Tuesday 27 June 2017

Power Pressure Cooker XL Cookbook - Vanessa Olsen



                I am not a lover of pressure cookers. My earliest memory of them is as a kid and every Sunday the evening meal would be cooked using a loud and dangerous stove top pressure cooker. The food would have no colour and definitely no taste. My father warned us to never touch or go near it because it could go off like a bomb if we raised the lid. I saw this book and just had to take a look because I couldn’t believe that there could possibly be two-hundred recipes for one of these horrid machines. After reading this recipe book, Ms. Olsen has changed my mind about pressure cooking and I think I may be purchasing one like is used in the book in the near future.                           
                This book is based on the Power Pressure Cooker XL which, where I live, is $120 and that is probably a higher price because things are quite expensive here. The author does provide information about how to gear the recipe towards other types of pressure cookers if you don’t own this particular kind. There are recipes for everything in this book, from breakfast to snacks, and it’s quite unbelievable that so many things can come from this piece of equipment. I took a week to try some of the recipes that caught my eye using a stovetop pressure cooker and, I have to say, they turned out quite well. There is a lemon poppy seed cake recipe that tastes just like my husband’s grandmother’s cake. I also made a huge pot of clam chowder that was to die for.  There were some recipes that didn’t turn out so well but I think that was due to my own mistakes and not the recipe itself. Boiling eggs is not something I will be using the cooker for since I never found that they came out the way I wanted them to.
                Ms. Olsen starts the book with a history of the pressure cooker which is actually quite interesting. I never imagined that it has been around for as long as it has been. She then gives lots of information about how to use this type of pressure cooker and it was very helpful. At first I thought the whole book was very much like an infomercial but it is so well set up and easy to use that I quickly fell in love with the book. The recipes are easy to read and understand and the step-by-step process makes them easy to carry out. There is something for everyone here and this is a great book to have, especially if you’re not comfortable with pressure cookers. I do wish there were pictures which, for me, are key to a cook book but overall, this is a great book to add to my collection.
                I read it on my ereader and it formatted perfectly. The cover relates to the topic and draws the eye. Excellent!

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