Under Pressure

Not that what I eat has anything to do with what I shoot, I mean, with a camera, at least...

Good news for the Tooloose homestead...I just received a new pressure cooker. Little known factoid about me is that I love to cook. About 4-5 years ago I went through all my spices and ingredients and completely stocked my shelves with necessities for cooking Indian food. IMHO, it is the best, the absolute best in the world. The hot spicy dishes keep my sinuses clear, for one thing.

A pressure cooker is a necessity for Indian cooking. The legumes/lentils (dal) cook up in a flash under pressure. I have a huge pressure cooker for massive doses of this wonderful cuisine, and a much smaller one, an Indian utensil, for small quantities, and for pressure cooking rice. The Indian cookers are quite different than my American-friendly unit as the Indian cookers work on the principle of building up steam, then blowing it off in a huge blast that might last a few seconds, and cooking is measured in 'whistles,' whereas my Fagor cooks in minutes. Both are great and together, I make some damn yummy meals.

I've been at this for a while now and have quite a library of Indian cookbooks. And I have been honored...a former client of mine grew up in India to a rather privileged life, from what I understand. She did not cook at home. After many discussions of Indian food, she confessed that I knew more about cooking Indian food than her, and even gave me a cookbook from her motherland that she never used.

Dals are my favorite, and usually that with rice will fill me nicely. But I love the vegetables, too, especially eggplant and okra. Since I shop at Indian markets, I also enjoy the wonderful fresh vegetables used in traditional Indian cooking, the various squashes, (opo (aka long squash), winter squash, cayote, bitter melon, etc.) and love to cook simple meals from South India, rasams and sambhars.

I submitted a recipe of my own design to a really excellent You Tube channel that presents Indian recipes, and it was featured here. If you like Indian food, this is a great show to watch. And it certainly doesn't hurt that the two ladies are extremely cute. ;)

So I will be blowing off some steam in my kitchen, butt worry not...I won't be posting pictures of my cooking, neither before or after consumption.

I do also cook Middle Eastern and Thai dishes as well.

Got any favorite recipes in these cuisines, please post to this blog.