Finally another Air Fryer recipe Maria I hear you say. Well, yes and not just that! It’s a really good one: Air Fryer Roasted Vegetables with Leftover Chicken.
Even better, it makes the most of your leftover chicken.
Be it from cooking Zero Minute Chicken or Lemony Chicken in your Instant Pot or Maple-Glazed Chicken that you have roasted it in the oven.
I love pushing the limits of the Instant Pot and I love Instant Pot chicken recipes. This Instant Pot Chicken with Paprika and Butternut Squash recipe starts with a well looked after Instant Pot by following every step in the Give your Instant Pot some love section of the Instant Pot UK Beginners’ Guide.
This Instant Pot Creamy Chicken and Pancetta Rigatoni Pasta
I often pressure cook some fish in the Instant Pot just to have in the fridge for salads. I’ve been meaning to post this for ages so here it is finally: How to cook FISH in the Instant Pot – Salmon, white fish, any fish.
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The doors to Feisty Warriors are currently closed but will of course open again. Make sure you join my FREE Feisty Tapas’ Health Warriors Facebook group in the meantime here.
We don’t lack information these days.
There are a million and one ways to transform your life.
What we all lack is the SPACE for that transformation to happen.
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| Extended! Click here to go straight to the Instant Pot website, enter ft20151 at checkout (opens in a new window |
This offer has now expired, sorry you missed out but you can always get in touch to see if I know of any other offers!
Come join my Pressure Cooking UK with Feisty Tapas group here for lots of inspiration regardless of the type of pressure cooker you have.
Pressure cookers are back and they’re big! I clearly remember my mother using one throughout the eighties. The old-style stainless steel whistling version but now there is a new generation of pressure cookers, the electric generation, like the Instant Pot.
It’s an electric (or programmable) pressure cooker so it’s not a conventional pressure cooker as it has been understood for years. In fact, I didn’t even know people still used them until recently!
The Instant Pot also has the advantage of having many other functions: slow cooking, sautéeing, yogurt, porridge, steam, keeping food warm… and 6 litres capacity.
So, what is the difference between a conventional pressure cooker and an electric one like the Instant Pot?
Think of the difference as that between a stove-top kettle and an electric kettle. They both boil water but they use different sources of energy. The stove-top kettle whistles when the water has boiled. The electric one just switches off.
Well,
this is very similar. The Instant Pot doesn’t whistle during use and the steam
doesn’t release until after. In fact, it has two ways of releasing that steam:
the natural way (time) or the express way (turning a little nozzle
carefully to quickly release the steam).
Safety
Who doesn’t remember hearing horror stories about stove-top pressure cookers in the eighties? The Instant Pot feels very safe, it has a large amount of safety features that have made a scaredy cat
like me feel very safe when using it (this is a big one for me). There are only a couple of rules to remember from what I’ve seen so far and they are soon built into you when using it. More advice on getting started soon.
Discount
So, how did I come across the best Instant Pot discount ever in the UK? Well, that is down to my Facebook comunity. A few months ago the name Instant Pot started crawling into my rather gadget oriented group. First one owner had one, then another, then another and they were all raving about it.
After a while of reading about it, how it was being used and the interest that other group members were showing, I approached the Instant Pot company in the UK to see if they would be amenable to a little exclusive discount for my group (the fact that it’s nearing 1,300 UK-based members had to count for something, right?). The company (very proactive) not only took me up on my suggestion but offered me the biggest discount going in the UK and an Instant Pot for me to try.
The Instant Pot came while I was in Edinburgh for the Quirky Cooking UK Tour so it had to stay in its box for days! Once I had tried it and I was happy with the machine, the company gave me the discount code and my group members got ordering.
My Facebook group has had access to this discount for a week and tons of members have taken advantage and already have their brand new gadgets at home. I can now extend it to you too (that is if Instant Pot hasn’t run out of stock thanks to my group members so you may want to hurry up).
By using code ft20151 at the checkout on the Instant Pot website to buy the Instant Pot Duo 7 in 1 Electric Pressure Cooker, you will get £25 off (so £104 instead of £129) + free delivery + a free
sealing ring. Note: There is no need to add the sealing
ring to the basket (the wording of the voucher doesn’t mention it but the code will trigger the warehouse to add
the sealing ring). Valid until June 30th 2015 *Now extended until August 31st 2015* ***EXTENDED AGAIN UNTIL 30TH NOVEMBER 2015***
What have I cooked in it so far?
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| The first thing I cooked: 1 Minute Quinoa |
My very first try with the Instant Pot was the test they recommend doing to get to grips with it, simple and effective, I liked it. My first creation was a version of the 1 Minute Quinoa. Then I made a feisty version of Ensaladilla Rusa, a chicken stew that turned out to be a very nice broth (I am still getting the hang of it) and then my chicken fajitas.
Now, the chicken fajitas have sealed the deal! I have never had a slow cooker and my version of fajitas is pretty easy as it is but with the Instant Pot they were wonderfully easy, no need for the oven to preheat and, because of the slow cooking function, I was able to get them started in the afternoon when T was back from school and leave them slow cooking until husband got home much later.
Hot food, made by yours truly, still warm with no need to reheat? This is a huge winner for someone like me.
Do let me know if you order or if you already have one. We will all learn together.
If you have any questions or particular things you’d like me to cook in the Instant Pot to give you my feedback, just leave me a comment or send me an email to feistytapas@gmail.com and I’ll see what I can do! The Instant Pot people are also very dynamic so make sure you ask them any technical questions you may have.
Disclosure: I was sent a free Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 after my email and before being provided the discount to make sure I really loved it. I did. Absolutely love it. *Edited on 8-7-2015 to add that, with over 100 Instant Pots sold using my offer code, the company has offered me a little commission so I will receive a £5 payment per unit ordered with my discount code so thank you in advance both to you my readers and to Instant Pot UK*
This Instant Pot offer is now closed, make sure you sign up to my newsletter to hear of future offers
Last year my birthday took a whole new meaning for me. This time last year I was about to turn 40, for months I had been dreaming of a big party with a forties theme but then I realised that that wasn’t really what I wanted anymore. What I wanted was to make it a day that put a smile on people’s faces so I came up with the idea of making August 9th a pay it forward day, a day full of random acts of kindness and so I wrote a post, here you have a screenshot:
People across the globe took part, I received messages of amazing RAKs.
This year I would love to do the same, I would love to make it all about paying it forward again. I know the blog has become very food and Thermomix centric, I have had people say that they miss the chatty posts which has made me a little bit sad but it has all been a reflection of my life. A life that has been busier than ever and that has evolved quite a lot in this last year.
If you look back at the posts from the last year, I really haven’t had a chance to post much. Last September my daughter (then 3) started a new routine of childminder in the morning, preschool until mid-afternoon and then the rest of the afternoon with mami (me!), then I tend to continue doing a bit of work in the evening. In January I also started working regularly at a client’s office once a week most weeks. I am still a freelancer who mostly works from home but suddenly I could put a whole day in in an office surrounded by people!
I have found a social life, I have made great friends from that team and that office building, I get to work with actual real-life people. Now, for someone who has been a full-time freelancer since 1999 mainly working from home with sporadic stints at client’s offices when they needed me on-site for certain projects, this is quite a change.
I also created the Thermomix Owners UK group towards the end of last year and I can’t tell you just how much I enjoy spending time there with the members, we are almost 400 members which to me is quite amazing. Now, dear members, I’m calling on you too to help me out with this, perhaps thermomix something to take to a shelter, a home or a friend just because… there are so many ways of putting smiles in people’s faces.
It has become clear that one of the things I love doing in my little free time is cooking (man I never
thought I’d say that, to think I hardly cooked just 4 years ago!) and so life has changed but I have to confess that I love it. I love being able to work in an office with human beings one day a week, I love actually stopping for lunch and I love that the work I do with that client started as translation but is now as Digital Content Editor. I love the digital world, I love social media and I still love translation, of course, and my work as a freelance translator too. Did I mention that I also love writing?
There you go two birds, one blog post: a chatty post with a goal to get you all to do a random act of kindness to put a smile on someone’s face on or around August 9th! What do you say? Are you in?
Lots of love and gratitude to you all for still being there after three years and a half of blogging!
Maria Feisty Tapas Chorizo Polkadot
PS-Big thank you to Lucy from The Smallest Smallholding for photoshopping the badge above, it would have taken me ages to do it.
LittleT has 12 teeth already, or so I think as the action of sticking a finger in her mouth to check these developments is actually rather brave at the moment, the girl has quite a strong jaw. She bites on anything and everything during the day and I have to make sure that we always have Bonjela and teethers in the fridge and we don’t go anywhere without Sophie la Giraffe, poor Sophie though, I haven’t seen her for a few days, no clue where she has ended up, I’m sure I’ll find her wedged under something soon.
Teething nights are rather hard, she wakes up a few times and sometimes only lying on her daddy’s chest soothes her, which is just as well since he is the one who gets up to calm her down. We had to come to this arrangement because, after working, looking after her, preparing bottles, baby food, grown-up food, putting a few washloads in the washing machine, taking them out to dry or putting them in the dryer, folding them and other baby-caring, adult-caring and household-caring duties, by the time I get to bed and close my eyes it’s very difficult to open them until my body and mind have had plenty of rest. I don’t know whether this makes me a bad mummy but it is the only way I can actually be functional the following day.
Teething has been a key word in our household of late, apart from a baby with a growing number of teeth: we have had teething problems trying to get into my new working mummy routine, having a tooth knocked out by a headbutting baby, researching next stage rear-facing car seats which apparently come with teethers and should we buy a second set of teethers…
I guess it all comes with the territory and we have a rather easy-going baby so that makes life easier, it just makes work a bit more difficult for both of us, I try to fit mine around baby and Mr Tapas tries to stay awake after some tough nights.
All in all, it’s difficult to keep on top of the blog that I started with such excitement. I am thinking that I might buy a refill for my old-style diary and create a schedule ahead of each day and try to stick to it so that I have time for everything.
First of all, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is María, I am originally from Spain but have been living in England for quite a while. I am married to an Englishman and have a seven month old baby (well, seven months at the time of writing this). Before being married, and therefore having other people to cook for, I lived on my own and never really felt the need to cook “English” although I do like to look at English cookbooks and English chefs’ websites and sometimes try their recipes.
Here I hope to tell you a little bit about how I get on with cooking Spanish dishes (or Spanish style in many cases) in England, where I find my ingredients, whether what I find is good or bad quality and, when I succeed, I would like to tell you what recipe I used and how to adapt it to the English (super)market. Also, one of the main goals (also known as my ulterior motive) of this is to hopefully get recommendations from other Spaniards based in the UK and people of any nationality who are familiar with what we can find in the UK and what is available in the food markets and supermarkets, i.e. where do they get their Spanish ingredients or their UK substitutes, for instance.
On the other hand, I would like to take advantage of this space to write about what is good about the English gastronomy; good places to visit because of their food, drink and ambiance; good food-related activities and hopefully a long etcetera. In countries such a Spain the British lifestyle and gastronomy are not exactly highly regarded, I think there is a lot to be said for food, drink and lifestyle in this country.
Now, let’s call a spade a spade: I’m not a good cook. At least I don’t think I am, I don’t like to spend lengthy amounts of time in the kitchen (I leave those recipes that seem to take forever to my husband who, when he has time, does have the patience to slave over our stove), my cooking is more day-to-day cooking, quick and easy meals that require more imagination and flare than time. But I must admit that what comes out is often rather tasty, even if I say so.
I do have one big problem, I don’t like to follow recipes to the letter or even step by step, I feel it’s a bit like being told what to do and I don’t like it! So, often I will remove certain ingredients or add others.
There is one other major hurdle: my audience is composed of a diabetic Englishman who isn’t too keen on fish or seafood (which I love) and a seven month old baby.
Right, let the challenge begin!
