Food for Thought: Indian Instant Pot Cookbook

[6/23. See important UPDATE at the end of this post. Please read before you cook from this book!] Our extended family includes a two-career couple with two small children and, as you might expect, they are very strapped for time. They have enthusiastically embraced the Instant Pot and, on a recent visit, whipped out the Indian Instant Pot Cookbook by Urvashi Pitre and proceeded to make a Butter Chicken as good as any I’ve had. (That link is to the recipe within the New Yorker article which brought the author widespread attention as the “butter chicken lady”.) The chicken was tender, the sauce was as rich as expected, and this labor-intensive dish came together in under an hour, most of that cooking and pressure release time.

Turns out Urvahi Pitre is also the proprietor of the Two Sleevers blog, source of the Easy Bhindi Masala recipe shared a few days ago. I’ve been aware of this blog for some time; the odd name comes from the gastric sleeve weight reduction surgery Pitre and her husband had a few years ago. Originally, their blog chronicled their transition to a healthier lifestyle with an emphasis on low carb eating. There’s a lot of Indian on the website but recipes like Kichadi (rice with lentils) are not going to be found on a low-carb blog.

Recommendation: bookmark the blog, but also buy the book. (It’s currently around $10 on Amazon.) When it arrives, you might start by whipping up the Garam Masala spice mixture on p. 24; you’ll need it for the butter chicken. Then make some Paneer (Indian soft cheese, p. 32) and use it for Palak Paneer (p. 88) which will take you all of 30 minutes in the Instant Pot. Check it out.

6/23 UPDATE. I’ve always believed you need at least a cup of liquid in an Instant Pot recipe to generate sufficient pressure to seal the pot. Urvahi Pitre says this isn’t true and you can cook with much less liquid. Today I tried her Lamb Rogan Josh (p. 118) which contains just 1/4 c of water along with 1/4 c of thick Greek yoghurt. It never developed pressure and I got my first ever BURN notice on the display. Luckily I was able to rescue the lamb (and the now caked-on pot) before the dish was completely ruined, and I will finish it in a few hours on the stovetop. The moral of the story: don’t trust her low-liquid recipes. Find a way to incorporate at least a cup of liquid event if she doesn’t. It’s worth going to the trouble because the recipe (based on tasting the marinade) is delicious.