Lemon-Ginger Glazed Sweet Potatoes

 

Happy Fall! Here is a Thanksgiving family favorite, Lemon-Ginger glazed Sweet Potatoes, (or yams, as many people call it, but more on that in a minute...**) that I have made some small tweaks to, in the last few years. The original recipe called for boiling the sweet potatoes first, then peeling them, and it used ground ginger powder, versus fresh ginger, and it also had much more brown sugar in it than mine. But I find my technique of peeling and roasting it in the oven is just as good (if not slightly better,) and the fresh ginger, and reduced sugar makes for a lighter, fresh-tasting and tangy version of the recipe. I don't even know where our mom found the original recipe, and all I had was her hand-written notes to go by.   It became a  yearly staple for our Thanksgiving table, and I frankly can't recall a time when we didn't eat it, so it has probably been in rotation for a good 25 or 30 years.

Pasta with Chanterelle cream sauce

When I was a little girl in Sweden, we went out in the woods to pick Kantareller (or Chanterelles).  They peeked out of the moss and pine needles, like little golden trumpets in the woods.  They were so delicate and buttery in flavor, especially when sautéed in butter!  Fresh chanterelles are hard to find, as they are seasonal, and cannot be cultivated.  They seem to only grow in the wild, and only where they choose, but they seem to prefer evergreen forest conditions.  About once a year, there is a 4-5 week time frame when I can find these golden fungi at the grocery store or farmer’s market, but usually at a cost of $28-30 a pound.  CostCo sometimes has them, and then it’s more like $10-12 a lb, which is much better than $28 a pound. But still, pricey.

So imagine my delight when I heard through the grapevine that a girl from our church lived near a wooded area that seems to have prolific Chanterelle growth every fall.  Sure enough, I went out there this morning for about an hour or so, in my rubber boots, and carefully meandered around the woods behind her yard.  Carefully, since the mushrooms often were tucked underneath the moss & leaves, and even though brightly colored, they often just blend in with the autumn foliage on the ground. As soon as my ‘chanterelle eyes’ became accustomed to looking beyond and underneath the camouflage hiding these little gems, I started finding dozens and dozens of them, ranging in size from 1/2” in diameter to several inches wide.

I picked almost a whole grocery bag worth. And now that I have had my dinner, I thought I’d tell you what one of my favorite chanterelle-based meals is.

INGREDIENTS:

1-2 cups worth of chopped chanterelles – brush off dirt and debris with a pastry brush
2 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp salt
1 sprig fresh rosemary, de-stemmed, and finely chopped up (probably about 1 tsp of dried rosemary)
3-5 large sage leaves, finely chopped up (I suspect it would be about 2 tsp worth of dried sage)
1-2 tbsp flour
1/2 cup- 3/4 cup heavy cream

Sauté the mushrooms in the butter, until soft, and then sprinkle flour over them, and stir it in until absorbed.  Pour cream, and herbs and seasonings in, and allow to simmer over low heat until the cream thickens a bit from the flour.

Meanwhile, prepare your favorite type of pasta according to directions, and drain it.  Stir in the cream sauce over the pasta.

This pasta is particularly delicious when served with grilled poultry, such as turkey breasts or chicken.  I had chicken tenderloins (because I always have them in my freezer) so I defrosted them, marinated them with olive oil, sage, rosemary, salt & pepper (probably about 3 or 4 sage leaves, minced, 2 sprigs of rosemary, chopped up, 1/2 tsp salt, and 1/2 tsp ground pepper) and grilled them on a very hot grill for about 2 minutes on each side.  Then I cut the chicken tenders into bite-size pieces and stirred them in with the pasta.   I have also served this with chicken breasts stuffed with brie, and made a similar sauce to drizzle over grilled turkey breast.  Roasted rock hens are also excellent with chanterelles. 

The chanterelles are so delicate in flavor that you really don’t want to overpower them with a lot of other flavors or heavy meats.  I stick with sage, and rosemary as the only real seasonings. I don’t use onions or garlic with chanterelles, because just a couple of woodsy herbs are enough of a good complements, and the cream sauce just enhances it all.

 

Technorati Tags: chicken,pasta,mushrooms,chanterelles,cream,herbs,main dishes,side dishes

Cordoba beer-battered eggplant with honey (Berenjena Con Miel)

This is a tapas-style delicacy that I first ate while vacationing in southern Spain, in the city of Cordoba.   It is called Berenjena Con Miel in Spanish, and I had it there, in a restaurant called Casa Pepe De La Juderia (The House of Pepe in the Jewish Quarters)  It would be no exaggeration to say that I completely pigged out on this deep fried battered eggplant dish, and for years, tried finding a similar recipe online, but not knowing for certain if I was making it right. 
I eventually remembered to contact my friend in Spain, whose brother gave me some approximates, and then I found an actual Spanish recipe online, which I translated a bit, and experimented some with.  This is the closest I’ve come to that magical dish I had once, ten years ago in 2001.  It is probably not exactly like the one at the restaurant, but it’s really good anyway. (Updated with new photos Sep. 2011)


Ingredients for Beer Batter:
1 1/4 cups white flour
1/2 – 3/4 bottle of beer – enough to make the batter the consistency of pancake batter. (*I used Alaskan Summer, and find that amber beer lends the most caramel-like flavor to the batter * )
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp paprika
1 clove minced garlic
Salt and pepper (a pinch of each)

Ingredients for Egg-dip:
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
salt and pepper

Bowl of white flour for dredging
 
1 large Eggplant, thinly sliced (which makes bigger discs) or two narrow Asian-style eggplants
 

Make the batter first, by mixing all ingredients in a medium sized bowl, and let it sit for an hour.










Meanwhile, peel and thinly slice the eggplant.  Each disc should be no more than 1/3” in thickness.

Spread the discs out on a large cookie sheet, and salt both sides.  Let the salted eggplant sit for about 30 minutes, and then rinse each disc well (you’ll see brown liquid forming on the eggplant as it’s drawing out bitterness and moisture.)  Dry each slice of eggplant with a paper towel, before deep frying.

 

Preheat your oil (whether in a deep fryer or deep skillet) to medium hot.  This takes a little fine-tuning and I usually do a couple of test slices in the oil first.

Whisk the egg dip in a small bowl, and soak each slice in the egg  and milk mixture, and then dredge in flour, which helps hold the batter on the eggplant.  If you skip this step, the batter will just slide off and end up in clumps in the hot oil.  Lastly, dip it in batter until well coated, but not too thick.  Let the excess drip off before you put it in hot oil.

 The frying process takes a bit of time so I usually line up another cookie sheet with a couple of layers of paper towels next to my deep fryer to place each slice there … they can be kept hot in the oven at 250 degrees while you’re making the rest.  They usually stay fairly hot even if you don’t put them in the oven, if you work fast, and orderly.  If you don’t own a deep fryer, you can certainly cook them in a deep skillet with about an inch of canola or olive oil in it. Be sure to let the eggplant get golden brown on one side before flipping it over.
 
Serve hot with honey drizzled over the top.  The honey really adds an extra element of amazing!

Technorati Tags: eggplant,deep fried,beer,garlic,side dishes, tapas, Spain, Spanish food, Cordoba, berenjenas con miel

Spring Rolls

(Edited on 02/16/2011 for additional optional ingredients & alternate soaking directions).

Maybe it is the pressure of being challenged to do new things in my cooking, as spurred on by this food blog, but wandering down the Asian food aisle, I think was what inspired me to buy the rice-wrappers for spring rolls.  I love so many Asian dishes, but sometimes it just simply doesn’t occur to me to make them myself.  That was my incentive to change things up, and make something new.
I always enjoy eating the spring rolls at restaurants, and realize there is no hard and fast rule as to what should go in them. 

My process came with a steep and fast learning curve.  For instance, those little wrappers are delicate, so I have learned that the kind of lettuce I had on hand was way too stiff to be rolled up without tearing the wrappers up. A few of them had to be double wrapped to be contained properly.
 
INGREDIENTS:
1 package spring roll rice-wrappers
1/4 package rice vermicelli / rice sticks (i.e., pad thai noodles) OR
1/4 package "glass" noodles (they will have different thicknesses / textures so experiment with which type you prefer)

The first step, depending on the type of noodle, can take up to 30-40 minutes.  So check the soaking directions on your noodle package, and get a large skillet out, and pour about 2 cups of water in it… heat it up until boiling, turn the heat off, and then soak the rice noodles in it until soft—usually about half an hour.  After that, rinse them in a colander in cold water to get excess starch off.  Let them sit in the colander in the sink to drain.
 
Filling suggestions:
In this batch, I used the following--
cilantro
basil
carrots
red cabbage
green onions
rice noodles
lettuce (butter lettuce would probably work better than what I had, because it’s softer and rolls up better)
Other tasty ideas would be fresh bean sprouts, red bell peppers, cucumber or zucchini, endives….

While your noodles are soaking, wash and mince your herbs, wash, peel and finely sliver or julienne all the veggies length-wise for easiest assembly.  Leave each veggie in a separate pile on your cutting board so you can assembly-line the … uh… assembly.  (That’s a whole lot of assembling there.  But I guess that is where the art-form is inherent. My spring rolls—not so much! Yet.)
 
Simultaneously pour some fresh water into your large skillet, and heat it up, and then shut the burner off.  Use this hot water to soak your rice wrappers for 15-20 seconds each.  Lay out a clean and wetted tea towel on your countertop, and when you pull your moistened rice wrapper out of the skillet, carefully spread it out on the tea towel, and dab off the excess moisture if necessary.

Next, place a lettuce leaf in the center of a rice wrapper, topped with about 1/4 cup of rice noodles, and arrange a pinch of all the vegetables in a stack, leaving about 1 1/2 inches on the ends, plus enough on the sides of the wrapper to roll it up like a burrito.  Except it is a spring roll.  Not a burrito.

Finally, fold the short ends of the wrapper into the middle, grab one of the long sides, and gently, gently roll it together.  The rice wrapper should be sticky enough to seal itself.  If you have never had these before, they are served cold, so they make a good side dish for a hot protein, or an appetizer, or – as my husband said – a portable salad!

Serve with your favorite satay peanut sauce, or as I did, Mae Ploy Sweet Chili Sauce, 25-Ounce Bottle (Pack of 2) which is The Goodness in dipping sauce.

Technorati Tags: Asian,thai,cilantro,cabbage,carrots,green onions,spring rolls,rice noodles,side dishes

Almond-Fig Brown Rice Risotto

I think risotto is something that I always enjoy at restaurants, and even though it’s a fairly easy concept, I’ve generally avoided making it.  Why? I don’t know.  But I recently read a good risotto recipe over at Butter And Onions: Pea and Bacon Risotto, plus I had these figs, and sometimes I just say something out loud to see if it sounds good.  So I said “Fig risotto. Hmm… why not?”  I scoured around the internet to find comparable recipes, and found a few, but for most of them, I lacked other critical ingredients, so I basically just gleaned the basic cooking technique from reading several recipes, and came up with this.  My technique may not have been totally authentic, but the end result was savory and really good.

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup whole raw almonds, chopped up
2-4 tbsp butter

5 fresh figs, stems cut off, washed, and diced up
1/2 yellow onion, diced

1 1/2 cups brown rice (or traditional arborio rice)
3-4 cups water
1 tbsp “Better than Bouillon” chicken stock
1/2 cup cream
1 oz white wine
Dash of nutmeg
1/4 cup grated Peccorino or Parmigiano

DIRECTIONS:
Since I used brown rice in this recipe, which takes a lot longer to cook, I was afraid of it being very under-cooked if I simply followed a traditional risotto technique.  Therefore, I decided to precook it about half way in a rice cooker.  

I started up my chicken bouillon with the rice & water in the rice cooker. 

While that was going on, I sautéed my almonds in about 2 tbsp butter in a cast-iron skillet, until they were nice and golden and aromatic. 

  

I added my diced onion in, and continued sautéing until the onion was almost translucent, and at the tail end, dumped in my diced figs, and the white wine.  When the figs were cooked just a tiny bit, I turned off the heat, and set aside this mixture in a separate bowl.
Once the rice approached a nearly cooked state, I added a little more butter to my skillet, and scooped in the parboiled rice filling up the bottom of the skillet.  I cooked this on medium heat until it started to stick to the skillet, and then poured in the remaining bouillon water from my rice cooker about 1/2 cup at a time until it was absorbed.  Since that didn’t seem to be enough liquid, I added about another 3/4 cup water into the skillet, and kept letting it absorb as the rice was cooking.  Towards the end, I stirred in 1/2 cup cream, the fig-mixture, and about 1/4 cup grated cheese, and a dash of nutmeg.

 

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: rice,risotto,figs,side dishes,almonds

MACARONI AND CHEEEEEEEEESE!!!!!

I am seriously a cheese-addict. I eat cheese almost daily in some form or another, and tonight seemed downright autumnal for July (it was about 65 and overcast, and breezy) so I opted for a 'comfort food' meal of grilled pork chops, mac & cheese, and some steamed summer squash.

This mac & cheese is loosely adapted from one that I got from my husband's mother, although I use real sharp cheddar instead of Velveeta, and I usually just put in a pinch of nutmeg instead of pepper.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 stick of butter
2-3 tbsp flour (I actually used whole wheat today with fairly good success)
1- 1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup grated cheese (sharp cheddar makes the most 'classic mac & cheese' flavor)
pinch of nutmeg

8-10 oz of uncooked pasta of your choice (I had bowties, so that's what I used)

DIRECTIONS:

Bring water to a boil and cook pasta while you prepare a 'roux' to make the cheese sauce.
(Roux is a flour & butter based sauce which helps emulsify cheese better than just stirring cheese into hot milk -- which, for the record, I've tried once, and got a giant ball of stringy cheese, floating in a pot of milk.)

Melt butter in another small sauce pan over medium heat, and stir in flour one tablespoon at a time, to keep it a smooth texture.

Stir in milk, very slowly, just an ounce or so at first. If you pour the milk in too fast, it will cool off the butter & flour mixture and make it lumpy.

Gradually whisk in the rest of the milk, keeping heat at medium, and taking care not to boil the sauce.

Next add a handful of grated cheddar cheese at a time, stirring it to melt it into the hot milk & butter roux.


Pour cheese sauce over cooked & drained pasta and either serve as is, or bake in the oven for ten minutes at 350 to "congeal it all" into its sticky, cheesy goodness.

Hummus

Hummus is something that I generally make myself, although past experiments have never yielded such a creamy result as a store-bought one. So tonight I decided to whip some up, and while I lacked one CRITICAL ingredient (tahini -- which I subbed with sesame oil, for a very similar outcome), I also determined to try a trick I once heard about; the idea is to blanch the garbanzo beans first to remove the hulls (which float to the top, so you can skim them off with a slotted spoon.) That proved to be a tedious time-suck, but it did really make the hummus smoother.

I also inadvertently put a tad too much lemon juice in, (because I really only use measuring cups when I'm baking, and my eyeballing it didn't quite work out) but it wasn't detrimental -- just tangier than it usually is.

INGREDIENTS:

1 can garbanzo beans (i.e., chick peas)
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup tahini (here I used sesame oil, since tahini is just sesame seed paste and the flavor is very similar)
1-2 cloves minced garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 - 1 tsp salt (to taste)
1 tsp paprika
1 tbsp parsley (fresh or dried)
1/2 tsp cumin

Blend all ingredients together in a blender until smooth & creamy. Blanching the hulls off the beans is optional, but it doesn't disappoint! Also, it's very useful to keep some pita chips or crackers handy for "sampling" your hummus as you go along, making sure the seasoning mix is "just so."

Serve with crudites like cucumber slices or carrot sticks for a healthy snack, or slather it in a pita pocket with some grilled chicken, lettuce, tomatoes, and feta cheese... top with some tzatziki if you have it.

Swedish Style Potato Salad

So, it's summer time, and everyone loves a big ol' bowl of potato salad. It keeps for days in the fridge, and is a nice, cool side dish on a hot day.

My take on potato salad is sort of inspired by a traditional Swedish-style potato salad.

And... it's way-hay-hay less fattening.

INGREDIENTS:

15 or so medium sized red potatoes
1 cup Plain yogurt (Greek would be good, since it's so thick & creamy)
1-2 tbsp Dijon Mustard
(1-2 tbsp Mayo – optional)
4-5 green onions
2-3 stalks celery
(2 tbsp chives – optional)
(1/3 cup crumbled bacon – optional)
seasoning salt of your preference (one that’s a little paprika-y is always good)
pepper

DIRECTIONS:

First off, make sure you start early. This is not a last minute type thing, unless you already have left over cold boiled potatoes in the fridge. Boil the potatoes until fork tender, drain immediately, and fill pot with cold water to stop cooking. Dump out cold water within 5 minutes to prevent taters from getting water-logged (which I inadvertently did last week. Boo.)

Chill potatoes for several hours or overnight in the fridge. It makes them way easier to dice. Believe me-- I tried it once with slightly warm potatoes, and it was a mushy mess.

Now then... Assuming your potatoes are boiled, and chilled, just take those cold, little potatoes, and dice them up with a nice big knife.

Then slice up approximately 2-3 stalks of crispy celery (trim the nasty ends off, first, and wash really well.)
Chop up about 4-5 green onions, and put all of the above in a large bowl.

(Optional-- for an extra kick, scissor-cut fresh chives into small pieces, and/or add crumbled bacon for a little sumpin’ sumpin’. )

The dressing is as such:

Approximately 2/3 to 1 cup plain yogurt
(It can be made entirely with yogurt, or else I often will stir in two tbsp of real mayonnaise just to help bind the yogurt and keep it from being too watery. Use a little more yogurt if not using the optional mayo.)
1-2 tbsp Dijon Mustard
1 tsp Seasoning salt
1 tsp fresh ground pepper

Stir together and chill.