I had always wanted to learn how to cook with a pressure cooker. The thought of savory soups and stews ready in literally minutes sounded too good to be true. I was hesitant about using one because I envisioned blowing the ceiling off my kitchen or having soup pasted on it--I'm a little clumsy that way. My apprehension diminished when I encountered Lorna Sass's new book, Pressure Perfect.

Not only is the book full of over 200 recipes and variations, it goes into great detail on pressure cooking methods. Lorna Sass describes how a pressure cooker works and includes a buying guide and pressure points, which are cleverly named tips dispersed throughout the book. The book includes a variety of recipes including the obvious soups and broths, as well as risottos and desserts. The meat, poultry and fish chapter goes into great detail including cooking times for a variety of cuts.

Pressure cooking really draws all the flavors out of the ingredients and it was ready in about eight minutes of pressure cooking! All in all I discovered pressure cooking was relatively easy and the results are full flavored.