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Thanks, Amy!

For years, when I thought of pressure cookers, I thought of food spewed on kitchen walls and ceilings. I thought about people getting burned on the hot steam. My mother was against them, and cooking on the stove, too, for that matter. I was afraid of them.

I wrote about that in a recent column, and when a woman named Amy Hunsinger saw that, she offered to come to my house and teach me. I asked if I could include some friends and she said that would be just fine.

So several weeks ago, in just over an hour, she watched us become pressure cooker believers while making macaroni and cheese with cheddar and gruyere, and red pasta with ground beef.

Since then, I have made baked beans from scratch and French onion soup. I hard-boiled 10 eggs at a time and peeled them in less than a minute. My friend Judy made General Tso’s chicken in her pot. It was beyond yummy.

I am not going to give you an Instant Pot recipe, because I know a lot of people still don’t have them, but think about buying one or asking for one for the holidays, along with a cookbook called The Instant Pot Bible, by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough.

In the meantime, here’s a simple-to-make recipe that requires no lessons at all, which I adapted from a recipe in Stop & Shop’s Savory magazine. As an added holiday bonus, it is healthy, to help balance out all of the calorie-laden goodness typical of the season. And, of course, it’s delicious.

Lee White of Old Lyme has been a food editor and restaurant reviewer for more than 25 years. You can email her at leeawhite@aol.com.

Oven-Poached Salmon with Pistachios and Horseradish

Adapted from Savory by Stop & Shop magazine available free at the supermarket

Yield: Serves 6 to 8*

Cooking spray

1 lemon

1 2 ½- or 3-pound salmon fillet

4 tablespoons olive oil, divided

2 sprigs rosemary

⅓ cup white wine

¼ cup roasted, salted shelled pistachios

1 small green onion, cut up, or three scallions

2 tablespoons honey

1 tablespoons prepared horseradish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a glass pan or gratin pan with cooking spray. Zest the lemon and reserve the zest.

Thinly slice lemon and arrange in a single layer, in baking pan. Place salmon on lemon slices, skin side down. Brush with two tablespoons of oil and season with salt and pepper. Top with rosemary and pour wine into the dish. Cover tightly with foil. Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until desired doneness.

Meanwhile, add pistachios and onion to a food processor and pulse until very finely chopped. Transfer to a medium bowl and stir in honey, horseradish, remaining oil, and 1 tablespoon water and reserved lemon zest.

When salmon is done, spoon pistachios mixture over the salmon and serve.

*If you are serving just four for dinner, consider using the rest, cold, on top of a salad or mix with an egg and some panko to make salmon cakes the next day.