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.

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.