Me *heart* my pressure cooker!

Coming from Singapore, I have lived 90% of my life without cooking in my kitchen.  Who needs to cook when you have 24hr foodcourts, great coffeeshops and affordable hawker food surrounding you?  Now, I can't live without an oven, and Emmanuel has introduced me my newest obsession - the pressure cooker.

First, we bought the pressure cooker so he can cook potatoes and artichokes fast.  Other than that, it stays in storage pretty often.  Frankly, I was a little in awe of it...all that steam whistling so fiercely outta that little outlet - I didn't really wanna mess with it and stuck to my trusty pots and wok.  And THEN, I saw chef Michael Smith using it to braise tough cuts of beef to fork tender in under 20mins and I got curious.  Of course I tried it the very next day, and ever since, this pressure cooker baby is my latest love.  Now, I wanna cook everything in it!

Braised Ginger Orange Beef

His recipe said to simmer the meat in pot for 1hr but you can throw everything into the pressure cooker and you will have a very satisfying meal in 20mins!  For some reason, the orange juice, marmalade and the 5-spice powder blended so well into each other and rounded up the flavours wonderfully into a very aromatic sauce.  Instead of serving over rice, I would put some thin rice noodles in the bowl with lots of bean sprouts, or maybe baby bak choy the next time!  The sauce need not be thick and makes a delicious soup base, down to the very last slurp!

In fact, I ate so much of this dish last night I had to suffer for it after...gluttony as punishment - what can I say?  ;)  At my 36weeks' of pregnancy, I had suddenly developed a ferocious appetite and been gaining weight at an astounding rate faster than an Olympic sprinter can compete with. Sometimes, I forget that my stomach really has not much space to expand into and  still...I stuff myself silly with food!

Oh well, la vie de la maman gourmande...