Candied Sweet Potatoes

Needs no introduction.

Calories (w/o marshmallows or pecans): 2900

Ingredients

• 3 lb orange sweet potatoes
• 1 stick butter
• 1 C real maple syrup
• 1 T lemon juice
• 3/4 t salt
• 1/3 t black pepper

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Peel and section the potatoes into wedges.  Lay the wedges into a 9×13 baking dish.  Everything should fit in one layer, more or less.
3. Melt butter in a pot.  Pour in syrup, lemon juice, and seasonings.  Stir to mix pretty well and pour the mix over the potatoes.
4. Bake covered for 20 minutes or so.
5. Uncover, stir around, and bake for 45-60 more minutes, stirring a bit every 15 or so.  Take out when the potatoes are done to your taste and the glaze has thickened.
6. If you want to go classic, put marshmallows and crushed pecans on top during the last 10-15 minutes or upon reheating.

Winter Squash Ratatouille

Just had a great Sunday dinner with my friends Jon, Diane, and Sharri and her housemates.  Jon and Diane made a nice salad, sunchokes, and a great apple pie (not too sweet, and Vietnamese cinnamon?!).  Sharri made a chicken–a delicious free-range bird with a garlic, apple cider, and other wonderful things glaze.  And I made this take on ratatouille.  This is the first recipe I’ve come up with prettymuch from whole cloth in a while, and it was quite a success, with the help of a fortunate mistake (adding the eggplant “too early”, or so I thought) and my friends (“lots more garlic!”).

One thing I’m starting to learn about vegetable dishes like this one is taste very often!  The amount of vegetable matter and it’s native variability makes it hard to get the seasoning just right.  Taste often and season slowly.  Add salt and pepper slowly over the course of cooking, as the flavors develop.  When you’re close, stop, wait awhile, and taste again.

Calorie Estimate: 1900 (lots of improv was going on, check this next time)

Ingredients

• 1 really large onion, diced
• 12 cloves of garlic, minced
• 3 or 4 tablespoons of butter
• 3/4 can tomato paste
• 1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded, 1/4″ dice (about 2 lbs worth)
• 2 very small eggplant (about 1 “italian” eggplant), 1/3″ dice
• 1/2 lb fresh chanterelle mushrooms, bite size pieces
• 1/2 oz dried lobster mushrooms
• 6-10 T diced celery
• 2 cups water
• 2 T red wine vinegar
• 1 T balsamic vinegar
• 1 T or so fresh rosemary, chopped
• salt and pepper to taste
• truffle oil to taste (less than 1 t, added slowly and tasting often)

Preparation

1. Make a mushroom broth.  Rehydrate dried mushrooms in 2 cups of water (I used lobster ’cause they’re awesome).  In the simmering liquid, add a diced slice of onion (thumb-width wedge), finely-diced celery, and 1 finely-diced chanterelle.  For this dish, add red wine vinegar since the acid will help counter the sweetness of the squash.  Some salt and pepper, a bay leaf if you’ve got it (I didn’t), and simmer slowly for an hour.
2. Dice the onion, garlic, and veggies before you start cooking.  To a big pot over medium heat (an enameled cast iron dutch oven would be awesome), add the butter.  Then, add the onion and garlic.  Soften, but don’t brown for 5-7 minutes or so.
3. Add in the tomato paste about 1/2 can.  Mix it around until it coats everything.  Try to brown it a little, 5 minutes or so.  Later on in the cooking, if it needs more paste, it’s okay to add it then.
4. Add in the squash, eggplant, and mushrooms, then the broth.  Stir everything together.  Salt lightly at this point to help pull the moisture out of the vegetables.  I thought adding the eggplant this early was a mistake, since it really broke down by the time the squash finished 45 minutes later, but it turned out to be key to the velvety texture.  Unlike regular ratatouille with zucchini, the butternut squash is much sturdier, and so the broken down eggplant binds this dish very nicely.  If the eggplant had some texture left, it may have conflicted with the toothsome squash.
5. I kept stirring for most of the cooking time, since we were hanging out in the kitchen, but it could probably cook covered with the occasional stir.  Pretty early on, I added about 1 T of chopped fresh rosemary. More wasn’t necessary later on, although it might’ve made a nice garnish if I was serving the food plated instead of family style.
6. Toward the end of cooking (about 45 minutes), add truffle oil, slowly, stirring and tasting often.  You want to stop the instant you become aware of its presence.  Truffle oil is a secret that adds a lot of character, but it can quickly dominate.  Also, dial in the salt and pepper at this point.
7. A few minutes before letting it rest, add 1 T of balsamic vinegar for a touch of color and the flavor.
8. Be sure to let the dish rest for at least 15 minutes so it really comes together.

More Molto Mario Ideas

From the Napoli Trattoria episode.

1. Braciola di Pollo = stuffed, de-boned chicken.  Looks delicious.  Probably a lot easier to do with skin on chicken breasts, although the whole chicken would probably be worth it.
2. Crostini Napolitani:  my interest is the anchovies and seasoned ricotta idea.

Mashed Butternut Squash

I’ve recently discovered winter squash, and I figured this would make for a nice twist on steak and potatoes.  This time of year, the squash are great-sweet and flavorful.  This simple recipe is a keeper.

Calories estimate:  100 per cup of mashed squash

Ingredients

• butternut squash (you get about 3 cups per pound, so buy accordingly)
• butter (1/4 T per cup or so)
• salt to taste
• (a little maple syrup, depending on how sweet the squash is and the dish it’s going with)

Preparation

1. Split the squash in half and scoop out the seeds.  Roast skin-side down in a wide pan with 1/4 inch of water in a 400^o oven for 1 hour or until tender.
2. Drain the water and let the squash cool until you can handle it.  Scoop out the cooked squash, leaving the skin behind.  Mash the squash with butter and seasonings.  Adjust to suit your tastes.

Split Pea Soup

Based on this recipe from Chow.com.  The ideal meat is a smoked ham hock, or a 1 pound minimally-processed ham (diced), but I couldn’t find either of those in Seattle, so I used 1/4-lb pancetta (bacon would be better) and 2-oz of leftover hard salami.

Calorie estimate for the batch: 2400 – 3000 (depends on meat)

Ingredients

• 1 lb split peas
• 1 large yellow onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 lb carrots, cut into thin (less than 1/4 inch) rounds
• 1/4 lb celery, cut into rounds, (or 1 green bell pepper, diced)
• diced salted/cured pork, as described above
• 2 T olive oil
• 8 cups chicken broth
• 1 T black pepper
• 1 t red pepper flakes
• salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

1. Dice onion and mince garlic.  In heavy-bottom soup pan, warm olive oil over medium heat.  Cook onion and garlic for 5-7 minutes until softened.
2. Add everything else.  Bring to a boil, then simmer for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.  If using a ham hock, toward the end of cooking, pull it out and take the meat off the bone.  Put the meat back in.
3. When it’s finished, see if it needs salt (probably not) and more pepper.  It’ll taste better then next day.

Sausage and greens

From the Molto Mario Contadino episode.  Serve along side bruschetta or something like that.

Calories: 2-300 per sausage

Ingredients

• sausage
• greens
• a little onion or leeks
• 1 clove garlic
• splash of white wine
• splash of olive oil

Preparation

1. Cook sausage on stove top in skillet (line around the edge of the skillet), with a little extra olive oil.  Poke the sausages before cooking to let some of the fat drain out (normally taboo, but you’ll see where we’re going).
2. After the sausages have released a good amount of fat, drop a couple cloves of minced garlic in the middle.  Add greens (broccoli rabe, leeks, cabbage, etc) and toss. Add stalky greens a little earlier than any leafy ones. Greens will give up moisture.  Move then around to pick up brown bits from the pan.  Salt to taste.
3. When sausages and greens are done, remove to a plate.  To the skillet, add a splash of dry white wine, lemon juice, and maybe a splash more of olive oil.  Stir out the browned bits and drizzle over the greens.

Chicken panino with Sicilian Caponata

I’ll republish this with a caponata recipe next time I make it.  Seeing as I wasn’t exactly in the mood to cook yesterday, I went with Trader Joe’s store-bought Caponata (not bad–all the ingredients are actually food, but it’s sweetened with sugar, which I didn’t notice while shopping) boosted with a tablespoon of Classico Pesto (honestly quite good and cheap, if a little salty).

Calorie Estimate: 800

Ingredients

• Toasted focaccia bread (or other suitable soft bread)
• 4 T-ish caponata (eggplant, celery, tomatoes, oil, onions, olives, capers, wine vinegar, salt)
• 1 T pesto
• 2 oz “fresh” (store-bought, soft) mozzarella
• 3 oz poached/grilled/baked chicken

Preparation

1. Cook chicken in a suitable manner.  I went with poached in salted water for about 15 minutes because I didn’t need to add much flavor or oil directly to the chicken since there’d be plenty of flavor in the caponata and focaccia.
2. Mix caponata and pesto together.  Heat in the microwave.
3. Make a sandwich.  Err, umm, make an open-faced sandwich if your bread is too thick like mine.