Curried Sweet Potato Soup with Coconut Milk (Pressure Cooker)
I made this last week and everybody in the family really liked it; that's pretty unusual. It's almost straight out Pressure Perfect by Lorna Sass (where she calls it Curried Coconut Soup with Sweet Potatoes and Chickpeas). My only changes were to reduce the vegetable broth (and slightly reduce the starting amount of curry powder, lest I get too spicy in the reduced soup volume) and increase the peas.
2 cu veg broth
1, 13.5 oz can coconut milk
1 1/2 T curry powder, or more
1 1/2 lb sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces (or a bit smaller)
15-oz can chickpeas (or 1 1/2 cu cooked chickpeas)
2 scallions, sliced thin, white and green separate
1 cup frozen peas
2-3 T chopped cilantro
fresh-squeezed lime juice -- I used two smallish limes
Combine broth, coconut milk and curry powder in pressure cooker and stir together. Taste, and add more curry powder if it doesn't taste curried yet. Add sweet potatoes, chickpeas, and whites of scallions. Seal and bring to full pressure. Cook at high pressure for 4 minutes, then quick-release pressure. Stir the soup a bit to get the now-soft sweet potatoes to melt into the creamy, curried broth. Some remaining lumps give it a nice variation in flavor and texture, but you want them mostly dissolved. She says you may need to help this along with an immersion blender, but just stirring was all it took for me. Rinse any ice crystals off of peas, then stir in peas, cilantro, and green part of scallions. Cook briefly to heat the peas through. Add enough lime juice to give it a ncie tang, and serve.
You could presumably do this without a pressure cooker as well. You'd have to allow a good amount of time to get the sweet potatoes that soft, unless you gave them an initial hit in the microwave or something. I don't know whether coconut milk takes well to long cooking or not. If you try it, report back -- I imagine others may be curious. (When I post a pressure cooker recipe, I usually get someone asking whether it can be done without a P.C.)