Mashed Sweet Potatoes and Roasted Broccoli

Hi All - my first night home in a long time. I wanted comfort food and I wanted to use what we had in the fridge & pantry: broccoli and sweet potatoes. So I chose Garlic Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Coconut Milk and Garlic (p. 317) and Roasted Broccoli (p. 285.)

Each was easy prep - peel and chunk the potatoes, slice the broccoli and peel the stalks.

The potatoes were cooked in coconut milk, 1 minced garlic clove and a dash of red pepper flakes. The broccoli was tossed with EVOO, s&p, and a little sugar. (SUGAR!)

The broccoli did brown nicely but I thought I tasted sugar; Vaden didn't taste it. I thought the coco milk made the potatoes too sweet. Vaden didn't. Vaden's dinner was served with store-bought (gasp) meatloaf and mine was served with a Quorn chicken patty.

I would not make either recipe as written again.

And just for fun - here I am eating a Wellfleet oyster last night in Boston where I was visiting granddaughter Sarah.

Butternut Squash Risotto, pp. 172-173

We’re back again! This recipe called to us on a cloudy, rainy day. Start to finish it took about an hour and a half. Here’s the finished product:

It tasted delicious, with a really nice sage/cheese/squash combination. An interesting trick the recipe used was to cook the seeds and fibers from the squash with the vegetable stock, then strain, to add flavor to the dish. Bruce fried up some leftover sage leaves for a garnish.

Steps along the way included frying the squash

and frying onions and then browning the Arborio rice before deglazing the pan

I liked the straight-sided pan better for this dish, and myself would have used one with higher sides. But, it didn’t boil over so I can’t complain.

This definitely made enough for 6 servings. Happy cooking!

North African Vegtable and Bean Stew, p.103-4

Greetings!  I made this hearty soup as my first foray into the book.  Warm spices and nice and savory for a winter night.  I’m considering it a success.
I noticed that a lot of the recipes call for small amounts of tomato paste, so I bought a tube to keep on hand.

I also bought chard for the first time.   Other than all the chopping the recipe comes together really quickly.  This pasta wasn’t called ditalini, but I believe it’s close to being that.  

The soup took about an hour from start to finish, with about half an hour of active time.  I used 4 cups of broth and 3 cups of water and I don’t think this hurt the final flavor at all.  The finished project had a lot of flavor, not all just spice. 

I should have chopped the chard leaves smaller as some of the pieces ended up too long, like spaghetti noodles. This soup turns out to be vegan. But I ate it with cheese and crackers, which was a great counterpart.  The leftovers will make a great lunch.  Bam!

Cheesy Stuffed Poblanos - p.51-52

Well we begin again. This seemed like a good dish for a snow day. Our house smells fantastic now that the peppers are baking in the oven.

Prep was easy. The beans and onions and water cooked down just about as fast as they said; we were surprised. The peppers from the market were beautiful and glossy.  The recipe said to microwave the peppers for 2.5 minutes to soften them up a bit - a very good trick.

Don’t they look amazing?

The only frustration so far was the recipe pages themselves required turning back and forth (two sides of one page rather than facing pages); with wet hands kind of a pain. But the cookbook is getting that used look and feel, so that is good, right? 

And the finished dish. The tomato salsa helps balance the dish with an acid component (p.43).

Super yummy. It was a lot of food. Maybe I would eat just one big one next time. :-) They are way less greasy than chile relleno. 

Welcome!

We are cooking with America's Test Kitchen's "The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook."