Pressure cooker sweet and sour chicken

So I have finally got my act together and started my one recipe a week. My first recipe is from my pressure cooker cookbook. Am a little obsessed with the pressure cooker at the moment. Dinner in 8 minutes? Yes please! So the book is;
Title: Everyday pressure cooker recipes.
Author: None
Publisher: Hinkler Books
ISBN: 978 1 7418 5609 5

Recipe
20ml vegetable oil
1 .5 kg chicken, cut up
1/2 C celery, sliced
1 green or red capsicum cut in chunks
600g can pineapple chunks drained and juice reserved
250ml reserved pineapple juice (add water if necessary)
1/4 C brown sugar
125ml vinegar
40ml soy sauce
20ml tomato sauce
1/2t Worcestershire sauce
1/4t ground ginger
2T cornflour
40ml water

Heat the oil in pressure cooker.  Brown chicken a few pieces at at time: set aside.
Return all chicken to cooker, and add celery and capsicum. Combine pineapple juice, brown sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce and ginger; pour over chicken.

Lock the lid in place. Over high heat bring to high pressure. Adjust heat to maintain high pressure and cook for 8 minutes. Let the pressure drop using the quick release method. Remove the lid tilting it away from you to allow any excess steam to escape.

Transfer the chicken and vegetables to a warm platter. Mix cornflour with cold water; blend in hot liquid.  Cook and stir until mixture boils and thickens. Pour sauce over chicken. Serve with steamed rice.
Serves 6-8

My review.

The recipe is very easy to follow and produces fairly consistent results.  There are some things that I will add to make it easier for you.
20ml is not enough oil to brown all that chicken, have some more at hand to add as you go.
Cut your chicken in fairly large pieces. I only use breast as I do not like the taste of thigh and breast does get dry in the pressure cooker fairly easily. So whilst they do not specify how to cut your chicken in the recipe, I would cut in about 1.5-2 inch pieces.  Any smaller and it will be too dry.  The chicken will still cook through in that amount of time so there is no worries about that.
I sliced the capsicum even though the recipe specified chunks and that did not work as well.  The pressure cooker is not gentle enough cooking for sliced capsicum so I would go for the chunks. Mine kind of melted!
Don't expect the lurid pink sweet and sour chicken you get from the local takeaway.  The photo does make it look slightly red/brown but in reality the colour is brown. Still tastes good but this is not the lurid pink sweet n sour we are used to.
I used a 400g can of pineapple as we do not sell 600g cans in Australia (that I could find anyway) only 400 and 800. That was a mistake. I had to add water to the juice to make up the 250ml and even though the recipe says you can, it takes away from the flavour so I would go the larger can, I don't think it would hurt to have extra pineapple pieces and you get enough juice for 250ml.
When you have cooked the chicken the recipe states to "transfer chicken and vegetables to a warm platter" Really? No, just put it in a bowl, you are not boiling the sauce for long enough for the chicken to go cold and warming a platter is a pain in the butt you don't need when cooking.
I had to add an extra glug of vinegar when I was thickening the sauce as well as there was really no sour.  I would start off with 150ml rather than 125ml and then add more or not to suit your palate but 125ml is not enough.  There is no sour at all really, so add a little more...
You may also need more cornflour. I did not find that 2T was enough to make a nice thick glaze with the sauce so I went some extra and it thickened up nicely.
The recipe does state this feeds 4-6. More like 6-8, there is 1.5kg of chicken here and it makes a fairly large amount so halve it if you don't have that many people coming over... I will probably freeze the rest as I have HEAPS left over.  I have no idea how this will go in the freezer but I will give it a go.  You may also want to do a side dish of steamed bok choy as well.  There is no greens here (well celery, but really) so if you want a more balanced meal I would add some greens.
So, it is a tasty dish, very simple to make, you could even get the kiddies started with this one.  And I am sure you could convert it to stovetop rather than pressure cooker as well... Just don't ask me how, I will leave that up to you to figure out!
Happy Cooking :)