Originally Posted by
HIDDY
Interesting idea.....
Why would you want to make it in a pressure cooker?
For at least the stew portion of the dish, a pressure cooker does wonders. First, you can cook it faster, using less energy. Second, a pressure cooker will tenderize meat like nothing else does, and I've also found its excellent for rendering fat out of the meat, which can either be removed, or used to flavor the rest of the dish. Moreover, its excellent at gellatinizing connective tissues, which means increased flavor. The pressure cooker can coax flavors out of dishes I can never get through conventional means.
.... can I also bounce another idea of FT'ers?
I experiment a lot!
I'm thinking of making my first meat pudding in the following way.
I'm thinking of doing a sort of mild Lamb and Sweet Potato Curry (may substitute carrot to preserve a bit of bite as the sweet potato will mush ....) with some coconut milk and sugar - and then put that cooked mix fairly dry into a suet pastry that I made in the normal way but also have mixed some slowly braised and caramelised red onion in with. So a sort of mild lamb curry in a caramelised red onion suet pudding crust.
I don't know whether anyone else can picture and taste this but the idea seems to work in my head. Any views appreciated.
I missed this part earlier, so let me just add, both carrot and sweet potato can turn quite soft if its cooked long enough to cook the lamb stew meat. What you may want to do if that's an issue for you is to cook either carrots or sweet potato (or both) separately, by themselves, and add 1 tablespoon of white vinegar to the cooking water for the carrots/sweet potatoes. Vinegar will help strengthen the pectin bonds in the carrots/sweet potatoes, helping them retain their shape and stiffness, and you won't taste it in the final product.