Back in the late eighties and early nineties I remembered as a kid, the taste of vegetables and meat and even rice. They tasted so wonderful! As years went by, the taste was forgotten. Every year I tried newer dishes from different cultures in different restaurants in different countries, thus eliminating my childhood taste buds entirely. At least that was what I had thought, that is, until last week.
As I was sifting through stuffs in the messy store-room downstairs I got hold of a cooking utensil, the pressure cooker! I wanted to try it but it needed a hard proper cleaning before making it usable; but the temptation was too strong, and after three hours of cleaning, the cooker was fit to cook.
The first thing I tried was rice. It tasted wonderful and needless to say, revived my childhood taste-buds. In the coming days, it was curry chicken, followed by vegetables of all sorts – radish, broccoli, cabbage, legumes, asparagus – you name it. My gastronomic system was beyond doubt, satisfied.
Then I sat down to point out the benefits of a pressure cooker:
- Pressure cooking retains the nutrients present in the food, which, if cooked otherwise, would lose some taste and some dietary essence.
- Foods cook faster in pressure cookers, even compared to microwave ovens – the magic being pressurised water vapour.
- A pressure cooker cooks food to the last single strand of fibre, with much lesser effort compared to other methods, like microwave or open pots.
Alas; a downside is that unless you have an electric pressure cooker, you can’t deny the noisy sss… sss… sss… – the whistle that may disturb your neighbours or guests, each time your food is ready.
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