I had two recollections of pressure cookers.  One, as a child, that there was a large bomb-burst hole in the polystyrene tile above my friends mothers cooker caused when the pressure cooker blew it’s top.  I thought my mother entirely sensible not to have one.  Two, in more recent years when we were taking a group on trek in Nepal, our coach being stopped by the police and searched.  They removed the pressure cookers in case we made bombs out of them.  A bridge had been blown up by the Maoists using explosives packed into a pressure cooker therefore all pressure cookers were viewed as a threat. 

I had no aspirations to own or use one until we started sailing and found gas consumption to be a bit of an issue.  Tashi Delek is fitted for a particular size of cylinder which, no surprises, is mainly found in France.  The Turkish ones are too big and so the European boats have to use very small ones that are not available everywhere.  Finding the next gas bottle can therefore be a bit of a challenge so we are quite careful about how much we use.  Cruising sailors have solved this by using pressure cookers so we decided to give it a go last year.  It took a bit of getting used to but nothing too difficult and with the help of an excellent recipe book that Sue gave us we have really enjoyed experimenting.  We have mastered not only stews, curries, bolognaise etc but cooking a whole chicken complete with potatoes and veg,  cheesecake and sponge cake.  This came as a complete surprise.

Thought I’d have a go at making some cream cheese while we were at it.  A Nepali friend had once told me how to do it so, first stitch together some spare mosquito netting to line a sieve.

Boil some milk, add lemon juice until it curdles then drain through the net.........

Use it to make a cheesecake, cover with tin foil and put it into the pressure cooker propped up on something to keep it out of the water.  Blast for fifteen minutes or so and unwrap......

And while I’m showing off, here’s a sponge cake!