You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Sweet Potatoes’ tag.
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I made these for the first time a few weeks ago, when I just had some white and orange sweet potatoes hanging out in my house, leftover from the fall produce sales. They were starting their own mini sweet-potato-reproducing-factory in my cabinet, and I needed to get rid of them. Naturally, I decided to make some fries. It’s the default thing to do with leftover sweet potatoes, right?
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But you can’t just serve fries on their own… and for me, ketchup/catsup/catchup isn’t what you serve with a big platter of sweet potato fries. Sweet potato fries are the sophisticated older sister of regular fries. You need something to woo her with…
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Like intense garlic breath, of course.
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Thus, roasted garlic aioli. An aioli is much like mayonnaise… except hopefully homemade, and with a fancier name.
Honestly, you probably just want to invite all your friends over for these fries. You want to make sure all the people you know are eating this, lest you see a friend or five out and about later… because they won’t want to be within 10 feet of you. (Unless that’s what you’re going for… in which case, I applaud you for your creative strategy.)
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Sweet Potato Fries
From the Kitchenette
Serves 8 as an appetizer or side
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Gather:
4 sweet potatoes, orange or white or both, scrubbed clean
1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more if needed
coarse salt
fresh cracked pepper
Prepare:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Cut sweet potatoes into 1/2 inch sticks. (Note: I’m not too concerned about getting each fry the perfect length or width. Perfection is BORING. Plus, having some fries be more crispy than others is quite tasty, honestly.) Toss sweet potatoes with 1 tablespoon olive oil, salt and pepper, adding more oil until fries are just barely coated. Roast at 425 degrees for approximately 40-50 minutes, tossing each 15 minutes or so.
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Roasted Garlic Aioli
From the Kitchenette
Yields about 3/4 cup
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Gather:
1 head garlic
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon olive oil, divided
1 egg
salt
fresh cracked pepper
Prepare:
To roast the garlic, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut the top off the head of garlic, and place on a square of aluminum foil. Drizzle 1 tablespoon olive oil over top the head. Wrap the aluminum foil around the garlic, and roast at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, until garlic is translucent and soft inside.
To make aioli, put 3 cloves of roasted garlic (you can squeeze them out of the head with your thumb) in a food processor or blender. Add in the egg, a pinch each of salt and pepper, and turn on the food processor/blender to high. Add in the olive oil in a VERY slow stream, as slowly as possible. Check the texture of the aioli intermittently while adding the olive oil; you are looking for a texture akin to a thin mayonnaise, and you may not need all the oil, or you may need a bit more. Once the appropriate texture is reached, transfer to a serving dish.
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Warpaint / Undertow
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“All most people really want [for Thanksgiving] is turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, [and] and cranberries.”
xxxx - Andrew Knowlton, Bon Appetit November 2010
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Ah, just another indication that me and mine are huge freaks. Our Thanksgiving table at home in Virginia changes year over year… the only staples are corn pudding, and the chocolate fudge pie from Ukrop’s. (Which was our neighborhood grocery store, now bought by the evil Martin’s. *moment of silence*)
Four years of Young Married Couple Thanksgivings has really torn up the idea of the traditional Thanksgiving menu, at least for me. I can pretty much guarantee that Brad won’t care one way or another what I make, as long as one dish has bacon, ham, or pork in it. (Done.) And not having to cook for a crowd of 12 has thoroughly released me from having to cook the standard mashed-potatoes-green-beans-stuffing line up; now I just cook whatever seasonal dishes I want for the big day. Usually I try to stick to one “starch” dish, whether it be mashed potatoes or bread, one dessert, one salad, and an entree. Then I do one or two vegetable dishes as well.
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I’ve had this recipe bookmarked for 3 years now, just waiting for the right time to break it out. The original recipe from Her Holiness of All Things Domestic calls for sweet potatoes, hubbard squash, and delicata squash. I’m not a huge fan of delicata, so I just cut that out and went with the hubbard only. When I was at the market, they were out of sweet potatoes, but they did have some gorgeous garnet yams. Just use whichever – yams or sweet potatoes – that you can find.
I think this recipe will definitely make a reappearance at my table soon, just because it was so freaking delicious. I like winter meals that take the normal pantry ingredients and twist them in new tastes and textures. Most squash recipes tend towards roasting, with or without the peel. Then you can puree the flesh or turn it into soup, or stir it into risotto, etc etc etc. But I liked the way that the squash ended up juicy and tender in this recipe; I imagine this would be a great use for squash that has been in storage for a long winter, because you infuse it with bacon and butter and chicken stock. The resulting dish is bursting with flavors just layered on top of one another… you can taste the chicken stock, the brown sugar, the wine, the butter. It’s so rich and delicious, I can’t get over it.
What side dishes are you contemplating for your Thanksgiving table?
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Glazed Squash and Sweet Potatoes
Inspired by Martha Stewart Living, November 2007
Serves 8
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For the record… I didn’t eat the squash peel. It helps to keep the squash from falling apart while cooking, though. The bacon will be easier chopped if chilled in the freezer for 30 minutes before cutting. Reserve the seeds of the squash to toast later, if you’re so inclined. And if you’re going to double this recipe, either use an additional (large) saute pan, or cook in batches.
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Gather:
6 ounces smoked bacon, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
a pinch of ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
2 large sweet potatoes (about 2 pounds total), sliced into 3/4 inch thick coins
1/2 Hubbard squash (about 2 pounds), de-seeded and sliced into 1 inch thick wedges
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken stock
1/2 cup white wine
salt and pepper to taste
Prepare:
Cook the squash. Cook bacon over medium heat in a large saucepan. Cook for about 10 minutes, or until the bacon is just crispy. Do not let bacon burn. Use a slotted spoon to remove bacon from pan and deposit on a paper-towel-lined plate; reserve for later. Drain all but 2 tablespoons of bacon drippings from the pan. Add butter to pan and melt over medium-low heat. Add sugar, cloves, and red pepper flakes to pan, and cook until sugar is somewhat dissolved, about 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Layer squash in pan, then layer potatoes on top of squash. Slowly pour chicken stock and wine over squash and potatoes. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes, until squash is tender. Remove squash from pan. Layer potatoes in the bottom of pan and let simmer for an additional 10 minutes, or until the sweet potatoes are tender. (Make ahead: can be prepared up to 24 hours in advance; store squash and potatoes, covered with saran wrap, in the fridge until ready to use; reheat in a 350 degree oven until hot. Store bacon separately from squash and potatoes, in a small tupperware container or plastic bag; reheat the next day with vegetables. Remove glaze from pan and store in a jar until ready to finish cooking the next day.)
Reduce the glaze. (Reheat squash and sweet potatoes if necessary in a 350 degree oven.) Add glaze back to a large saute pan, and whisk vigorously to re-combine any separation that occurred overnight. Reduce over medium-low heat, about 7 minutes, until the glaze is thickened and syrupy. Add (reheated) vegetables and half of crispy bacon to the pan and toss to coat with glaze. Transfer to a serving dish, top with remaining bacon, and serve. (Make ahead: Can be kept warm in a warming drawer or warm oven for up to an hour; reserve second half of crispy bacon to sprinkle on right before serving.)
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Thanksgiving Menu 2010:
Autumn Salad with Apples and Spiced Pecans
Steak over Butternut Squash with Caramelized Onions
Glazed Squash and Sweet Potatoes
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Thanksgiving Background Music Recommendation of the Day – in our house, we like a constant stream of mellow background music to enjoy along with our holiday festivities. Here is a week of safe-for-childrens’-ears, no-curse-words-to-creep-out-Grandma, soft tunes to accompany your turkey and mashed potatoes. (And not one of my recommendations will be a washed-up-musician’s rendering of Christmas hits, I promise.)
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Fleet Foxes / White Winter Hymnal
This is about as close to holiday music as you can expect me to get. Look, it’s themed! It talks about winter! It’s easy to imagine snow drifts outside your window when you play this! Think of it as the updated, indie version of Mannheim Steamroller (but with more facial hair).
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This recipe has been a strong player in my family’s recipe repetoire (recitoire? hmmm) for a few years, and I can’t believe I didn’t think to blog about it earlier, to be honest. I remember I found this recipe in a Cooking Light magazine when I was in college, and I made it in my crappy college kitchen with my $10 set of knives from Wal-mart that could bend 90 degrees without breaking. Have you ever tried to cut sweet potatoes with a knife that bends? I’m surprised I still have all my limbs. Good times.
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So this year, I made these veggies as an easy side dish for the Christmas Day dinner. You see, my Christmas vacation back on the East Coast was somewhat rushed this year. I only had 5 days to travel halfway across the country and back, and I had no idea what I was going to make for Christmas dinner before I left Denver. So unfortunately there was no well-planned menu, no poring over blogs and magazines for weeks in advance; I basically went with some old stand-bys that I knew would work – including these veggies. After all – when faced with cooking or hanging out with my family, I pick my family every single time because we have such a good time doing the dumbest stuff. Like when my mom, dad, and I spent Wednesday night looking at Fail Blog, and all three of us laughed so hard we almost peed our pants. How does that compare with baking? No contest!
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Needless to say, the veggies were a HUGE hit at Christmas Dinner. My cousin Jordan practically had a coronary, proclaiming them delicious at multiple intervals during the meal, which was nothing short of hilarious to me, because these veggies are so simple to make. I would imagine that this would be a great way to get kids to eat their veggies (but I don’t have kids so what do I know?) because the sweetness of the honey isn’t overpowering, but instead a subtle background note. You still get the flavor of the vegetables, the bitterness of the turnips, but with just a hint of sweet. I love this with course salt, so that every once in a while you get a flake of salt to contrast with the honey and vegetables. Be sure to get small to medium-sized turnips and parsnips at the market – larger-sized versions tend to be more woody and bitter.
One of the best things about this recipe is that it uses vegetables that are in season here in Colorado. And then to make it even better, I used locally-produced honey that I picked up at the farmer’s market earlier this year. This isn’t a complicated recipe – you can use whatever portions you prefer, so feel free to switch out turnips for more carrots or another vegetable entirely. I don’t even bother measuring the honey or olive oil, and I add a little more if I feel like the veggies aren’t entirely coated. Feel free to experiment based on what you like.
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Honey-Roasted Root Vegetables
Adapted from Cooking Light
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Ingredients:
1 large sweet potato, peeled and coarsely chopped
2 medium turnips, peeled and coarsely chopped
4 medium parsnips, peeled and coarsely chopped
3 medium carrots, peeled and coarsely chopped
3 shallots, peeled and halved
1/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon course salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh cracked pepper
Cooking spray
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Directions:
Preheat oven to 450F degrees. Combine honey, olive oil, salt and pepper in the bottom of a large bowl and mix to combine. Add vegetables to bowl and toss to coat. Coat a baking sheet with cooking spray, and spread vegetables on baking sheet in a single layer. Cook vegetables at 450F for 35 minutes, stirring halfway through.
Serves 4-6 as a side.
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Now Playing in the Kitchenette: Murder by Death / Brother
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What did you have for Christmas dinner?
