Spring may have sprung (in between freak snowstorms here in Colorado), but I am still working through a backlog of recipes that I produced during the frigid temperatures of January and February. Therefore, please don’t expect any light side dishes or salads from this blog. In fact, even if there is an “Instant Pot Caesar Salad” listed in this book, I am going to respectfully refuse to make it! That being said, prepare yourself for some ridiculously good comfort food to make the next time the mercury dips, or whenever you just want Creme Brûlée. Which is always. Dessert has no season!
Ah, my ol’ favorite: “pasta and _____”. Pretty much anything works here, chicken, beef, even pork cutlet, but I have a particular affection for shellfish of all varieties. My go-to has always been shrimp fettuccine in cream (not tomato) sauce, but #16 Linguine with White Clam Sauce is a close second! My only objection to this recipe is that the pasta was not absolutely drenched. Specifically in Alfredo sauce, or something similarly thick and creamy. But that’s not what this is, so basically I’m mad because this isn’t another recipe altogether! Since I can’t reasonably hold that against this IP recipe, let me say that the sauce it did use was pretty tasty, and although the photo looks fairly dry, there was a coating of garlicky, buttery, clammy goodness on all the noodles. Like most sauces with a butter and cream base, reheating pretty much destroys the velvety texture, so you’re much better off just planning to have a couple guests over and polish this off in one sitting! PS, somehow I managed to take a pic that appears bereft of clams, but I assure you there were 20 oz of the little guys in there! Overall rating for this (accounting for my Alfredo-bias) is an 8/10. I docked a point for the author having access to a wider world of Better Than Bouillon flavors than I have EVER seen, thus requiring me to improvise. Evidently Clam BTB is a thing… Somewhere.
I generally chafe at anything claiming to be “the world’s best” anything in the food world. It’s just too much pressure (zing! I snuck in an IP joke!) to live up to! However, in this instance I must tip my hat to the author. He really nailed #17 Best-Ever Pot Roast, and mine turned out amazing in a fraction of the time that it would have taken in a slow cooker. The key to a great pot roast for me is the seasoning, and I was not disappointed. Too often a fancy-pants chef will insist, “if the meat is quality, all you need is salt and pepper and the flavor will sing.” Bull pucky. I submit that no matter how “Kobe” my beef might be, some garlic and onion powder will never make it worse. The average Joe/Josephine Homechef isn’t routinely buying $29/lb meat, so I need my Costco bulk beef to sing too! Or at least hum a few bars… My roast was improved by seasoned salt, parsley, rosemary and thyme (Simon and Garfunkel would approve, despite the lack of sage!) onion and garlic powder, and S & P. Worcestershire sauce and fresh garlic along with red wine gave the meat a depth of flavor as well, and searing each side in butter and olive oil caramelized the surface beautifully before it was set to pressure cook. Most pot roast recipes have a standard onion-celery-carrot component, and most are served over mashed potatoes, but due to the intense heat of a 60-minute pressure cook, I made little foil “packets” for the potatoes and carrots which just sat on top of the meat while it cooked. This kept them from dissolving into mush, which they would have done if they were exposed to all the liquid for that long. Admittedly I was skeptical about not having MASHED potatoes, (clearly the superior form of spud, along with the noble French fry) but these were tender and delicious and definitely lower in calories. Rating: 10/10, and I concur with the “Best-Ever” title without objection!
I honestly don’t think I have a done a cookbook yet that didn’t have a version of #18 Creme Brûlée. This is a beautiful thing, since it saves me about $60 each time I make a batch and therefore do not have to order it at restaurants for a while! I think my favorite thus far is still an Alton Brown recipe I made many years ago which I doctored with espresso flavors (as I did here), and while I have made many a delicious brûlée, none have quite reached that level of perfection. Making this dessert in an Instant Pot was both easy and stressful, mostly due to my irrational fear of something exploding when I put the lid on. I don’t know why I continue to feel trepidation about putting cooking vessels (in this case oven-proof glass ramekins) into an IP, but I just woo-sah’d myself into a calmer state and went for it. The creme mixture was pretty standard, the only unusual ingredients being nutmeg and cinnamon, but I like to add coffee extract as well. Heavy cream and egg yolks plus sugar and spices all went into a microwaveable bowl and heated for 45 seconds, then I poured the liquid into my ramekins. Normally this would the part that is so easy to mess up: placing the creme brûlées into a bain-marie (water bath) and transporting the whole sloshing pan to the oven. One drop of water splashing into the creme mixture will ruin it, as the dessert will not set up. For the IP version, all I had to do was wrap the ramekins in foil and stack them inside! There was water in the pot, but with the “lids” on, I was less worried about contamination. They were done cooking in 15 minutes, then as usual had to chill overnight or at least a few hours. So that’s the good part, they were super easy; on the downside, the texture was…weird. If you like tapioca pudding, this will not bother you in the slightest, but I could do without it. The crazy thing is that there were not actually “lumps” in the finished product, it was more like there were “holes”. It looked like little tiny air pockets had formed while cooking, and it gave an almost curdled appearance, though it certainly was not. The flavor was on point, and once I took a bite I could tell that it was in fact smooth…ish. For me the “aerated” mouthfeel was less than ideal, so I prefer the tried and true (and still stressful) method of baking them in the oven. If I ever find myself in some sort of creme brûlée emergency, I know how to knock out an acceptable batch in short order, but the overall rating will sit at about a 6.5, because I demand a silky smooth texture. But on the plus side, I still got to light them on fire!
Have Book, Will Cook 