Editor Reviews:

Product Description:

Remember how wonderful home cooking tasted when you were a kid? Remember the comforting aromas that filled your house, the delicious soups and stews that warmed your childhood winters?

They can all be yours again. From the elegant to the ethnic to the traditional, this collection of recipes --developed for a whole new generation of pressure cookers and mindful of the healthier way we eat today -- is comfort food at its fastest and best.

Today's totally safe pressure cookers -- sleeker, speedier, more user-friendly than the microwave oven -- turn out foods in one-third the time of conventional methods without sacrificing moisture, flavor, or aroma. Even inexpensive cuts of meat become tender and succulent; soups, stews, and sauces taste as if they've been simmering for hours; pot roast melts in the mouth; rice, beans, and grains, which used to take hours, are ready in minutes.

Lorna Sass introduces us to an eclectic array of dishes that can be prepared on a whim: Imagine a classic ossobuco in only 18 minutes, chicken gumbo in an astounding 9, superb risotto in just 6 minutes without stirring -- even chocolate cheesecake and Grand Marnier bread pudding are done to perfection in record time.

These are dishes that are right in tune with the eat-healthy eat-right life-style of the 1990s: The shorter cooking times allow foods to retain their nutritional content, and the pressure cooker is ideal for preparing grains and beans, so low in cholesterol and high in fiber. Also included in the book are charts and tables that take the guesswork out of cooking foods under pressure.

Treat yourself to this wonderful world of satisfying flavors: Take the pressure out of cooking and put the taste and nutrition back in.

Rating : - my first cooker experiences
All those years ago, a co-worker of mine was raving about the fantastic rice pudding he had made the night before. Now, if there's one thing I like eating, it's rice, and rice pudding that much more. I felt a bit jealous because I hadn't made any in so long -- cleanup and length of cooking time kept me from some of my favourite recipes. We talked some more, and he told me about all of the great recipes in the book. The next day, he brought me the rice pudding recipe he had spoken of. I had done a bit of research on cookers, and found a Lagostina cooker at a very reasonable price, and was ready to go. Talk about delighted. So easy, so fast, and since the cooker retains moisture so well, cleanup was simple. I bought this book and dove into the realm of the pressure cooker.

Lorna Sass has no boundaries for what she'll try pressure cooking. Her braveness is worth every cent her cookbooks cost - she tests everything, makes sure it works, gives advice, gives tons of suggestions and alternate versions of the recipes, charts for how long it takes to cook beans and other things. I've become a pressure cooker fiend, and recommend it to all my friends. Cookers are not the scary things we thought they were when we were kids - I encourage anyone to take the plunge. You'll be happy you did.