I was asked recently, "What is your favorite thing to cook?" After some consideration, I decided that it would have to be homemade soup or stew. I love putting on good music and getting into the slow rhythms of chopping and nibbling and measuring and simmering and tasting, etc. In a strange way, I feel very much "myself" when I am puttering around the kitchen and hovering over the stove.
I usually plan my meals for the week on Sundays or Mondays and this week I needed something to last me for the week with enough left over to share with a good friend who is having surgery in several days. I decided to make my mom's beef stew. This dish was staple in our home during all my growing up years and I have lots of warm memories of my family around the table eating this stew with some kind of homemade jumbo muffin!
Mom's Beef Stew
2 - 2 1/2 lbs stew meat
1 pkg mushroom, sliced
1 onion
2 bay leaves
1/2 cup butter
2 T Worcestershire sauce
32 oz beef broth
carrots
potatoes
garlic cloves, minced
seasoning
wine
- Saute mushrooms, onion and garlic. (My mom's recipe called for 2 garlic cloves. I used 4 today. Pretty much, use as many as you want depending on how you feel about garlic!) Remove from pan, saving the juices.
- Coat meat with flour and fry in juices and butter until browned. (I used tapioca starch instead of flour and it thickened my stew beautifully. I also used olive oil instead of butter).
- Also, I learned recently that the secret to nicely browned meat is to not crowd it in the pan. I browned my meat chunks in several batches so that none of the pieces were touching in the pan.
- Put the mushroom/onion/garlic mixture back into the pan with the meat. Add all other ingredients and enough water to just cover the meat and veggies. Simmer until the vegetables are tender, anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours (the longer you go, the more tender the meat will be). Stir often, as the stew will stick to the bottom of the pan.
- About 5 minutes before removing the stew from the heat, add a few splashes of sherry wine or red wine.
- I did not specify a quantity on the carrots or potatoes. Use as many as look good to you.
- I also did not specify the seasoning quantity. This is where you might get irritated with me as a cook. I just add what sounds good to me and keep tasting until it I get it right. In my batch today, I added somewhere around 1 tsp of salt, 1/2 tsp white pepper, several shakes of italian seasoning and about 1/2 tsp of crushed rosemary.
One final thought, as I was eating this for dinner tonight, the thought came to me that just the tiniest bit of bacon added to this would be amazing. It would give the broth just a little bit of a smoky flavor. I would probably cook a couple pieces of bacon first and then cook the mushrooms/onions/garlic in a small portion of the grease and then finish off as usual. YUM!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
For when too much cayenne pepper jumps out of your bottle...
I learned something really handy yesterday!
I had lunch with my good friend, Sue Ellen and she fixed us this yummy vegetable and bean soup. She warned me though, that when adding cayenne pepper, more came out than she expected and the soup might be a bit spicy. It was! So she cut a lime in 1/2 and we each squeezed the juice into our soup. Aside from the lime juice tasting really good, it noticeably cut the heat. In addition, we had little orange wedges and when I nibbled on one of those after taking a bite, it cooled my mouth right down. Amazing!
So if you accidentally make a dish too spicy, and if the flavors will tolerate it, add a little citrus!
(P.S. If any of you know of other tricks for fixing a dish that is too spicy or too salty, will you comment and let me know?)
I had lunch with my good friend, Sue Ellen and she fixed us this yummy vegetable and bean soup. She warned me though, that when adding cayenne pepper, more came out than she expected and the soup might be a bit spicy. It was! So she cut a lime in 1/2 and we each squeezed the juice into our soup. Aside from the lime juice tasting really good, it noticeably cut the heat. In addition, we had little orange wedges and when I nibbled on one of those after taking a bite, it cooled my mouth right down. Amazing!
So if you accidentally make a dish too spicy, and if the flavors will tolerate it, add a little citrus!
(P.S. If any of you know of other tricks for fixing a dish that is too spicy or too salty, will you comment and let me know?)
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Buttermilk Spice Muffins
Sometimes when it snows in Colorado, it dumps heavy, wet snow everywhere and tree branches break and plants get squashed. But sometimes when it snows, a little magic happens and everything gets coated with this lovely layer of frost that makes my backyard look like Someone spent the night carefully dusting iridescent, pearly glitter over each twig and branch. I stumbled up to the kitchen to make coffee an hour ago and literally gasped out loud with delight for it is just such a morning! And even better, the skies are dark and ominous so we may get more. Even after living here for 6 1/2 years, the snow still captivates me. I love it!
And what better way to celebrate a frosty Saturday morning than with homemade muffins? I made these a few days ago and they re-heat beautifully. They have a nice dense, moist texture and are pretty heavy on the nutmeg, which makes me happy. A couple of years ago my mom, who is brilliant in the kitchen, discovered whole nutmeg. It looks like a small brown nut and you grate it using the fine part of a cheese grater. It makes the nutmeg flavor incredibly rich.
(And by the way, I chose that link above because of the nice picture of what whole nutmeg looks like, but the article with it is fascinating! If it is true, the Dutch literally traded the island of Manhattan with the British for nutmeg back in 1667. So interesting!)
Buttermilk Spice Muffins
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
3 eggs
2 1/2 cups flour*
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
3/4 cup + 1 T buttermilk
Topping (optional):
2 T brown sugar
1 cup chopped walnuts, pecans or slivered almonds
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
* I substituted 2 1/2 cups of Pamela's Gluten Free Baking Mix for the flour and then omitted the baking soda. Other than a funny little sink-hole at the top of each muffin, this worked great.)
- Preheat oven to 350.
- Cream sugar and butter until fluffy. Add eggs and beat for 1 minute.
- In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg.
- Alternately add the dry ingredients and the buttermilk to the sugar/butter/egg mixture, mixing thoroughly after each addition. This keeps the batter from getting lumpy.
- Prepare muffin cups with paper liners or non-stick spray and pour in the batter. The recipe is supposed to make 12 regular sized muffins, but for some reason, it made 18 for me.
- The topping makes these muffins pretty sweet. If you use it, mix the ingredients and sprinkle a little on top of each muffin.
- Bake 20-25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.
I hope you all have a lovely Saturday!
And what better way to celebrate a frosty Saturday morning than with homemade muffins? I made these a few days ago and they re-heat beautifully. They have a nice dense, moist texture and are pretty heavy on the nutmeg, which makes me happy. A couple of years ago my mom, who is brilliant in the kitchen, discovered whole nutmeg. It looks like a small brown nut and you grate it using the fine part of a cheese grater. It makes the nutmeg flavor incredibly rich.
(And by the way, I chose that link above because of the nice picture of what whole nutmeg looks like, but the article with it is fascinating! If it is true, the Dutch literally traded the island of Manhattan with the British for nutmeg back in 1667. So interesting!)
Buttermilk Spice Muffins
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
3 eggs
2 1/2 cups flour*
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
3/4 cup + 1 T buttermilk
Topping (optional):
2 T brown sugar
1 cup chopped walnuts, pecans or slivered almonds
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
* I substituted 2 1/2 cups of Pamela's Gluten Free Baking Mix for the flour and then omitted the baking soda. Other than a funny little sink-hole at the top of each muffin, this worked great.)
- Preheat oven to 350.
- Cream sugar and butter until fluffy. Add eggs and beat for 1 minute.
- In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg.
- Alternately add the dry ingredients and the buttermilk to the sugar/butter/egg mixture, mixing thoroughly after each addition. This keeps the batter from getting lumpy.
- Prepare muffin cups with paper liners or non-stick spray and pour in the batter. The recipe is supposed to make 12 regular sized muffins, but for some reason, it made 18 for me.
- The topping makes these muffins pretty sweet. If you use it, mix the ingredients and sprinkle a little on top of each muffin.
- Bake 20-25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.
I hope you all have a lovely Saturday!
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Salsa de Tomatillo con Aguacate
(No... I have not spontaneously started speaking Spanish, but I felt fancy giving you the real name for the forthcoming recipe!)
A Mexican restaurant called Estella's opened up about 10 feet from our office building last summer. I actually don't care too much for the food, but oh, let me tell you about their creamy, spicy green dip! To a novice, it looks like a super smooth guacamole dip. But then you scoop up a nice dollup and to your surprise, it is tangy and complex and super spicy! I usually avoid really spicy food because I am a wimp can't taste anything beyond the heat. Not so with this sauce! It inspires me to bravery and I will sit and eat it until my eyes are tearing and my nose is dripping and my ears are smoking because it is just so incredibly YUMMY!
(Forgive me for being a little excessive with my exclamation points! This sauce gets me a little excited!)
As you might imagine, I have been intensely curious as to what is in this strange sauce. I have been entertaining visions of dancing homemade enchiladas smothered in this mysterious green sauce. But alas, the staff at Estella's have been closed-lipped! It was somebody's grandma's homemade recipe and they won't even tell me the basic ingredients.
So a few weeks ago, I embarked on a quest to see if I could figure it out on my own.
My first attempt was complete failure. I tried a base of mayo and sour cream and added in jalepenos, cilantro, avocado, garlic, lime juice and just a hint of wasabi. It was a decent sauce in its own right (especially on some broiled tuna steaks), but it was absolutely nothing like my beloved mystery sauce. After this attempt, I concluded that there should not be a "cream" in the base of of the sauce and that there should not be any wasabi.
After a few more completely necessary tasting exercises (wink, wink), I tried again last weekend. I have been "Googling" things like "creamy, spicy, green, mexican sauce" with no luck. It occurred to me one day that I have often seen tomatillos in Mexican food recipes but I have never tasted them. Since the mystery sauce has a flavor that I can't quite name, it made sense to me to start exploring some ingredients that I am not quite familiar with.
BINGO!
The recipe below, unfortunately, is not my mystery sauce, but after tasting tomatillos for the first time, I am certain that they make up one of the main ingredients in the longed-for sauce and I will keep experimenting with them. Despite the fact that the recipe below is not quite what I was looking for, it was surprisingly delicious and I have gotten all my coworkers hooked on it. Especially if you have never tried a tomatillo, I would encourage you to try out this recipe. They are tangy and tart, almost like a lime but without the "bite". I will definitely be exploring more ways to play with them.
Salsa de Tomatillo con Aguacate (Avocado)
2 garlic cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 small vidalia or other sweet onion
2-3 serrano chiles (I find serrano chilis to be a little unpredictable so start with one and increase if you want more heat)
1/2 lb tomatillos (6-8 average-sized), cut into quarters
1 ripe avocado
- Remove the tomatillo husks, rinse them off and cut them into quarters.
- Remove the stem and seeds from the chiles.
- In a food processor or blender, process the garlic and salt into a paste.
- With the processor running, add the onion, chiles, tomatillos and avocado. Puree until smooth and ENJOY!
I will be continuing my quest to re-create Estella's mystery green sauce and if I stumble on any more yummy recipes on the way, you can be sure that I will share!
A Mexican restaurant called Estella's opened up about 10 feet from our office building last summer. I actually don't care too much for the food, but oh, let me tell you about their creamy, spicy green dip! To a novice, it looks like a super smooth guacamole dip. But then you scoop up a nice dollup and to your surprise, it is tangy and complex and super spicy! I usually avoid really spicy food because I am a wimp can't taste anything beyond the heat. Not so with this sauce! It inspires me to bravery and I will sit and eat it until my eyes are tearing and my nose is dripping and my ears are smoking because it is just so incredibly YUMMY!
(Forgive me for being a little excessive with my exclamation points! This sauce gets me a little excited!)
As you might imagine, I have been intensely curious as to what is in this strange sauce. I have been entertaining visions of dancing homemade enchiladas smothered in this mysterious green sauce. But alas, the staff at Estella's have been closed-lipped! It was somebody's grandma's homemade recipe and they won't even tell me the basic ingredients.
So a few weeks ago, I embarked on a quest to see if I could figure it out on my own.
My first attempt was complete failure. I tried a base of mayo and sour cream and added in jalepenos, cilantro, avocado, garlic, lime juice and just a hint of wasabi. It was a decent sauce in its own right (especially on some broiled tuna steaks), but it was absolutely nothing like my beloved mystery sauce. After this attempt, I concluded that there should not be a "cream" in the base of of the sauce and that there should not be any wasabi.
After a few more completely necessary tasting exercises (wink, wink), I tried again last weekend. I have been "Googling" things like "creamy, spicy, green, mexican sauce" with no luck. It occurred to me one day that I have often seen tomatillos in Mexican food recipes but I have never tasted them. Since the mystery sauce has a flavor that I can't quite name, it made sense to me to start exploring some ingredients that I am not quite familiar with.
BINGO!
The recipe below, unfortunately, is not my mystery sauce, but after tasting tomatillos for the first time, I am certain that they make up one of the main ingredients in the longed-for sauce and I will keep experimenting with them. Despite the fact that the recipe below is not quite what I was looking for, it was surprisingly delicious and I have gotten all my coworkers hooked on it. Especially if you have never tried a tomatillo, I would encourage you to try out this recipe. They are tangy and tart, almost like a lime but without the "bite". I will definitely be exploring more ways to play with them.
Salsa de Tomatillo con Aguacate (Avocado)
2 garlic cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 small vidalia or other sweet onion
2-3 serrano chiles (I find serrano chilis to be a little unpredictable so start with one and increase if you want more heat)
1/2 lb tomatillos (6-8 average-sized), cut into quarters
1 ripe avocado
- Remove the tomatillo husks, rinse them off and cut them into quarters.
- Remove the stem and seeds from the chiles.
- In a food processor or blender, process the garlic and salt into a paste.
- With the processor running, add the onion, chiles, tomatillos and avocado. Puree until smooth and ENJOY!
I will be continuing my quest to re-create Estella's mystery green sauce and if I stumble on any more yummy recipes on the way, you can be sure that I will share!
Monday, February 15, 2010
Playing with fire...
Do you ever have days where you wonder if you are fit to be an adult? I am 28 years old and could have benefited today from adult supervision! I don't know where my brain was. I had fully THREE heat/fire related fiascos and all three were my own fault!
Sigh...
Fiasco #1: I was hoping to share a new recipe with you all for hot Cinnamon Pecan Quinoa Breakfast Cereal today. I have grown weary of my standard scrambled eggs and fruit and was super excited to try out this recipe. If you don't know what Quinoa is, hold out for future posts. I get on a bit of a soap box about it! Anyway... I put the quinoa on the stove to boil and left the room. I have done this on many occasions with no incident since quinoa cooks just like rice. However, my recipe called for water and milk (I used soy) and this addition of milk changed everything. I came back upstairs 15 minutes later to a kitchen filled with smoke and a horrible, bubbling, charred mess on the stove! Despite the chilly 30 degrees outside, I employed the fan, opened the kitchen window and door and it still smelled like smoke 5 hours later! YUCK!
Fiasco #2: While waiting for the kitchen to air out, my roommate and I went for a walk and then drove over to the gym where she is a member to sit in the hot tub. Now, this is a very fancy gym and they have an outdoor hot tub with a huge rectangular fire pit next to it. We were sitting and chatting quite happily in the tub when, quite unexpectedly, the smell of burnt marshmallows starts wafting towards us. Just as I heard another guest mention the smell, one of the men in the hot tub very calmly remarked that someone's towel was on fire. I turned and sure enough, I had set my towel on the side of the fire pit and when the pit turned on at noon (as I later learned that it does every day), my towel caught on fire. It was a strange moment, sitting there and wondering what to do about my flaming towel. I have never been very good in crisis. All common sense seems to abandon ship and I freeze. One of the men jumped out and grabbed my water bottle and scooping water out of the hot tub, put out the fire. I was a bit embarrassed! Who in their right mind drapes a towel over the top of a fire pit??! But I confess that I was also intrigued. Why in the world would a burning towel smell just like a toasted marshmallow?????!
Fiasco #3: You might think that I would have started to get an inkling by this point that this was not my day to be near powerful heat sources, but no. I decided to boil some water for tea this evening. It was an innocent enough venture. But on this most unlucky of days, I accidentally turned on the wrong burner and instead of heating my tea pot, I melted 1/2 of the plastic trivet that was sitting there! Okay... not exactly 1/2. But I am irritated and feel justified in being slightly dramatic.
I have decided to confine myself to my bedroom for the rest of the evening. I don't think I am safe to be roaming the house.
I will most definitely be attempting the quinoa cereal later this week and I am hoping to post an update that doesn't include smoke, ashes, flaming terry cloth or melting plastic!
Sigh...
Fiasco #1: I was hoping to share a new recipe with you all for hot Cinnamon Pecan Quinoa Breakfast Cereal today. I have grown weary of my standard scrambled eggs and fruit and was super excited to try out this recipe. If you don't know what Quinoa is, hold out for future posts. I get on a bit of a soap box about it! Anyway... I put the quinoa on the stove to boil and left the room. I have done this on many occasions with no incident since quinoa cooks just like rice. However, my recipe called for water and milk (I used soy) and this addition of milk changed everything. I came back upstairs 15 minutes later to a kitchen filled with smoke and a horrible, bubbling, charred mess on the stove! Despite the chilly 30 degrees outside, I employed the fan, opened the kitchen window and door and it still smelled like smoke 5 hours later! YUCK!
Fiasco #2: While waiting for the kitchen to air out, my roommate and I went for a walk and then drove over to the gym where she is a member to sit in the hot tub. Now, this is a very fancy gym and they have an outdoor hot tub with a huge rectangular fire pit next to it. We were sitting and chatting quite happily in the tub when, quite unexpectedly, the smell of burnt marshmallows starts wafting towards us. Just as I heard another guest mention the smell, one of the men in the hot tub very calmly remarked that someone's towel was on fire. I turned and sure enough, I had set my towel on the side of the fire pit and when the pit turned on at noon (as I later learned that it does every day), my towel caught on fire. It was a strange moment, sitting there and wondering what to do about my flaming towel. I have never been very good in crisis. All common sense seems to abandon ship and I freeze. One of the men jumped out and grabbed my water bottle and scooping water out of the hot tub, put out the fire. I was a bit embarrassed! Who in their right mind drapes a towel over the top of a fire pit??! But I confess that I was also intrigued. Why in the world would a burning towel smell just like a toasted marshmallow?????!
Fiasco #3: You might think that I would have started to get an inkling by this point that this was not my day to be near powerful heat sources, but no. I decided to boil some water for tea this evening. It was an innocent enough venture. But on this most unlucky of days, I accidentally turned on the wrong burner and instead of heating my tea pot, I melted 1/2 of the plastic trivet that was sitting there! Okay... not exactly 1/2. But I am irritated and feel justified in being slightly dramatic.
I have decided to confine myself to my bedroom for the rest of the evening. I don't think I am safe to be roaming the house.
I will most definitely be attempting the quinoa cereal later this week and I am hoping to post an update that doesn't include smoke, ashes, flaming terry cloth or melting plastic!
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Whipped Shea Butter Sugar Scrub
I have yet another bath recipe for you and this is definitely my favorite so far! I know it is a bit of a deviation to talk about bath products on a cooking blog however... I use recipes and I am always barefoot in my kitchen when I make them so I have decided that they still count!
This sugar scrub has only a handful of ingredients and was really quick to put together. Even better, applying it feels like slathering vanilla frosting all over your body and who wouldn't love that?!
Here you go:
Whipped Shea Butter Sugar Scrub
1/2 cup pure Shea Butter
1/3 cup oil (almond oil, jojoba oil, olive oil, etc. - I used almond oil)
1/8 tsp vitamin E oil (optional, but it will prolong the shelf life)
1 tsp corn starch (optional, but it will make it feel slightly less greasy)
fragrance
1/2 - 1 cup sugar (other choices might include salt, finely ground nuts or even coffee grounds)
- Place the shea butter in a mixing bowl and begin to beat with mixer until the butter is creamy (think whipped cream cheese). Be patient! This took about 5 minutes for the friction from the beaters to soften the shea butter.
- Gradually add the carrier oil a little at a time, mixing well after each addition. This is important or the butter will get lumpy.
- If you are adding vitamin E oil, do that next and then mix.
- If using, add the corn starch and fragrance next.
- Slowly mix in sugar until you achieve the desired consistency.
- Spoon into jars and then dash off to the shower to try your new creation!
A few other notes...
* Since I have become slightly obsessed with this stuff, I went ahead and purchased a few essential oils to use as fragrance. The shea butter and oil will not have any fragrance so if you want it to smell nice, you will need to add something. I heard somewhere that cooking extracts (like vanilla or almond or lemon) can be used for fragrance, but I don't know if that is true. If you use an essential oil, start with 1/4 teaspoon and then increase if you want it stronger.
* This has a wonderful consistency. Unlike the body butter I made, this stays creamy, even when stored in the freezing cold bathroom in my basement!
* You could definitely try this out as a regular lotion/cream by following all the instructions but leaving the sugar out!
Here's to smooth, silky skin in the dead of winter!
Happy Bathing!
This sugar scrub has only a handful of ingredients and was really quick to put together. Even better, applying it feels like slathering vanilla frosting all over your body and who wouldn't love that?!
Here you go:
Whipped Shea Butter Sugar Scrub
1/2 cup pure Shea Butter
1/3 cup oil (almond oil, jojoba oil, olive oil, etc. - I used almond oil)
1/8 tsp vitamin E oil (optional, but it will prolong the shelf life)
1 tsp corn starch (optional, but it will make it feel slightly less greasy)
fragrance
1/2 - 1 cup sugar (other choices might include salt, finely ground nuts or even coffee grounds)
- Place the shea butter in a mixing bowl and begin to beat with mixer until the butter is creamy (think whipped cream cheese). Be patient! This took about 5 minutes for the friction from the beaters to soften the shea butter.
- Gradually add the carrier oil a little at a time, mixing well after each addition. This is important or the butter will get lumpy.
- If you are adding vitamin E oil, do that next and then mix.
- If using, add the corn starch and fragrance next.
- Slowly mix in sugar until you achieve the desired consistency.
- Spoon into jars and then dash off to the shower to try your new creation!
A few other notes...
* Since I have become slightly obsessed with this stuff, I went ahead and purchased a few essential oils to use as fragrance. The shea butter and oil will not have any fragrance so if you want it to smell nice, you will need to add something. I heard somewhere that cooking extracts (like vanilla or almond or lemon) can be used for fragrance, but I don't know if that is true. If you use an essential oil, start with 1/4 teaspoon and then increase if you want it stronger.
* This has a wonderful consistency. Unlike the body butter I made, this stays creamy, even when stored in the freezing cold bathroom in my basement!
* You could definitely try this out as a regular lotion/cream by following all the instructions but leaving the sugar out!
Here's to smooth, silky skin in the dead of winter!
Happy Bathing!
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Sweet Potato Fries w/ Curry Ketchup
I have a new favorite snack! And there is a bit of a story behind it...
Nearly all of my friends like beer. In fact, a certain group of them LOVE beer. Their faces light up and their language gets animated and they gesticulate wildly when they talk about a particular beer called "Awaken" on tap at a little brewery here in town called Trinity. This group of friends spends a lot of time there. Unfortunately, I don't like beer. I would feel like a "cooler" person if I did and I have put forth a valiant effort to acquire a taste for it, but to no avail. I think the stuff is gross. So when we go to Trinity, the options for me are yummy snacks/appetizers (or if I want a drink, they keep a pear "beer" on tap but I have been told it is much too sweet and much too girly to actually qualify as beer!). One of these appetizers that we all like are the sweet potato fries w/ curry ketchup. I am not much of a sweet potato person, but I like these fries and even more so, I LOVE the curry ketchup. Really, if I am honest, the fries are just a vehicle for the sauce!
A couple weeks ago, my kitchen buddy, Megan, sent me a recipe that she had for sweet potato fries. I tried them on Friday night and they were a dismal failure. The ends burned and the middles were mushy. Undeterred by initial failure, I "Google'd" Sweet Potato Fries and lo and behold, there are some people with strong opinions and passions for these things out there! After a little research, I discovered that my mistake was letting these little fries touch each other in the pan. Apparently, sweet potatoes have a really high water content and so if the fries are touching each other, more water releases and it "steams" the fry and causes mushiness.
I tried them again this afternoon and carefully laid out each fry so that none of them were touching. It worked and I had a delightful batch of crisp-on-the-outside, warm-and-soft-on-the-inside Sweet Potato Fries. I added a little curry to my ketchup and TA-DA! I had one of my favorite snacks right here in my cozy house!
Sweet Potato Fries w/ Curry Ketchup
1 sweet potato, peeled and cut into fries
drizzle olive oil
1-2 tsp coarse sea salt
1 tsp rosemary
ketchup
curry powder
- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
- In a bowl, drizzle the fries with olive oil. Mix with your hands until the fries are lightly coated.
- Add the salt and rosemary and mix again. (I did 2 tsp of salt because I like things pretty salty. I would guess that most people would be satisfied with just 1 tsp or even less. I used fresh rosemary because we had it. Feel free to adjust the amount depending on how strong you want the rosemary to be)
- Lay the fries out on a cookie sheet. They can be close together but don't let them touch!
- Bake for 15 minutes. Turn the fries over. Bake for another 15-20 minutes. Watch them closely near the end as they will burn easily.
- Mix the curry with ketchup a little at a time until it tastes good to you.
- Serves 1-2 people
Enjoy!
(And for fun, below is a picture of my beer-loving friends at Trinity from last weekend!)
Nearly all of my friends like beer. In fact, a certain group of them LOVE beer. Their faces light up and their language gets animated and they gesticulate wildly when they talk about a particular beer called "Awaken" on tap at a little brewery here in town called Trinity. This group of friends spends a lot of time there. Unfortunately, I don't like beer. I would feel like a "cooler" person if I did and I have put forth a valiant effort to acquire a taste for it, but to no avail. I think the stuff is gross. So when we go to Trinity, the options for me are yummy snacks/appetizers (or if I want a drink, they keep a pear "beer" on tap but I have been told it is much too sweet and much too girly to actually qualify as beer!). One of these appetizers that we all like are the sweet potato fries w/ curry ketchup. I am not much of a sweet potato person, but I like these fries and even more so, I LOVE the curry ketchup. Really, if I am honest, the fries are just a vehicle for the sauce!
A couple weeks ago, my kitchen buddy, Megan, sent me a recipe that she had for sweet potato fries. I tried them on Friday night and they were a dismal failure. The ends burned and the middles were mushy. Undeterred by initial failure, I "Google'd" Sweet Potato Fries and lo and behold, there are some people with strong opinions and passions for these things out there! After a little research, I discovered that my mistake was letting these little fries touch each other in the pan. Apparently, sweet potatoes have a really high water content and so if the fries are touching each other, more water releases and it "steams" the fry and causes mushiness.
I tried them again this afternoon and carefully laid out each fry so that none of them were touching. It worked and I had a delightful batch of crisp-on-the-outside, warm-and-soft-on-the-inside Sweet Potato Fries. I added a little curry to my ketchup and TA-DA! I had one of my favorite snacks right here in my cozy house!
Sweet Potato Fries w/ Curry Ketchup
1 sweet potato, peeled and cut into fries
drizzle olive oil
1-2 tsp coarse sea salt
1 tsp rosemary
ketchup
curry powder
- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
- In a bowl, drizzle the fries with olive oil. Mix with your hands until the fries are lightly coated.
- Add the salt and rosemary and mix again. (I did 2 tsp of salt because I like things pretty salty. I would guess that most people would be satisfied with just 1 tsp or even less. I used fresh rosemary because we had it. Feel free to adjust the amount depending on how strong you want the rosemary to be)
- Lay the fries out on a cookie sheet. They can be close together but don't let them touch!
- Bake for 15 minutes. Turn the fries over. Bake for another 15-20 minutes. Watch them closely near the end as they will burn easily.
- Mix the curry with ketchup a little at a time until it tastes good to you.
- Serves 1-2 people
Enjoy!
(And for fun, below is a picture of my beer-loving friends at Trinity from last weekend!)
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