Jessica's sweet potato chickpea peanut stew - an easy winter meal

This recipe (from my friend Jessica) comes together so fast, is made in one pot (or crock pot), requires little chopping, and brings together delicious flavors. A real winner I keep making over and over since she first shared it with me. If you have some ginger, garlic, and a sweet potato on hand, you can probably make this with stuff you have in your pantry.

• 1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed (or about 2 cups from frozen)
• 1 sweet potato, cubed (I used 2)
• 1 1/2 t. curry powder
• 1/2-3/4 t. garam masala (depending on how spicy you like it)
• 1 t. cumin
• 1 T. minced ginger
• 2-3 cloves minced garlic
• dash of cinnamon
• 1 14 oz. can fire roasted tomatoes, in juice
• 1 can light coconut milk
• 2 c. vegetable stock (or 1 if using crock pot)
• 2 T. natural peanut butter
• 1/2 c. red lentils, drained and rinsed (can substitute quinoa, if desired)

Combine everything in a soup pot, bring to a boil, let boil for about 15-20 minutes, then put on low and simmer for about 1 hr. It's finished when the potatoes are nice and tender (and falling apart). If you have a crock pot, turn it on high for an hour, and then let it cook on low for 2-3 hours (or low 4 hours).

sweet potato macaroni and cheese

I didn't get a photo of this dish since we made it at night and mac and cheese does not photograph well... However, it is worth posting the recipe because of how easy it was, and good. The leftovers also re-heated well. The recipe is adapted from Eating Well, Sweet Potato Mac & Cheese. I found their recipe made way too much sauce, so we ended up making an extra cup of noodles, which evened things out. The recipe below is adjusted for that. If you want to make a smaller batch, you could make 2 cups of the pasta, and reduce milk to 1 cup. Eating Well notes that the "bright orange color tricks your eyes into thinking this healthy macaroni and cheese recipe is loaded with cheese, but there’s actually only about half as much cheese as compared to a traditional recipe." So there you go, healthy, and winter comfort. And most macaroni dishes require baking the whole dish to set, but this one you just pop under the broiler. And it was creamy and delicious. If you have a baked sweet potato already, this comes together in under 30 minutes.

photo from Eating Well

ingredients: 
3 cups whole-wheat elbow noodles
1-2 medium sweet potatoes (depending on how large - there's room for error here)

2 cups milk (nonfat or 2%, whatever you have on hand)
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 small clove garlic, minced
1 1/4 cups shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

3 tablespoons coarse dry whole-wheat breadcrumbs (homemade are best*)
1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil

(optional: 1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed)

*Jessica taught me how to make breadcrumbs with the days-old bread rinds: pulse in food processor and store in freezer. 

get ready:

cookie sheet with foil

big pot for boiling noodles

saucepan for making cheese sauce

greased lasagne pan

1. Roast the sweet potatoes in the oven (wrapped in foil or on foil sheet, at 400 for about 45 mins) until soft when pierced through. (While you're doing this, you might want to make a few for the rest of the week.) This can be done in advance. 

2. Cook noodles according to package directions, about 7-9 minutes, and then drain and set aside. 

3. Whisk flour, milk, garlic in a saucepan. Heat until steaming but don't let it burn or boil. When sweet potato is cool, scoop out and add to milk mixture and puree using an immersion blender (or do it all in the blender). Be careful because it's a bit thick and splashes. Add cheese, mustard, salt and pepper and stir until combined. (And add peas if you wish.) Combine with the noodles, mix everything, and then pour into a greased lasagne-sized glass baking dish. 

4. In a small bowl, combine breadcrumbs and olive oil, and mix. Sprinkle on top of macaroni. Put under the broiler until crispy, 1-2 minutes. (Always watch the broiler!)

holiday side dishes: cranberry-chipotle sweet potatoes

I have my friend Anne to thank for this tip. She has a fun habit of cooking her way through issues of Cooking Light magazine and then saving the good recipes in a binder. I like the idea, but I don't think I could ever be that methodical. Instead I accumulate cookbooks and then cook mostly from the internet. :) Anyways, this is one gem she passed along to me, a recipe by Mark Bittman. Super festive looking, and delicious. Make these for a holiday feast, or just to spice up your winter plate.

eggplant, tempeh and sweet potato roasted with maple glaze

This is a recipe from Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Every Day, which I have made a few times and really enjoyed each time. I feel like I'm on a race this week to use vegetables - either before they go bad or before we get the next CSA installment (on Thursday already!) and we start drowning in vegetables. It's good. This is the best part of the CSA. You have to try new things, have to cook and eat more vegetables. This felt like a bit of a fall/winter dish, but it was a crisp 60-something degrees outside today, and I had eggplant to cook. :)

I love the colors when chopping everything for this dish. The eggplant is such a beautiful purple color, it always makes me a little sad how it turns brown when it cooks.

ingredients:
1-2 eggplant (I used 2 of these long skinny Chinese eggplant)
8 oz package of tempeh
1 sweet potato
zest of 1 lemon
glaze: mix together 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup maple syrup, some red pepper flakes, and 2-3 cloves pressed garlic (depending on how garlicky you want it...), salt and pepper
garnish: cilantro, plus feta (non-vegan version)

instructions: Preheat oven to 350. Cut the tempeh and sweet potato into 1/2-inch cubes, and the eggplant slightly larger (it cooks faster), about 1-inch cubes. Toss with lemon zest and about 2/3 of the glaze. Roast in the oven about 45-50 minutes, stirring halfway through. When all vegetables are soft, toss with the rest of the glaze and add some cilantro and feta.

This makes a great packed lunch!

This is me playing around on the internet... :)

sweet potato and pulled pork hash

This was me finally using up the last of the pork from our taco night. It was still really delicious. I think I want to make a big chunk of pork once a month. :) This would make a great brunch dish, or weekend breakfast. In our case, it was a thrown-together dinner, but hey, that was good, too. I first roasted the sweet potato (1 large, cubed) with some onion (about 1/2 red onion, diced) and olive oil in a hot oven (about 450, with a sprinkle of paprika and cumin, salt and pepper). Roast about 20 minutes, until soft and starting to brown. Then I added it to an oven-proof skillet with the pork (about 1 1/2 cups), heated it up over a medium flame, and finished it off in the oven with some eggs and some cheese (queso fresco). Cook until the eggs are done (about 10 minutes). Season with salt and pepper and serve with hot sauce.

spicy sweet potato and black bean taco filling (vegan)

Sorry there's a lot going on in this photo. It's the taco filling, with some salsa, pickled onions, and queso fresco on top. Yum yum. I made this filling for taco night as a vegetarian option (also vegan without the cheese on top). You can vary the spice by adding more or less jalapeno and chipotles in adobo. 

red flannel hash for Easter brunch

 This was my contribution to today's brunch at Peter and Katie's. It was an amazing spread - so much good food: a citrus salad, bacon biscuits, two kinds of frittata, roasted spiced potatoes, another roasted vegetable dish with purple (!) brussels sprouts, scones, cinnamon rolls...mmm...

I first had red flannel hash at the Duluth Grill. It was so pretty and I loved the idea of adding beets to breakfast hash. I think it's important to first roast the vegetables, so they get that sweet roasted taste, and then saute them with the bacon and onion to get them crispy and get a little bacon flavor. But of course the vegetarian version is good, too. If you add a poached egg it's a more substantial breakfast/brunch, or even lunch or dinner. :)

ingredients: sweet potatoes and/or regular potatoes, beets, carrots, onion, bell pepper
chop everything into roughly 1/2-inch dice. 
make: roast vegetables in oven, tossed with olive oil, thyme*, rosemary, salt, pepper
This can be done the day before - roast all the vegetables, then re-heat in a pan the next day. 
in a pan: sautee the bacon if using, then add vegetables and cook till hot, stirring.

*thyme tip: it can be difficult to peel thyme off the fragile stems. If roasting vegetables in the oven, just put the fresh thyme sprigs on top of the vegetables. They dry out and the leaves fall off the stem; those that don't can be easily crumbled off after baking. 

spicy lentil and sweet potato stew with chipotles

Here's another one from the New York Times recipes for health... a spicy lentil stew with sweet potatoes. I got sweet potatoes of the white variety...by accident. They look the same as the orange ones from the outside (or very similar). But I started to peel it and it was white inside. Diane Morgan explains in Roots, there are two main kinds of sweet potatoes, the "soft," orange variety that "cooks up soft and moist," and the "firm" variety with "creamy white or yellow flesh that remains mealy and relatively firm." And let's clear up for once and for all...

What is the difference between sweet potatoes and yams?
Diane Morgan: "The firm variety was already being grown in the United States when the soft-fleshed type was introduced. To distinguish them, the latter were called yams because they resembled the unrelated African yam of the genus Dioscorea, and the term stuck."
Sweet potatoes: many varieties, including garnet, jewel (soft, moist-fleshed), but also Jersey, white Triumph, Kotobuki, Okinawa (firm, mealy).  People call the orange ones yams, but they are not yams. 
Yams: at least as old as the Jurassic era...they are most often an "oblong tuber with a rough, sometimes barklike skin and a starchy flesh that is hard and brittle when raw but quite tender, even creamy, when cooked." (Diane Morgan) Some varieties can weigh as much as 100 pounds!

Sweet potatoes were brought to Spain by Christopher Columbus - nearly a half century before the potato. Portuguese traders brought them to India and China.

Mexican Chicken and Potato Stew served with Green Rice

 Tonight I was cooking as my friend Katie's sous chef in her amazing kitchen. Peter was pouring the wine. Raffa was just being super cute. :) My friends are all better cooks than I am, truly, and I love learning new ingredients and flavors I had never known from them. Tonight I discovered the flavors of chipotles in adobo sauce.  There are some meals that photos can just do no justice. Make this. If you're vegetarian, it would be good without the chicken. The flavors are just so unique, and so warming. The pineapple is a wonderful surprise.