Pressure cooker rice pudding

Here´s a good reason to love the pressure cooker; it´s honest, real cooking. There´s nothing gimicky about it. The spectacularly cut-down times only come after you have done all the real work of a recipe, slicing, dicing, browning and sauteeing. So it´s not really less work than the tradtional methods, where you leave things to simmer away on their own for hours. But it does make it possible to make spur of the moment stews and soups and bean salads that you would otherwise have to plan for. And they come out tasting as good or better than the usual.

I´m very impressed with pork shank soup done under an hour, mashed potatoes in ten minutes, and beef stew in half an hour. And note that these are the real times, not just the minutes they spend under pressure, and I factor in the depressure time too. The recipe I´ll give you, though, if for one of my all time favourite puddings, done in record time and much better than the way I used to make it. Please welcome the 

20 minute rice pudding

(adapted from Lindsey Bareham and Diane Page)

Put a walnut sized knob of butter in the open cooker, and turn 60 gr. pudding rice in it until it´s translucent. Add 600 ml. milk and three tablespoonfuls of sugar and bring to the boil with whatever flavouring you like; lemon peel, vanilla, cinnamon. Bear in mind that because no steam escapes flavour is intensified, so use less than you would normally.

Lock, and leave 12 minutes under pressure. Let it come down naturally and put it in a basin to chill. Just made it looks a bit soupy, but after a few hours it´s the creamiest, most delicious pudding, and the rice mantains its bite. Wonderful.

This image is one I´ve used before, in the days before I met my rice cooker and fell in love with it, but that was a long long time ago, and it´s a pretty drawing, no?