Pressure Cooking the Books

2. Vegetables by Mark Diacono

I am currently on holiday in Northumberland. And I did not intend to do any work, but I have worn out all of my family, making them walk all week long and actually, have given my knee a bit of a bashing too, so we’re taking a bit of down time. I am rubbish at switching off when I have something to get out and so knowing this about myself I brought my laptop with me.

Today I am not talking about some of the regional specialities up here, although I have bought kippers and smoked mackerel from L Robson & Son in Craster, eaten a great deal of Doddington Dairy ice cream and have had fun working out pressure cooker friendly recipes for dishes such as pan haggerty and pease pudding. I haven’t cooked and eaten these yet - like the rest of the country Northumberland is having a bit of a heatwave. This did not stop me eating beef mince pie with swede and carrots at Beamish, mind, but I have to draw the line somewhere. I’m going to cook and post the recipes in due course, but for now I am returning to cookbook reviewing and recipe converting with what I think is a corker - Mark Diacono’s Vegetables.

I expect most of you know of Mark Diacono. He has feet in both the gardening and food writing worlds and manages both brilliantly. Amongst other things, he has an extremely successful newsletter and as well as having a very inclusive approach when encouraging fellow writers onto the platform, he is currently writing his next book - Abundance - in instalments on his own Substack.

Vegetables is his latest, out last month. First off, it is written with all his usual wit and very entertaining, sometimes bonkers use of analogy which makes it an absolute joy to read. The introduction will immediately set you on the right path - it’s an excellent manifesto on exactly why it is a good idea to eat as wide a variety of seasonal fruit and vegetables as we possibly can. The advice on how to do so is sensible and gently encouraging and this is reflected in the eminently achievable and perfectly pitched recipes. I write as someone who struggles with the concept of less can be more when it comes to my own recipe writing. I know this can be off putting to home cooks who just want to get something on the table, fast. These have a simplicity about them both in terms of number of ingredients used and method which make them all suitable evening meal fare. And of course, if you pressure cook elements of them too, you will get them on the table even faster.

I spent much of last week cooking my way through some of them. It was hard to choose because quite unusually for me there wasn’t a single dish that didn’t have some appeal. There are no fillers, every recipe has earned its place, making it a real work horse of a book. In the end I chose relatively seasonal things - mainly based on my regular farmers’ market shopping - and have promised myself that I will return to the autumn/winter dishes when the weather starts to turn again. Something to look forward to.

Pressure cooking will speed up most of the recipes in this book - at a rough count at least 80% of them have at least one element in them which can be pressure cooked. This might be a grain or pulse for a salad, or a braise which relies on tinned beans. There are plenty of vegetables which can be pressure roasted instead of switching on the oven, eggs which can be pressure steamed instead of boiled (and a couple of times can be cooked with the potatoes they are being paired with). And of course there are all the one pot dishes - soups, curries, pastas, risottos, braises and gratins which pressure cook so brilliantly. It is definitely the sort of book you should consider buying if a) you want to increase your vegetarian repertoire and b) you want to use your pressure cooker more.

What did I cook?

I took a slightly mix and match approach with this book - the recipes work well as stand alones and are for the most part designed as main courses, but quite a few of them complement one another too, so I doubled up a bit on the dishes which gave me plenty of leftovers too. I had a bit of a glut of tomatoes as they are so good from the farmers market at the moment, so several of my dishes focussed on them.

First up, Tomato, Caper and Feta Dip. The tomatoes are roasted before being blitzed with capers, garlic, chilli flakes, parsley. Instead of oven roasting, I seared cut halved tomatoes in the pressure cooker, then gave them zero minutes HP with a fast release. Then left to cool before following the rest of the recipe. This one had a great savoury quality with a bit of a bagnetto vibe. I used it with crudités including pressure roasted cauliflower and wished I’d made double the amount.

Next was a Tomato and Cherry Quinoa Salad with Pistachios. Cherries are also in season right now so it seemed stupid not to try this particular pairing. The pressure cooked element here was the quinoa - it will cook at 1 minute high pressure with natural release. If you are using red or black quinoa, add an extra minute - it is slightly more resistant.

I had a bit of a mishap when pitting the cherries. I never learn. White shirts, favourite jumpers, nothing is safe in my kitchen (and I don’t think an apron would have saved me in this instance, either). It is the same when I garden - it never occurs to me to change first. I managed to get the cherry juice stains out - a paste of bicarbonate of soda then a splash of white vinegar and a soak before washing and the shirt is as good as new. Not sure I needed the vinegar, I’ll try without next time. There is always a next time. Anyway, as usual, I digress.

This was a really good balance of flavours - sweet cherries, slightly more acidic tomatoes, crunch from the pistachios. Mint is a flavour I love with both tomatoes and cherries so that worked too.

I paired the salad with Leeks with Tarragon and Puy Lentils. I love a leek (Welsh blood will out). Again, a great one to pressure cook. The puy lentils were cooked with bay leaves and whole garlic cloves - just 1 minute at high pressure and natural release. Then the leeks were braised, also under pressure. I let them sear a little for colour, then added just a splash of water and brought up to high pressure, removed from the heat and left for a minute before releasing the remaining pressure. The dish was dressed with a combination of date syrup, lemon juice, garlic, oil - which gave just the right amount of piquancy to mellow earthy lentils and sweet leeks - then garnished with tarragon (we should all be using more tarragon). I put some feta on the side as I had some to use up and dressed it with a bit of za’atar. But neither dish needed it.

Finally Tomatoes Stuffed with Spiced Coconut Rice with an Aubergine Curry.

full agreement here re marrows

I shouldn’t really have put these together - one being South Asian, the other Thai. But it worked, just.

For the tomato and rice dish, tomatoes are scooped out, then stuffed with cooked, gently spiced rice and baked. Pressure cooked rice is so fast and easy. With this recipe I reduced the amount of liquid Mark uses very slightly to match the rice/liquid ratios necessary for pressure cooking. You need a ratio of 2 parts rice to 3 parts liquid. Then 3 minutes high pressure, natural release. To bake the tomatoes, you have options. This dish requires 8-12 medium/largeish tomatoes, which is a bit too much to cook Pot in Pot (ie, in a dish on a trivet), so I cooked in the base of the pressure cooker. This is slightly risky because tomatoes can collapse. I heated the pressure cooker, added a slick of olive oil, arranged the stuffed tomatoes in the base and added a splash of water. Then 1 minute high pressure, fast release. Anyway, you can pressure cook if you like, or if you don’t want to risk it, put them in the oven (or air fryer), but pressure cook the rice at very least. What made the dish was the tarka - cumin and mustard seeds, green chilli, curry leaves fried in coconut oil until they crackle and pop. So good poured over sweet, gently spiced rice and tomatoes.

For the aubergine curry, the pressure cooker made very short work of bringing everything together. I fried wedges of aubergine as per the recipe - they needed light browning in oil. Then garlic, ginger, onion and red pepper were given a quick saute then in went coconut milk, curry paste, palm sugar and I’m afraid I cheated here and used fish sauce instead of soy. Then add in the aubergine, bring up to high pressure, cook for 1 minute, leave for another minute, then fast release the remaining pressure. I did not make my own paste in this instance. I have tried a few jars recently and have found they are so much better than they used to be.

(As an aside - I had a few trimmings leftover from the recipes - the innards of the tomatoes (seeds, core, jelly/juice), the leek ends. So I threw them into the pressure cooker with a bit of leftover curry paste, celery, carrot and some chicken stock for a very quick 2 portion soup. 5 mins HP, natural release, blitz. Add any flavours you like.)

One final thing to say about Vegetables is that in an effort to make everything as accessible/year round as possible, there is a great deal of flexibility in the recipes. Anyone who reads my books knows how much I love a flexible recipe - within parameters that the writer has worked out, so you don’t have to. So there are tips on how to make the recipe vegan if is vegetarian, whether or not it is gluten free and best of all, what swaps you can make if you want to follow the recipe but the main ingredient is not in season - or if you want to speed it up even more. So as an example, if you don’t want to make this curry with aubergines, use any leftover vegetables, cooked potatoes, hard boiled eggs in their place.

I have said this before, but it is such a joy to be cooking from other people’s recipes for a change. Even with the pressure cooking conversions - some of which require a bit of thought, it isn’t always perfectly straightforward - it is quite restful knowing that someone else has already done the work.

I am back in London tomorrow, so glad to have missed the heatwave there! Please remember to click on the ❤️ if you liked this post. I am told it helps with visibility. For any of you thinking about moving from Free to Paid, I have extended the 25% offer until the 15th August. Finally, this is a free to all post, so please share with anyone you think might like Mark’s book and/or needs encouraging onto pressure cooking. Thank you all so much!