Category: Recipes

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Sweet Potato Pecan Crumbles

I got this recipe from the Le Creuset “Mini-Cocotte” cookbook, and plan to adapt it to larger sizes for Thanksgiving.  I’m putting it up here to make it easy to find.

Sweet Potato Pecan Crumbles

Ingredients:

  • 2.25 lbs sweet potatoes
  • 1/4 C flour
  • 1/4 C dark brown sugar
  • 1/2 t pumpkin pie spice
  • 1/2 stick sweet butter, well chilled and cut into small cubes
  • 2 oz pecans
  • 1/4 cup maple syrup

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350.

Lightly butter 4 mini cocottes.

In a medium sized mixing bowl, add the sugar and spices to the flour.  With your finger tips, swiftly work the cold butter into the dry ingredients.  It should look like cornmeal.  Careful! Proceed quickly.  If your ingredients become too warm, put the bowl immediately into the refrigerator for 15 minutes until all is very well chilled and begin again.

Peel the sweet potatoes and cut them diagonally into 1/4 inch slices.  Divide these between the 4 mini cocottes.  Sprinkle each with half of the “crumble” mixture.  Layer the rest of the sweet potatoes slices with the remaining “crumble”.  Scatter the pecans and moisten each with the maple syrup.

Cover with a sheet of aluminium and bake alongside your roast for 45 minutes.  Remove the foil after 30 minutes.  Serve piping hot!

This recipe definitely has some promise, but I’m not certain the authors had anyone proofread or attempt to make this after they wrote the recipe.  For example, they tell you to divide all the sweet potatoes into the cocottes, but then they tell you to put in the rest of the sweet potatoes.

I think of most recipes as guidelines anyway, so I’ll be able to work off this to make something very delicious.

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Pico de Gallo

I just harvested a bunch of tomatoes from the garden but we’re about to go out of town for a week, so I made a big bowl of pico de gallo in the hopes of eating the tomatoes before we leave.

Here’s what I used:

  • 10-ish tomatoes, chopped
  • 2-ish cups white onion, chopped
  • 3 jalepenos, diced
  • 1 serrano, diced
  • 1 lime, squeezed
  • 4-ish drizzles olive oil
  • salt, to taste

I chopped the tomatoes first, and tailored the other quantities of ingredients to that.  I then added everything else to taste.   It’s not very spicy, except when I get a piece of jalepeno or serrano.  I didn’t add more pepper, though, as it will get spicier as it sits.

 

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Recent Yummy Things

We’ve made a number of yummy things recently.

We made pretzel dogs following this recipe: http://joythebaker.com/2012/01/mini-pretzel-dogs/

We harvested a couple of buckets of citrus fruit off the tree in our back yard, and squeezed them for juice for mimosas.  We think they’re Satsuma Mandarins, and they made delicious mimosas.

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And we made a batch of bread dough we can keep in the fridge and bake parts of whenever we want.  We’ve had lots of success with this in the past, and so we started it back up again.

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Beef Stew

TriTip

 

Inspired by a delicious beef stew my aunt made for us over Christmas and the tri tip we’ve had in the freezer for a couple of months, we made a beef stew this week.  We prepared everything on Tuesday night, then Matt threw it in the crock pot Wednesday morning.

First, I cut up some onions, carrots, and potatoes and bagged them up for refrigeration.

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Next, I cut up the tri tip, and put it in a big bowl.  I then tossed the meat with half a cup of flour and bagged it too.

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Finally, I prepped a “flavoring” mix.  I chopped up some garlic, and threw that and the following things into a pyrex bowl: ketchup, beef “better than bullion (~1Tbsp), worcestershire, soy sauce, red pepper, chipotle hot sauce, bay leaves, paprika, pepper, and salt.

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The seasoning bowl, the bag of veggies, and the bag of meat all went into the fridge.  On Wednesday morning, Matt threw it all in the crockpot with some water.  When he came home, he also added some “pork chop” seasoning mix, cumin, cayenne, more salt, red pepper, chipotle hot sauce, and worcestershire.

I didn’t take any pictures of the completed product, but it was delicious.  Some of the beef and potatoes fell apart, and helped the flour thicken the mix.  We ate it with some good rosemary olive oil bread.  This was definitely a successful recipe, and we got at least three meals for both of us plus one for just me out of it.

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Delicious, Delicious Pot Pie

So, we make pot pie on a regular basis, but I think this one wins.  Here’s what we did:

First, I harvested some kale, rosemary, and peas from the garden.  I also grabbed some carrots from our farm box, and a potato and an onion we had lying around.

I chopped everything up, boiled the potato, carrot, and peas, and sauteed the kale.  I then chopped up some chicken and sauteed it with the onion and rosemary.

The veggies went into a baking dish.

Then I mixed the chicken in with the veggies.  Next, I made a roux with 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup flour, and then added almond milk until it looked right.  The texture was a little weird — more like a dough than a sauce, but once I mixed it up with the veggies and chicken, it worked out totally fine.  If I had to guess, I’d say I used maybe a cup of almond milk, but I definitely didn’t measure.

I then topped it with a pie crust that Matt made.  I believe the crust had butter, water, flour, and some herbs.

I popped the whole thing in the oven at 400 degrees for ~40 minutes, and it came out golden and delicious.

I will definitely make pot pie this way again.  In the past, we’ve made the crust with shortening, and we haven’t mixed the milk in with the roux.  Using a butter crust and mixing the milk (well, almond milk) into the roux were definitely good choices.

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Kale and Cornbread Dinner

Tonight, we did kind of a Southern dinner and made cornbread and sauteed greens.

For the cornbread, we used a Joy of Cooking recipe.   We substituted almond milk for cow’s milk, because my stomach doesn’t get along with cow’s milk.

For the greens, the basic recipe is below.  I used two kinds of kale from my garden.  I didn’t actually measure the vinegar, I just glugged.  Next time, I’ll definitely use less.

  • 4 strips bacon, cut in half
  • 2 cloves garlic, diced
  • 1 Large bunch greens
  • 1/2 cup chicken stock
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 2 Tablespoons red wine vinegar

Cook the bacon till just crispy on medium heat.

While your bacon is cooking, chop the greens.  For large leaves, fold in half and remove the stem by cutting parallel to the stem, between the stem and leaf.  Then, stack your leaves, cut down the middle the long way.  Stack the halves, and cut down the middle again.  Then, chop up the greens across the short  side.  For smaller leaves, you don’t need the second cut down the middle.

Once the bacon is crispy, remove from the pan, lower the heat and add the garlic to the hot bacon fat.  Cook the garlic for a couple of minutes, until just soft and you start to smell lots of yummy garlic.

Once the garlic is ready, add the stock and greens.  Stir everything up until most of your greens are coated in liquid.  Turn the heat to high,

cover, and let sit for about 5 minutes.  Chop up your bacon.  Once your greens are g

ood and wilty, remove the lid and season with salt and pepper.  Stir occasionally until all liquid has evaporated.  Add the vinegar and bacon, and mix everything up.  Serve hot.

Freshly washed kale from my garden