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Posts tagged ‘sweetpotatoes’

Full moon setting; rosemary mashed sweet potatoes with caramelized shallots

Florida-grapefruit yellow moon dropping to the horizon outside study windows this morning, something I’d miss if I could sleep past 4 a.m. The last of the moonlight makes luminous the mist exhaled by the sleeping pastures, and I wonder, again, how I can leave this extraordinary beauty for a more prosaic site with more people,  more life.

Because I drove more than 150 miles yesterday for lunch with a cousin I hadn’t seen in 44 years, my glamorous second-cousin Amy with her mother’s smokey eyes and voice.  Amy’s dad and my mother were first cousins in the more-or-less gothic Lawrence clan. Not that they wore black eyeliner and tattoos, but each of the four children of Amy’s and my great-grandparents seemed to suffer blows beyond the usual twists in life’s journeys. Which doesn’t mean they weren’t beautiful and privileged — they were, all of them. 

So it was extraordinary to sit for several hours with someone who has her own take on our shared family dramas, who remembers me half a century ago, someone who was there when the elderly siblings dove into their Manhattans before every family celebration, someone who also beheld our formidable great-grandmother swathed in black and swirling snowflakes before the annual Christmas Eve blow-out. The Cheever biography I’m reading disparages autobiography-as-novel, but I think my mother’s family was the ultimate, hair-raising novel.

That’s my beautiful cousin on the right who looks WAAAAY more than 6 years younger!

But if they didn’t do well at emotional expression, they excelled in the kitchen. Thus, as their true descendant (even if I do look like her despised mother-in-law as my mother said all the time), I would rather cook and eat than say something meaningful to someone else or, for that matter, see long-”lost” relatives. Which is why I need to live where there are someones, particularly those who walk and hit the Y (which is what I’m going to do instead of joining Weight Watchers — I have to feel good enough to work out which is only going to happen with some water exercise classes).

My FB friend Peg R. has an interesting proposal, that all of us struggling with food/weight issues commit to being 3 pounds lighter by Jan. 1. (She’s also suggesting each of us be able to do as many pushups by then as we are years old, but that’s not going to happen.) A  manageable goal that should, nevertheless, make us feel that we’re constructively dealing with  the stressful holidays.

By way of a positive beginning, I gained nothing over Thanksgiving. It was more important to do things other than eating and, when eating, to choose the healthy foods. The following Nov. 2010 Cooking Light recipe is my go-to sweet potato casserole for the foreseeable future. Farewell marshmallows and gobs of butter; hello, crisply caramelized and lightly sugared shallots.

Rosemary mashed sweet potatoes with shallots

2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons good-quality olive oil, divided

3/4 cup thinly sliced shallots (about 2 large)

2 teaspoons brown sugar

2 pounds sweet potatoes, roasted and peeled

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in skillet over low heat. Add shallots and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Sprinkle with sugar; cook 20 minutes or until shallots are golden, stirring occasionally.

Nothing but healthy food and drink as far as the eye can see.

Put sweet potatoes through ricer. Add rosemary, salt and pepper, whisk until blended. Spoon into serving bowl; top with shallots and drizzle with remaining 2 teaspoons oil. Makes 6 servings of 202 calories, 6.3 fat grams each.

Category:

healthy cooking, Holiday cooking, Holiday eating, Importance of others to recovering addict, Weight loss, Why overweight?

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Travels with Tootsie, sweet potato and peanut stew

All communication from E. Africa so gratefully and excitedly received!

Any day that begins with a video conversation with Dora the Explorer and one of her older sisters calling to say they’re coming for Christmas is a fab one.

Saturday morning the Tanzania group was in the middle of 3.5  internet-free weeks on their schedule. So everyone went into a Stonetown internet cafe to upload pictures and talk to their parents. I’m sure all the parental units were as excited as we.

Sunday they again left all social media for 10 days. I will admit grudgingly that I’m proud of her for being so bold. And it is exciting and gratifying to see images from across the world — not just glassy-eyed snaps from the latest frat party. Evidently, though, wherever in the world college women are photographed, they stand with their hands on their hips and their torsos slightly turned.

It’s now “only” 12 weeks until the end of this semester abroad so I’m starting to think about African food. That and why I’ve larded on 13 pounds in the six weeks since my August high school reunion. Anxiety, depression and a stinking cold are, I believe, the deadly triumverate, deadly to taking care of oneself anyway. Today was my first walk with the puppy in a week and a half, and I already feel better and less likely to skid into the slough of despond.

The African-inspired slow-cooker sweet potato-peanut stew we enjoyed is healthy, easy and cheap to fix. And until we piled it on noodles moistened with a wee drap o’ cream cheese, fairly non-fat. The 1/2 cup minced fresh parsley is as necessary to the distinct, sharp taste of this stew as it is to tabbouleh.

This seems like something Dora the Explorer, who shops now in open-air markets full of seashells, cardamom pods and “logs” of cinnemon, will enjoy in December. I was a little leery of  the amount of allspice but, honestly, the individual tastes combine into a unique and hearty whole. Even Stoic the Vast, who can usually identify any spices he’s not crazy about, could not name or disparage the allspice. 

Peanut-sweet potato stew (from Time, Inc.’s All You website)

6 small sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 3/4 inch slices (about 2 pounds)

3 red onions, peeled and thinly sliced (I used a smaller amount of chopped green onions because that was what I had)

1 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes, not drained

1-1/2 teaspoons ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

Salt and pepper

2 cups water

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

1/2 cup creamy or crunchy peanut butter

Stir together potatoes, onions, tomatoes, cumin, allspice, salt, pepper and water in a slow cooker until thoroughly combined. Cover and cook for 4 to 5 hours on high. Just before serving, stir in parsley and peanut butter. Makes 4 318-calorie servings.

Category:

African food, Casseroles, Emo eating, Exercise, Fall, Tomatoes, vegetables

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When bad recipes happen to good people

 
Most holidays I fall victim to the extravagant cake syndrome. Use something tried and true? Never! That’s how I ended up struggling with the white cake-butter frosting-lemon curd filling-toasted pistachio layer cake from Real Simple for Easter. Real Simple, my Aunt Fanny!
 
So for Thanksgiving I thought I’d try the sweetpotato layer cake from Saveur magazine. Saveur, of course, has never promised simplicity, but I would have expected organization and did not get it. I accept responsibility for not reading painstakingly through the directions before I started — I’m afraid I never do.
 
I understood from the get-go that I was talking about made-from-scratch cake, filling, icing (praline) and candied pecans. I did not know food writer Ben Mims would just throw all the ingredients in his computer, hit the “scramble” key and publish.  If the stuff that’s used several times had even indicated “divided,” it would have helped. So would an editor, something I never thought I’d admit.
 
So, in the hopes that this is an ab-fab cake (we won’t eat it until tomorrow), I share my re-written version. It should serve 12, but in this family, if it amounts to anything…
 

SWEETPOTATO CAKE

CAKE:

1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)
2 cups packed brown sugar
3 cups flour, plus more for pan
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1-1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
3/4 teaspoon ground cardomom ($12 for a wee McCormick bottle this year!)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
4 eggs
2 cups mashed roasted sweet potatoes
3/4 cup sour cream
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
 
Brown butter in saucepan; stick in freezer and chill until solid but not permafrosted. In bowl whisk flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, baking soda and allspice. Set aside. In mixing bowl beat firmed-up browned butter and brown sugar until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beat until smooth. Beat in potatoes, sour cream and vanilla.
Heat oven to 350. Grease and flour 9×13-inch baking pan. Add flour mixture to sweetpotato mixture, using electric mixer to combine until until moistened. Finish mixing gently with wooden spoon or spatula. Turn out into prepared pan, smooth top and bake until cake tester comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Cool on rack. Halve cake crosswise into two layers.
 

MARSHMALLOW FILLING:

2 egg whites
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup water
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
 
Place whites in mixer bowl and beat until foamy. Meanwhile, stir together salt, sugar and water in small saucepan, bring to low boil, continue boiling, without stirring, until syrup temperature reaches 250. Slowly pour hot syrup in small, steady stream into whites with beater running. Continue beating until whites have cooled and peak softly. Add vanilla. Spread icing over bottom layer and top with second layer.
 

CANDIED PECANS:

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
8 ounces pecan halves
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup rum
 
Mix all ingredients together in small saucepan. Cook, stirring often, until thickly glazed, about 4 minutes. Transfer to sheet of foil in single layer and cool. (Mine need to dry overnight without a spell in the oven on a baking sheet.)
 

PRALINE TOPPING:

6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
1/4 cup milk
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 (or less) teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
 
Combine ingredients in saucepan, bring to gentle, rolling boil, stirring. Cook for 5 minutes without stirring. Remove from heat, add vanilla and let cool for 15 minutes, without stirring. Ice top of cake and press candied pecans into praline.
 

On a happier, smoother note, got together with four women I’d worked with at the Charlotte Observer last week — some of our friendships reach back to 1977. It was fun and we hope to do it annually from now on, maybe with husbands. I don’t necessarily think old friends are best — I have some pretty cool new ones as well — but these broads (and they are broads) are da bomb. More later about our round-the-clock meals. God bless us every one! Oh, wait, that’s the next holiday. Have a good, good day tomorrow.

(L-R:) Yours truly, Cathy the food blogger and non-profit administrator; Kathy, journalist and pet sitter; Jody, writer and rider; Miriam, artist.

 
 
 

Category:

Badly written recipes -- how to deal with, Desserts, good food, Seasonal food

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Biking with buggies, sweetpotato hash

Sunday afternoon we trucked our bikes across US 21 and into Yadkin County. I hadn’t realized that those few miles would put us so much closer to the blue Brushy Mountains nor how much Amish buggy traffic we’d see late on a Sunday.

The air was as crisp as a fall apple — I stayed chilly in shorts and a sweatshirt, even while peddling — and the clear gold that seems to magnify every leaf and ladybug as sunset nears. The buggies had black curtains up against the chill, but in the last that passed us we could see a baby roughly the size of a loaf of Italian bread, swaddled in pink and nestled under her grandmother’s chin.

We are learning to say that certain settlements — or lack thereof — “look like dogs.” Loose dogs, that is, although yesterday we would have been hard pressed to say which pack was funnier — the three Lab-mix black puppies storming from one place or the three brown chihuahuas from another. We do take perverse pleasure in riding in one direction — dogs streaming behind us — only to ride back as soon as they return home and settle down. In fact, Mr. Funny Pants suggested we go a third time past the puppies after their owner finally came outside and called them back to their perch on the side porch. (We didn’t.)

We came home to fish sandwiches, homemade cole slaw and the first of this year’s sweetpotatoes, bright-orange treats about the size of three thumbs, no bigger. These are so different from the dry, pale-yellow yams I grew up with in Pennsylvania as to be an entirely different vegetable.

Most of our youngest’s high-chair suppers were nothing more than a small sweetpotato (written without a space in the South) with a cooked egg, applesauce and milk. That covered all the food groups, and she never tired of the menu.

Our neighbor Esker T. went somewhere Down East where the soil’s sandy and brought back a pickup truck loaded with these sweet, moist gems. We were the beneficiaries of enough to carry us at least through the holidays and probably longer.

A sweetpotato supper we still enjoy on crispy fall nights is this meatless hash  from the American Profile newspaper supplement. It’s easy and hearty and something a little different (like the mashed sweets with jalapeno and maple syrup at the Blue Parrot Bistro in Gettysburg, Pa.). You’ll need a big heavy skillet, meaning: Well-seasoned cast iron works really well.

Sweetpotato hash with baked eggs

2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil

2 large sweetpotatoes, peeled and chopped into 1/4- to 1/2-inch dice (about 2-2/3 cups)

1-1/3 cups minced yellow onion

1 big garlic clove, minced

1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced (don’t forget the rubber gloves when handling this)

1/4 teaspoon salt, divided

Coarsely ground black pepper to taste

4 eggs

3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley

Heat oven to 400. Heat oil in skillet over medium heat. Add potato dice and 0nion and cook about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until potatoes are tender. Reduce heat, add garlic and jalapeno and cook another 1 to 2 minutes. Season with 1/8 teaspoon salt and pepper.

Make 4 evenly spaced, slight depressions in hash and break an egg into each one (breaking the yolks if you so desire, which I always so desire). Place pan in heated oven and bake 8 to 10 minutes or until eggs are cooked to your preference. Remove, season eggs with remaining salt and pepper and garnish with parsley. Serves 4.

Category:

Exercise, good food, Rural life, Seasonal food

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