Hi I'm Alison Taafe, the Sassy Chef.
And today I'm going to show you how to use the slow cooker and also the pressure cooker
to cook some really lovely wintery goulash stews, ragout, all sorts of beautiful things
that speak winter and goodness to me.
I'm going to show you a beautiful massaman curry -- a nice Northern Thai curry that's
got potatoes in it and coconut cream, coconut milk, absolutely fantastic.
I'm going to use my pressure cooker for that one and I'm going to cook it in 12 minutes.
Plus I'm going to do a lovely ragout of beef, a bit like a spaghetti bolognaise but I'm
going to use chuck steak, pieces of chuck steak or blade steak.
Some of the old fashioned cuts of meat are actually better for this style of cookery
and they're also really full of nutrients and flavour so by slow cooking them or pressure
cooking them, we get them to be nice and tender and they give out all their flavour in the
juice and so the stew is so good for us and it's so flavoursome.
So it's a really good way and an economical way of getting good quality dishes to your
students in your tuckshop.
So without any further adieu I'm just going to start off my pressure cooker.
The new pressure cookers these days, if you're lucky enough to have one like I am, have a
browning setting on them.
So I was always taught to brown the meat first, in other words fry the meat a little bit first
to get some flavour and to caramelise some of those juices in the meat.
Just a little dash of vegetable oil, not too much.
And of course you could use your cooking spray there if you wanted to.
I've got some beautiful diced chuck or blade.
You can even use topside and at a push you can use rump steak.
Rump is a little bit more expensive then you need to go but it is a nice tender piece of
meat.
So a nice lean piece of meat, probably cut into about one to two centimetre dice.
You can get your butcher to do that if you like.
Okay so pop that into the pressure cooker.
And you know what, I could be doing this in a slow cooker now, it's exactly the same process.
So depending on what you have at your fingertips, I'm going to have a pressure cooker cooked
beautiful dish in 12 minutes flat in here.
But if I wanted to use my slow cooker, which I'm going to do for the ragout a little bit
later on in the segment, it's going to take me five to six hours.
So you can see why if you're a little bit time poor then this is a great way to go.
The only advantage of the slow cooker is that you can just leave it and go off and do something
a little less boring instead so you can have a whole day off and just wait for that just
to plop away nicely in the pressure cooker.
And if all else fails you can even put it in the oven like my Nan used to do -- put
a lid on or a bit of foil over the top of a casserole dish, put it in the oven about
180◦ Celsius and let it plop away, braise away beautifully for about two to three hours.
You know it's cooked when the meat can just break apart in your fingers so it's fantastic.
So I'm on my browning setting here.
Just while I'm doing that I'm going to get some rice cooked.
I'm going to use some jasmine rice.
Now normally you would probably give this a wash over and over again in cold water to
make sure that all the starch runs off.
And also by soaking it you are almost rehydrating it a little bit before you start to cook.
So this has already been washed.
It's going to go in my rice cooker.
And I'm assuming a lot of you have access to a rice cooker.
If not, it's a really good cheap thing to buy and it makes perfect rice every time.
But if you're like me, you can do it the old fashioned way in a saucepan, two parts water,
one part rice, put the lid on and let it steam away for about 10 minutes.
Perfect.
So easy.
I'm just going to put some water in here.
Just barely cover the rice with water, shut the lid, turn him on, and in about 10 minutes
I'm going to have perfect fluffy jasmine rice.
Alright so I'm just giving this a really nice stir up here.
So while that meat is stirring away, sealing away, I'm going to talk to you about the paste
that I'm using here.
I'm using a massaman curry paste.
Most supermarkets stock a variety of massaman paste, whether it's a jar, whether it's a
can, whether it's a packet.
You can get a really good quality massaman paste now.
Massaman paste is a combination of all sorts of lovely things including chillies and lemongrass
and turmeric and ginger and garlic.
You don't need to put anything else in this curry once that goes in.
Generally speaking, we put one spoon in per person.
So if you're going to make that for two, two spoons, for four, four spoons, it's easy.
I'm going to sweat the meat and the curry paste first so that I can get a little bit
of extra flavour out of that lovely paste.
So by sweating it off, not too hot, just gentle, get extra flavour happening.
Went up to my tree this morning, picked some kaffir lime leaves.
Now if you are in an area where you can't get fresh kaffir lime leaves, do not fear,
you can buy frozen ones and you can buy dried ones, whatever you can get your hands on.
I'm happy for you to use any type.
Give them a bit of a squeeze up to get some of that natural flavour out of those leaves.
Just by bruising them, oh you can smell it in your hands, just a fabulous, fabulous taste.
And you can't really replace the taste of kaffir lime in this one.
It's kind of like a bay leaf would be to French cuisine, a kaffir lime is to Thai food.
So once that's in there, it's frying off beautifully.
We're going to switch over in a minute to actually a high pressure steam and as I said
in 12 minutes we're going to have this fabulous curry.
The only problem with a pressure cooker is that it does get a little bit moist because
there's a lot of condensation underneath the lid.
If you find that your curry is a little bit wet, you can just thicken it up with a little
bit of cornflower at the end because people do like to eat a nice robust thick curry.
It's the only thing I'll explain to you about that.
Okay I'm going to take some light coconut milk -- remember we're trying to lower the
fat that we put into our food for our tuckshops.
We're going to put some light coconut on the meat -- as you can see the meat has started
to seal.
So in other words it's changed from being bright red to almost like a brown colour.
So in other words we've sealed the edges.
This helps to increase flavour but also it helps to keep the shape of the meat, which
is what you want.
Okay light coconut milk going in here.
Fabulous, give it a good stir around.
So now we've got everything in there.
What I'm going to do is just wait for that to come to the boil, just so that I can add
my potatoes and pop the lid on and start pressure cooking that for about 12 minutes like we
said before.
So that's starting to just bubble nicely now.
I've got some big old bits of potato peeled and washed and cut up in quite big pieces,
the reason being is the pressure cooker will only cook at one go.
I can't open the lid and add potatoes later on which I can do in my slow cooker.
So follow the recipe.
Go to Smart Choices website, download the recipe and I've given you alternatives for
using a pressure cooker and a slow cooker.
So washed potatoes, peel, put those into the curry and that will help to thicken that curry.
So that starch in the potato will come out into that lovely curry and that will be all
lovely and thick, hopefully.
If it's not, a bit of cornflower is a good trick at the end.
Okay so that's ready.
So what I need to do now is pop my lid on, making sure I lock it, making sure my pressure
valve is closed.
I'm going to change over my menu to high pressure, I'm going to set 12 minutes, and I'm going
to start.
And that's it for that one.
Okay so here is my fabulous massaman curry.
I can't wait to eat this one myself because it smells beautiful.
The whole kitchen, your whole tuckshop is going to smell great, you're going to love
this one.
I know the kids are going to love it as well.
So I've got this beautiful soft potato, so check it with a knife.
You know what, when the potato is cooked, it pretty much is going to happen quite quickly
but I would check the meat because if the meat is cooked, so is the potato.
So take a little piece of meat and just break it with your fingers, have a taste you know,
you're the best judge whether the meat is cooked alright.
Now I have thickened that a little bit with a tiny bit of cornflower.
So don't forget the Smart Choices website has the recipe, it does say add a little bit
of diluted cornflower at the end if you think it's a little bit runny, it's up to you.
Okay now I'm going to add some lime -- I'm just going to bust the cells of the lime so
I get maximum juice out of it.
You know you've done a good job when you can smell the lime on your hands because the oils
are coming out so it's beautiful.
We're going to give a really beautiful squeeze of lime -- look at all that juice coming out
of that one lime, it's incredible.
Good season for limes at the moment I'm told.
Alright so that's going in there.
We're going to counterbalance with a little bit of sugar, white sugar or palm sugar, small
amount, just to take away that sourness of the lime so just one teaspoon in about four
portions so it's not much you know.
We're also going to add a little bit of salt in the form of fish sauce or low sodium soy,
but just a splash, not too much.
And don't forget these been no salt going in there at all, we've just got the flavour
from the meat and also from the paste.
So what we're going to do is just take a little spoon and just check.
Fabulous.
Okay I'm going to serve this one up, I'm going to use a little noodle box.
We've got these little cool noodle boxes with paper handles.
This way you can put them into your hot box and the metal handles don't get hot so up
here for thinking this one, it's a great one.
I'm going to pop a little bit of rice from my lovely rice cooker here and the rice is
beautiful and very fluffy and light.
Cooked perfectly.
I'm going to put a little bit of rice in there and we're going to top that with some lovely
warm curry.
And like I said, you can pop those into your hot boxes and they can be ready to go and
the handles are going to stay cool so that's a pretty smart invention.
Okay so pop that on top, so the potatoes and the meat, beautiful, nice and tender, lovely
rich thick curry.
Nice for winter time, nice any time really.
Pop that there and there you have your beautiful winter warmer, your massaman beef curry.
It tastes delicious, it looks great, it smells incredible.
So good luck with that one.