Pressure cooker 0 Remoska 1

This pressure cooker thing has been bugging me so I thought I'd remake the recipe in a Remoska, a Czech tabletop cooker that also claims to be energy-saving.

I tweaked it slightly, leaving out the mustard and adding a bit of chorizo but the whole thing was much, much tastier than Saturday night's effort. OK it took longer - about 40 minutes - but I didn't have to do anything while it was cooking.

I also rescued the leftovers from the abortive pressure cooked chicken by taking the chicken off the bone, putting it back with the onions and stock, heating it up and stirring in a good dollop of wild garlic pesto I bought at the Love Food Spring Festival at the weekend. This transformed it into a really quite passable chicken and wild garlic soup. I can imagine poaching (note, poaching not pressure cooking!) a whole chicken and serving it with new potatoes and spring veg, the chicken broth and a dollop of wild garlic pesto - like a cross between an aioli and a salsa verde.

Anyway this is my adaptation of Richard's original recipe. For the Remoska or oven, not for the pressure cooker, if you please . . .

Spanish-style chicken
Serves 2
1 tbsp olive oil
75g chorizo, cut into cubes
4 chicken thighs
3 small onions, peeled and quartered
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
75ml dry sherry or white wine)
125ml chicken or vegetable stock
8/9 green olives
Handful of chopped fresh parsley
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the olive oil and fry the chorizo until the fat starts to run. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper, brown on both sides and place in the remoska or a casserole. Quickly fry the onions in the chorizo-y oil then stir in the garlic. Tip in the sherry and bring up to the boil then add the stock and pour over the chicken. Stir in reserved chorizo and the olives. Cook for about 40 minutes in the Remoska or cover with a lid and place in a low oven until the chicken is nicely browned. Stir in the chopped parsley and serve with rice.

Remoska roast veal with rosemary and garlic

Although I can't think, given the current weather, why we ever switched off the AGA, I'm getting increasingly persuaded by the virtues of its temporary replacement, the Remoska - about a tenth the size but similarly versatile.

Tonight I rustled up a Sunday night supper from the freezer, veg rack and storecupboard- a small rolled shoulder of veal joint from the Real Veal Company I brought back from the Bristol Wine and Food Fair a couple of weeks ago and froze with assorted root veg, some home-grown rosemary and almost half a head of fresh elephant garlic that had been sitting round in the veg rack for a while.

I poked the rosemary into the meat then put it in the pan along with a quartered onion, a couple of giant cloves of garlic and a couple of carrots and switched on the cooker. 45 minutes later I turned the meat, added a slosh of white port (could equally well have been white wine) and a handful of new potatoes and carried on cooking it for another half hour. Total cooking time 1 1/4 hours, resting time 15 minutes. And it tasted like the best French country stew you can imagine.

The other day I made a meat loaf in it to this recipe. Scarily large amounts of fat came out of it (and were discarded) but the loaf itself was really delicious - and easily enough to feed six.

Apparently the Remoska uses 80% less electricity than a normal oven which makes it a frugal gadget par excellence. Perfect for the two of us (although you can easily cook meals for four in it) and for caravan or boat owners, I would imagine. (And no, I don't have any kind of commercial relationship with them!)