Pressure Cooker Black-Eyed Stew

For you new readers (hey guys!) and anyone unfamiliar with the term "fazool," I wanted to explain the derivation.  The traditional Italian dish of pasta with beans, "pasta e fagioli," is otherwise known as "pasta fazool." So, my blog is "vegan fazool," to celebrate my foremothers and to carry on the Italian tradition of lovingly cooking plant-based foods (beans especially!) in novel and delicious ways.

I have bags and bags of dried beans in my pantry, and although I love to eat freshly made beans, I am tired of all the soaking and boiling, boiling, boiling.  So, I finally decided that in order to make efficient use of those beans, I had to do something different.

Enter, pressure cooker!

Here is my brand-new, lovingly washed and dried,  Six Quart Presto Pressure Cooker!

Even though for everything but lentils and black-eyed peas, you still have to soak them, you can cook them super fast in a pressure cooker.

I decided to try black-eyed peas today since they didn't have to be soaked.  I used the classic French mirepoix as a stew base and went from there.

Fazool Stew (Pressure Cooker Black-Eyed Stew):

1 cup dried black-eyed peas (you don't have to soak them!)
3 cups liquid (whatever you like: water, veggie stock, water and wine, you can also use bouillon dissolved in warm water first if you want to do it that way, I recommend Rapunzel veggie bouillon it's excellent).
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
½ a small onion, chopped
1 bay leaf
½ tsp dried thyme
½ tsp fresh or dried rosemary

Put everything in the pressure cooker.  Bring to pressure and cook for four minutes.  Remove from heat.  Let pot come back down to pressure on it’s own (about 15 minutes).  Add salt to taste at the end (if you add it during it may make the beans tough).  That’s it. I love my new pressure cooker!

Here are the pics:

 The dancing carrot.

 Everything is in the cooker and ready to go!

 Bringing it to pressure took about nine minutes.

 Action shot! The pressure cap "rocking" back and forth, a little steam escaping. Allow four minutes of gentle "rocking" (I turned the heat down to about medium to get it to rock gently) then turn it off.

 After about 15 minutes of letting the pot depressurize on its own, the stew is done!

 Wha La!

My son ate two bowls of it and so did I.

Until tomorrow, MoFoers!