I never grew up thinking of risotto as risotto but ‘riso’ – this was just always how we had rice. So I’ve never been intimidated by it. This may be why I approached making it in the pressure cooker with the gung-ho attitude I did (it ends well, so don’t worry, no gore or heads blow off).

This is what happened. The children were playing with Lego, it was one of those days where all was right with the world. The sun was shining, the chickens were out pecking the grass, I had mascara on and it was a week day. I had, in the back of my mind, an inkling I had read you could make risotto in the pressure cooker – you can of course.

The pressure cooker was out because I had just made industrial quantities of chicken broth. And that broth tasted really good. I’m always a bit surprised when MY chicken broth comes out tasting anywhere near as good as my mum’s. Anyway. I had loads of broth, it was so tasty. We were going to have warmed up (home made, sourdough, wood-oven cooked – because what do you think I am?) pizza with salad.

But I couldn’t be bothered. I had a bit of a tummy ache and the thought of filling it with pizza, albeit as good as you can get pizza, didn’t really appeal. Plus, have I mentioned, the broth was SO good. So I got some short grain rice (judge me but honestly it’s so similar to risotto rice, which I also had but didn’t use), some onion, some oil, some of my amazing broth and I set to.

This is what I did:

I put the pressure cooker onto saute (mine has that function if not you’ll have to do this bit on the stove), and added some extra virgin really good olive oil. Forget this shit that you need to use crap olive oil to cook, you don’t. You can use really good stuff and it does make a difference to the taste of food (I do use not so good olive oil for some things but not when there are so few ingredients and each needs to step up and hold its own).

I gently softened a chopped onion and some bacon I found in the fridge (three rashers of smokey). Then I added 200g of short grain rice, stirred it around, put in 500ml of stock and put the pressure cooker on 40 wotsit pressure for seven minutes.

Seven minutes.

I did of course expect to open the lid and the rice explode like a million fire crackers or it be over cooked or undercooked, but it lay there, glistening, perfect and, despite what the Daily Mail will have you believe, nothing bad happened.

Sure it has to get up to pressure, but it doesn’t take long to get up to 40. After 7 mins you release the steam fast, add 100 ml of stock, some peas what I had had in boiling water for the last 7 mins (as in just chucked frozen peas in a jug and poured boiling water over them) and some parmesan.

It was so good I wanted to open the door and scream. It served three of us but you could easily double this.

More officially:

Some good olive oil, about a tablespoon

An onion, chopped

Bacon, snipped into pieces

200g risotto or short grain rice

600g home made stock – divided up into 500/100ml

An amount of peas to please you all

Parmesan to stir into once cooked.

Of course you could adapt this but this is the basics of what I used. 200g rice to 600g stock.