Cooking under pressure

Tonight I cooked another artichoke (yes, they were on sale at Costco). But instead of waiting the excruciating 45 minutes or so, I decided to pop it in the ol' pressure cooker, just like my mom used to do.


I borrowed the behemoth from work for this special task; and being unfamiliar with how this contraption worked, I needed to first do a little sleuthing online for instructions. Trim it up, add water, pop it in, lock the lid, turn up the heat.  Check and check. Easy peasy.


Soon it was rattling away and the haunting memories of my youth came hissing back. My mom only used this contraption occasionally and I learned to respect and fear it at the same time.  Anything that can turn bone into soft tissue in under an hour should be respected.  Hissing and rattling, we watched in awe expecting the giant silver time-bomb to explode at any second sending shards of molten metal and beef ribs into our tender little bodies.  


My mother's "STAY BACK!!" never went unheeded and served to bolster the terrifying effect of the steam engine pumping away on the stove. In fact, I stayed so far back that I continued to stay out of the kitchen for the next 20 years of my life.  I didn't really need to go in there to learn anything anyway. I had three older sisters who were perfectly happy to learn all of the diabolical and life-threatening secrets of preparing a home-cooked meal.


So, tonight everything was coming along just fine.  My son called me up to chat just when the timer went off.  I approached the pot with caution to turn the burner off, but I was perplexed about whether I should somehow lift it off of the hot stove to stop the rattling.  Instead, balancing the phone in the crook of my shoulder and a pot-holder in each hand, I managed to knock the pressure gauge thingy part way off of the steam nozzle. Steam started shooting sideways from the lid top (luckily not in my direction), and the noise was unbelievable.


"What in the world are you doing?" he shouts into the phone. "What is that awful racket?!"


"Oh, I'm just cooking in a pressure cooker," I respond more calmly than I felt.


"I didn't know you could cook tin foil and pennies in a pressure cooker," he yells over the hissing, clanging and sputtering. Frying turkey patties added to the harsh and chaotic symphony.


All ended well and the 'choke turned out perfectly. No one was injured in the preparation of this meal. The pressure cooker is going back to work tomorrow.