicken.
  9. Puree the soup with a stick blender.
  10. Continue simmering the soup and drop in pieces of your pulled speck gently while stirring.
  11. Serve the soup into a bowl and garnish with whatever herbs you feel desirable.
  12. Give thanks to the Lord for the meal.
  13. Take a large spoon and enjoy the soup.

Takeaways

The soup is good. It is thick and spicy. The peppercorns in the soup are like a party in my mouth. The speck is tender, succulent, and moist. The coconut cream gives the soup an Asian feel. To augment that, I should have added some curry paste, perhaps, a laksa paste.

Final thoughts

  1. How was your week?
  2. Are you a fan of bacon? I went out this morning and enjoyed eggs benedict with bacon. It’s the first bacon I’ve eaten in months.
  3. I reckon if you like bacon, you’ll love speck. Would you please give it a go and let me know what you think?
  4. Do you have plans for Christmas? I’m looking forward to summer.
  • Eggs Benedict with bacon from Stella’s by the lake
  • Pressure cooker speck, lentils, and peppercorns cooked in pumpkin soup
  • Pressure cooker speck, lentils, and peppercorns cooked in pumpkin soup
  • Pressure cooker speck, lentils, and peppercorns cooked in pumpkin soup

Pork belly red curry

Posted by Gary

Dear Reader,

Yummy Lummy’s mission is to help singletons cook meals for themselves.

Many of the meals here have enough leftovers, so if you are part of a family or a group house, you could use the recipe for an evening meal.

Tonight I put together some leftover bits and pieces to make a tasty evening meal.

During the week, I’d cooked a few pork belly strips and peppercorns in the pressure cooker. I’d also cooked some rice and had some leftovers.

One of the things I do with capsicum is to buy three of them (red, green, and yellow), slice them at the start of the week, and use the slices as needed.

I am a lazy cook, so I buy whatever looks good at the supermarket rather than make a curry paste from scratch.

Pork belly red curry

Ingredients

  • Cooked pork belly strip
  • Cooked peppercorns
  • Cooked rice
  • Capsicum slices
  • Chopped parsley
  • Sliced red cabbage
  • Red curry paste
  • Coconut cream

Instructions

  1. Lovingly sharpen your cook’s knife (as iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend (Proverbs 27:17 NLT).
  2. Slice the red cabbage
  3. Dice the pork belly strip
  4. Chop the parsley
  5. Heat a skillet and add some cooking oil.
  6. Heat the pork and peppercorns.
  7. Add a tablespoon of red curry paste as the pork softens, and gently stir everything with a wooden spoon until the pork and peppercorns have a curry paste coating.
  8. Add in the rice and mix everything and cook until the rice is hot. Remember that when you reheat rice or any food for that matter, you want to get the food in the cooking vessel hot enough to kill vegetative bacteria. Please don’t make the mistake of calling this a sterilising process. It isn’t. Sterilisation requires the death of spores, and the only reliable way to sterilise food in a domestic kitchen is to use a pressure cooker. At best, all we’re doing with a skillet is pasteurising the food.
  9. Pour in the coconut cream and stir everything. Bring the food to a simmer and keep cooking to reduce the coconut cream.
  10. Thicken the coconut cream to the consistency you want and turn the heat off.
  11. Mix through the capsicum, cabbage, and parsley and serve in a bowl.
  12. Give thanks to the Lord for the wages we earn to buy food and the skills we’ve learnt to prepare and cook food. 

Final thoughts

  1. How has your week been?
  2. Have you ever experienced food poisoning from poorly heated food?
  3. Do you like making meals from scraps of food you’ve cooked during the week?
  • Red cabbage Parsley Capsicum
  • Pressure cooker Pork belly Peppercorns
  • Rice Peppercorns
  • Pork belly red curry
  • Pork belly red curry

Pressure cooker ribeye roast

Posted by Gary

Dear Reader,

How are you? It’s been a good week; I even spent half a day in the office!

Thankfully the weather here in Canberra is getting warmer. Spring has sprung, and with it, the pollen count has exploded. Hay fever is the only downside of spring.

One of the many highlights of this week was receiving a gift from my daughters. They bought me a hand mixer for my birthday (yes, I know my birthday is in May and it’s October). I’m looking forward to using it tomorrow to make pancakes.

  • KitchenAid Hand Mixer
  • KitchenAid Hand mixer

Ingredients

  • Ribeye roast
  • Iodised sea salt
  • Master stock
  • Peppercorns
  • Potato
  • Red cabbage
  • Carrot
  • Red onion
  • Wasabi mayonnaise
  • Instant gravy

Instructions

Pressure cooker ribeye roast

  1. Remove the ribeye roast from the refrigerator about an hour or so before you plan to start cooking.
  2. Unwrap it from the plastic packaging.
  3. Dry the surfaces of the roast with some absorbent paper towel.
  4. Season the meat with salt. Be generous with the seasoning.
  5. Allow the beef to rest at room temperature.
  6. Sear the surfaces of the roast to get it brown.
  7. Place the ribeye into the pressure cooker and add master stock plus peppercorns and a potato.
  8. Cook the ribeye for one hour.
  9. Allow the pressure cooker to equalise and keep the meat enclosed for another 15 minutes. The resting helps keep your meat moist.
  10. Remove the roast from the pressure cooker and, with a boning knife, dissect away the fat cap for the meal. Place the rest of the meat into a container and put it into the refrigerator.

Slaw

  1. Lovingly sharpen your cook’s knife (as iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend Proverbs 27:17 NLT).
  2. Slice the cabbage, carrot, and red onion.
  3. Mix with the mayonnaise.

Finishing up

  1. Make the instant gravy according to the instructions for use.
  2. Add the cooked peppercorns from the cooking liquor to the instant gravy and mix it through.
  3. Plate up the meat and slaw and slather with instant gravy.
  4. Give thanks to the Lord for His grace and mercy.

Cooking notes

Why did I use a boning knife to remove the fat cap? It feels more comfortable using a knife with a short distance between the spine and edge for dissecting between muscle planes.

Why did I reserve the fat cap for dinner? The fat cap is the best part of a ribeye because it is the deckle or spinalis dorsi muscle. It is tender and has a high amount of fat. We all know that fat means flavour.

Blog post questions

  1. Do you have hay fever? How do you manage it?
  2. What did you receive for your birthday this year?
  3. Do you like your meat fatty or lean?

Simul Justus et Peccator

I know many people think of October as Halloween month. All Hallow’s Eve has never really featured highly in my mind. I’m always amused to see all these big North American pumpkins in Coles.

When I think of October, I think of Martin Luther and his posting of his 95 theses on 31 October 1517. Reformation Day represents the onset of the protestant reformation.

I’ve been listening to Tim Keller this month preach on Galatians. On Thursday morning, I listened to a sermon he titled “Justified Sinner”. The text was Galatians 2:17–21. Tim explained how one of Luther’s most well-described formulae is Simul Justus et Peccator, Latin for a justified sinner. If you’re interested, the podcast is fantastic. Tim explains the heart of the gospel in this sermon.

  • Ribeye roast
  • Ribeye roast
  • Ribeye roast and iodised salt
  • Pressure cooker ribeye roast with slaw and instant gravy with extra peppercorns.
  • Pressure cooker ribeye roast with slaw and instant gravy with extra peppercorns.
  • Pressure cooker ribeye roast with slaw and instant gravy with extra peppercorns.
  • Pressure cooker ribeye roast with slaw and instant gravy with extra peppercorns.