Laura Pazzaglia - The Everything Healthy Pressure Cooker Cookbook: Includes Eggplant Caponata, Butternut Squash and Ginger Soup, Italian Herb and Lemon Chicken, Tomato Risotto, Fresh Figs Poached in Wine...and

THE

HEALTHY PRESSURE COOKER
COOKBOOK

Dear Reader,

When it came time to write this book, I knew that I wanted to include recipes that could not only be cooked in any kind of pressure cooker, but also did not require processed ingredients like canned beans, packaged soups, bullion cubes, and flavor packets. This, after all, is how I cook for my family anyway, so it was a pleasure to share my secrets with you.

You can thank my second child, who cried for almost the entire first two years of her lifeexcept for two 20 minute naps every 24 hoursfor giving me the perfect reason to start using a pressure cooker: I needed to cook more nutritious meals in less time (or for however long I could hold a writhing, screaming child in one arm while cooking dinner with the other!).

When I was invited to a friends house for dinner, I watched her prepare a complete, delicious meal with her pressure cooker in about 15 minutes. I knew at that moment that I had to have this wondrous, amazing, noisy thing that could feed an entire family in no time! After she patiently showed me how to use it, I could not tear myself away from the pressure cooker and started to pressure cook everything in sight.

I hope that once you discover the time, flavor, energy, and vitamin-saving wonders of pressure cooking, you will do the same! I especially hope youll find this cookbook to be helpful as you explore the world of healthier eating with pressure cooking.

For more recipes, tips, and pressure cooker reviews, please visit my website: www.hippressurecooking.com.

Laura D. A. Pazzaglia

Welcome to the

Series!

These handy, accessible books give you all you need to tackle a difficult project, gain a new hobby, comprehend a fascinating topic, prepare for an exam, or even brush up on something you learned back in school but have since forgotten.

You can choose to read an Everything book from cover to cover or just pick out the information you want from our four useful boxes: e-questions, e-facts, e-alerts, and e-ssentials. We give you everything you need to know on the subject, but throw in a lot of fun stuff along the way, too.

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PUBLISHER Karen Cooper

MANAGING EDITOR, EVERYTHING SERIES Lisa Laing

COPY CHIEF Casey Ebert

ASSISTANT PRODUCTION EDITOR Melanie Cordova

ACQUISITIONS EDITOR Lisa Laing

DEVELOPMENT EDITOR Eileen Mullan

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Matthew Kane

EVERYTHING SERIES COVER DESIGNER Erin Alexander

LAYOUT DESIGNERS Erin Dawson, Michelle Roy Kelly, Elisabeth Lariviere

Visit the entire Everything series at www.everything.com

THE

HEALTHY
PRESSURE COOKER
COOKBOOK

Avon, Massachusetts

To my brave husband, Roberto, who begrudgingly eats my pressure cooker experiments and enthusiastically praises the successes.

THE FIRST PRESSURE COOKER was invented by the French physicist and mathematician Denis Papin in 1689. While the popularity of using the pressure cooker to prepare meals has waxed and waned over the years since, it has most recently become an essential tool for busy moms, environmentally conscious cooks, and even molecular gastronomists.

The pressure cooker has come a long way since Papins initial invention, which was nicknamed the bone digester because of its ability to soften bones and extract nutrients; the high-pressure environment renders them brittle enough to be easily ground into bone meal. But it is important to note that the transformation from Papins bone digester to the pressure cooker we know today really began in 1920. It was at this time that a large, industrial model was first produced and sold in France.

A short time later, at the 1926 Home Exhibition in Paris, the first pressure cooker model for home use was introduced, and thirteen years after that, in 1939, the National Pressure Cooker Company, now known as National Presto Industries, Inc., launched the first U.S. model at the New York Fair.

It didnt take long for aluminum pressure cookers to become a popular cooking tool in the United States, and for many companies to begin producing them regularly. By the start of World War II, pressure cookers were well used and loved in American homes, especially for pressure canning, but also directly for cooking. Then the war effort halted the production of pressure cookers. According to the Oregon State Archives, in 1943, the State Nutrition Committee, which was formed by The Oregon State Defense Council in 1941, released a bulletin that encouraged homemakers to start forming canning circles to better utilize resources. It even suggested that six or more families share each cooker and the preparation of the fruits and vegetables for canning and cooking.

In 1943, the National Pressure Cooker Company published this statement in Life magazine:

The manufacturing facilities of the makers of Presto Cookers are now devoted to war production. Once victory is wonthere will be Presto Cookers for everybody. Until then, if you own one, share it, wont you? Its a good neighbor policy.

The National Pressure Cooker Company kept its promise. By the end of the war, it was back to making pressure cookers, and many other factories that had originally produced weapons tried their hand at making pressure cookers as well. However, many of these factories produced poor-quality cookers. The market was flooded with subpar pressure cookers lacking basic safety controls (which is why you should never buy or put a vintage cooker into use, unless it has the required safety controls).