Sweet Potato Gnocchi

I absolutely love gnocchi but I may love sweet potato gnocchi even more. So sweet and tender, and versatile!

Sweet Potato Gnocchi
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 egg
salt and pepper, to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
2 1/4 cups all-purpose (plain) flour

Roast the potatoes in a 425◦F oven until tender, then continue cooking until it starts to become caramelized. Puree until smooth.
Allow to cool slightly before mixing in the egg and spices, then gradually stir in the flour until it forms a soft dough.
Divide dough into 4 pieces, and roll each out into a long, thin rope on a lightly floured surface.
Cut into 1/2 inch pieces.
Cook the gnocchi in boiling salted water until tender.

Cooking options:
#1 Serve as is, simply boiled
#2 Pan-fry gnocchi in butter or oil until crisp and evenly browned
#3 Toss the gnocchi in melted butter or oil in a pan and place under the broiler, flipping often until crisp

Serving options:
A) Serve plain - they are delicious as is!
B) Serve with a simple garnish such as a little melted butter, grated parmesan cheese, or fresh herbs
C) Serve with a sauce - mushroom sauce, cream sauce, or pesto

Sweet Potato Hummus

Want a really delicious hummus recipe? Amp up the flavor with some other additions - vegetables, herbs, spices, and condiments. Here is one of my favorites. I like to add sweet potato to the hummus, because not only do I love sweet potato and the sweetness it brings, but also because sweet potatoes are high in Vitamin C, and this helps your body to absorb all the iron in the chickpeas.

Sweet Potato Hummus
1 large sweet potato
3-4 garlic cloves
1 can (540mL)  chickpeas or white kidney or navy beans - I use no salt added
*this is approximately 2 cups of beans, so dried cooked beans can be substituted if desired
apple cider vinegar
ground ginger
paprika, just a dash
ground black pepper
Optional: lemon or lime juice, olive oil, salt

First, cook the veg. I recommend roasting the sweet potato to get that caramelized taste and sweetness, but if preferred it can also be boiled or steamed until tender.
To roast: my favorite way is to just shove it in the oven at a high temperature until it is soft and you begin to see spots turning brown and caramelizing, Then let it cool just enough to handle and peel off the skin, It can also be wrapped in foil, or peeled before hand, and even cut into pieces for a quicker roasting. Roast the garlic along with it, just remember the garlic won't take nearly as long as a whole potato and it burns easily.

Meanwhile, puree the beans until smooth. Then puree the sweet potato and garlic. Pureeing them separately, then adding them together, makes for optimal smoothness. Puree them together with the remaining ingredients, to taste. 

I prefer my hummus without oil, I also prefer a thicker consistency, but the sweet potato really helps to thin this hummus out without the need for added fat. I also used a lot of spice, so I found I did not even need salt! Now that's a healthy and tasty party dip!

Sweet Potato Custard

Sweet Potato Coconut Custard + Cranberry Hazelnut Granola + Maple Syrup Reduction + Melon Pearls + Pickled Chutney + Microgreens

Sweet Potato Coconut Custard
450 grams sweet potato, baked with skin on until tender, then peeled and puréed
400mL canned coconut milk
2-4 Tablespoons maple syrup
2 Tablespoons agar agar

Whisk the warm sweet potato purée and milk together in a small saucepan. Whisk in the syrup and agar agar. Bring to a boil over gentle heat, stirring often. Allow to boil for a minute or two until slightly thickened. Pour into a baking sheet lined with parchment paper (size depends upon how thick or thin you would like your custard to be). Chill until set, in the freezer if you would like it to set faster. Cut into desired shapes while still firm, and allow to soften and come to room temperature to serve. Can be stored refrigerated or frozen.

Rustic Sweet Potato Pistachio Bread

Rustic Sweet Potato Pistachio Bread
approximately two medium sweet potatoes
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 Tablespoons tahini or nut butter
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 Tablespoon sweetener of choice (blackstrap molasses, maple syrup, sugar, etc.)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 - 1/2 cup chopped pistachios (peeled if desired)
nondairy milk or water, as needed

First cook the sweet potatoes. Peeled sweet potatoes are best for this recipe, though when I can I do like to eat the peel as well - it is full of fiber!
I think roasted sweet potatoes are best for this recipe as they caramelize in the oven, but boiled, steamed, or microwaved will work just as well. They just need to be cooked until they are soft enough to mash. A few chunks are ok, it doesn't have to be completely smooth. This step can be done in advance or make use of leftover sweet potato.

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix until no dry flour remains. Mixture should have the consistency of wet drop biscuits, if it is too dry, add liquid a little at a time. Pat mixture onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. If you want a less rustic look, pat it into an 8-inch round pan, or try an 8x8 inch square pan. Or drop in individual biscuits if you wish (baking time will be shorter). Bake at 400◦F for abut 30 minutes or until bread is cooked through. Great warm or cold!

This is a really easy and nutritious quickbread or biscuit recipe. I love the combination of sweet potato and pistachio, making the bread both moist and crunchy! It's also vegan.

Irish Lamb Stew

There is nothing more satisfying than a hearty, nutritious stew on a cold day. Beef stew is good, but lamb adds a little something special and different. This is an easy stew to make and quite forgiving. If you have a homemade beef or even lamb stock on hand, be sure to use that. The sweet potatoes help to flavor and thicken the stew, but you can add more stock for a thinner stew. I served this stew in bread bowls, and it is pictured below in one of them, surrounded by the delicious, hollowed-out bread pieces. 

Irish Lamb Stew
6 center loin lamb chops, cut into small cubes
all-purpose (plain) flour
2 Tablespoons oil
3 medium carrots, in rondelles
2 medium onions, medium dice
1 large sweet potato, large dice
salt and ground black pepper, to taste
garlic powder and dried rosemary, to taste
lamb stock, beef stock, or water plus beef bouillon seasoning, brought to a boil
1 can peas

Dredge the lamb in the flour. Heat the oil in a large pot, then sear the lamb until browned well on both sides. Stir in the carrots, onion, and sweet potato until well coated in oil. Allow to sweat, without browning, for a few minutes. 
Stir in the spices, then pour the hot stock over top, enough to fully cover the contents of the pot. Bring to a boil.
Simmer for approximately 1 1/2 hours until stew is well thickened. Stir in the peas.

Turkey Pot Pie

Turkey Pot Pie
1 large carrot, sliced
2 medium sweet potatoes, in small cubes
1 tablespoon margarine
1 small onion, diced
1 1/4 cups chicken broth
2 Tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 cup skim milk
salt and pepper, to taste
2 cups cut-up cooked turkey
1 can peas
CRUST
1 cup all-purpose (plain) flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon margarine
1/3 cup sour cream
3 Tablespoons milk

Preheat oven to 350◦F. 
Boil the carrots and sweet potato until tender. Alternately, use frozen vegetables. 
In a small saucepan, sauté the onion in the butter until tender. Mix 1/4 cup of broth with the cornstarch, then add remaining broth and milk, salt, and pepper. Boil for one minute. Stir in the turkey and vegetables. Spoon mixture into an 8x8-inch square pan.

CRUST: In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cut in the margarine. Mix sour cream and milk until smooth and stir into mixture. Knead dough lightly on a floured surface. Pat into an eight inch square, then cut into four equal squares. 

Place crust over turkey mixture. Bake for about 30 minutes, until mixture is hot and biscuit is golden. 

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving everyone! We had our big turkey dinner yesterday, and decided to make a turkey pot pie with the leftovers today for a little something different  - homey and comforting. The vegetables may be varied as you wish. Chicken would work for this recipe as well. The crust is really easy to put together and the pie is simple to assemble because it only has a top crust, but it is very flaky and delicious. 

Crocker, Betty. "Turkey Pot Pie." Recipe. Low-Fat Low-Cholesterol, New York: MacMillan, 1991. 89.

Moroccan Vegetable Tagine

Moroccan Vegetable Tagine

1 teaspoon olive oil

½ white onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1 white potato, cubed

½ large sweet potato, cut into short sticks

1 carrot, cut into short sticks

1 teaspoon ground ginger

½ teaspoon cumin

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ can diced tomatoes, undrained

½ can chickpeas, rinsed

2 cups vegetable broth

¼ teaspoon turmeric

¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the next eight ingredients and cook for ten minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook for two minutes. Add the chickpeas, broth, turmeric, and pepper and bring to a boil. Simmer for 30 minutes.

This is an easy vegan supper dish that does not require too much attention, and fills the air with a spicy aroma while it simmers. It is a hearty dish for a cold night, and with two types of potatoes, it makes a very substantial full meal. There are plenty of vegetables in it and some chickpeas for protein. This could be served alone as a complete dish, or with a side salad, bread, rice, pasta, or meat side dish. 

Fall Vegetable Curry

This is a quick and nutritious one pan meal that tantalizes with its spicy aroma. This is a vegan recipe, and is chock full of vegetables and lean protein. It is perfect served over a bed of rice. It is not too spicy, so increase the amount of spice if you wish. You can also add more tomatoes or broth if you like your curry to have more of a stew-like consistency. 

Fall Vegetable Curry

1 teaspoon olive oil

1 package firm tofu, drained and cut into 1 inch cubes

½ large sweet potato, cubed

½ head cauliflower, chopped

½ small white onion, chopped

2 teaspoons curry powder

½ cup vegetable broth

½ can chickpeas, rinsed

½ can diced tomatoes, drained

cilantro, for garnish

Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the tofu and sweet potato and sauté for three minutes. Add the cauliflower, onion, and curry powder and sauté for a few minutes. Stir in the broth, chickpeas, and tomatoes and bring to a boil. Simmer for ten minutes. Garnish with cilantro. Makes about four servings served over a bed of rice, couscous, or quinoa. 

Pain Patate

I recently did some research on Haiti, and in particular national dishes of Haiti. I found four national plates, but I decided to make this one because it sounded the tastiest. This is called Pain Patate, which literally means potato bread, but it is more like a pudding, and in some cases is even more cake-like. It is made with sweet potatoes, which work well in baked goods just like pumpkin or zucchini would. It also contains banana and coconut milk, typical flavors of Haiti. In addition, it contains a nice blend of spices. I left out the cinnamon, nutmeg, and lemon. It tasted pretty good warm from the oven, if you like sweet potato that is. Coconut is also a prevalent flavor. The texture was a bit softer than I expected, but it is pudding, so I guess that makes sense. Nonetheless, it was interesting to try a dish from a different country and appreciate new flavors, as well as what we have here. This dish would be more like a vegetable side dish for me, but it is sweet enough to be a dessert too! I bet it would even work as a breakfast dish.

Pain Patate
2 pounds sweet potatoes, cooked and grated
1 large banana, mashed
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
grated rind of 1 lemon
1 Tablespoon butter, melted
1 1/2 cups coconut milk
1 1/2 cup evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Add all ingredients to a large bowl, one at a time, in order given, stirring well after each addition. Pour into a 9x13 inch baking pan. Bake at 375◦F for 90 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Broad Bean Soup

Since we were asked to look after a friend's large garden while they are away, and were told to help ourselves to whatever we wanted. Well, actually we were encouraged to pick any vegetables that were ready. The garden is fairly big and varied, it includes peas, beans, lettuce, cabbage, rhubarb, carrots, squash, tomatoes, etc. Upon our last visit, we discovered that the broad beans were ready and plentiful, so we had to pick them. Now, what exactly do you do with pounds of broad beans, especially if you have never even eaten broad beans before? They aren't exactly the kind of vegetable you eat fresh and raw, they also aren't very exciting just boiled and served either. My father, who used to eat a lot of broad beans as a child, came up with the idea to make broad bean soup. My grandmother often makes a really good bean soup, not with broad beans but with other beans. So my father kind of used this idea to make something similar. He boiled up a lot of broad beans with some carrot, onion, sweet potato, and some other ingredients. Once cooked, he pureed it with a hand blender. The result was a thick, broad bean soup. It was relatively bland, a few garlic cloves, or other spices would have probably helped it out a bit, but we didn't have any on hand (this soup was a spur of the moment thing). Also, the chopped onion was added near the end, so it did not get pureed. I kind of like the little extra texture this added, but my father wasn't a fan of it. We also debated whether or not to add pasta, but as it was a side dish, decided against it. A little spaghetti or other pasta would have been good in it though. Overall, it's not a bad soup, just not one you can eat large quantities of in one sitting. And it certainly solved the problem of what to do with all of the broad beans. But we still have some beans left. Any ideas?

Slow Cooked Root Vegetables

This is a nice vegetable dish to make in the wintertime, when there aren't many vegetables in season, the ones that are in season aren't all that appealing on their own, fresh vegetables don't have the best flavor, and hot, slow-cooked dishes are the way to go. This recipe combines equal amounts of carrots, parsnips and turnips with some sweet potato and onion. They are flavored with olive oil, salt, pepper, brown sugar and parsley. All of the vegetables are cut into approximate one inch chucks, seasoned, and thrown into the slow cooker. Simple, easy, and no work after the vegetables are prepared. This side dish makes a nice accompaniment to any meal. I was a little bit skeptical when my father first pulled out this recipe, but he really pulled it off. Not bad at all for a dish of cooked winter vegetables! I really wish I had remembered to take a picture of these vegetables when they were still in the crock pot right before they were served, as they looked very lovely presented that way. But I didn't, so here is a picture of them in a bowl.

Christmas Dinner

Here is a picture of one of the plates of the amazing Christmas dinner my family and I had the great privilege of enjoying yesterday. My grandmother prepared most of this delicious food. She did have some help, as it would be nearly impossible to prepare such an excellent meal alone, but she did a lot of the work herself, and always made sure everyone's plate was full and everyone was satisfied. Our Christmas dinner included: peas, carrots, coleslaw, sweet potato, mashed potato, pickles, cranberry sauce, rolls, stuffing, gravy, and of course, turkey. This dinner was prepared for nearly twenty people. That's no small feat! The coleslaw, the gravy, and the cranberry sauce were all homemade from scratch by my grandmother. The vegetables were freshly prepared, cooked, and seasoned. And the turkey was freshly roasted.  We certainly indulged in a divine Christmas dinner, and I haven't even said a word about the delicious desserts...

Roast Pork Tenderloin and Mushroom Dinner

Here was tonight's supper: a roasted pork tenderloin cooked with mushrooms, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, and cooked in a creamy mushroom sauce. It was very easy and efficient to make, since the entire meal cooks together in one dish. The various aspects cooked beautifully together, and cleanup was a breeze. I found the recipe in a 2011 calender. The only big changes I made was to use two small pork tenderloin "quick roasts" because that is what I found at the grocery store, and to add an extra sweet potato.

Roast Pork Tenderloin and Mushroom Dinner
1 large pork tenderloin, trimmed (about 1 lb/500g)
2 medium white potatoes, cut in 3/4 inch chunks
2 medium sweet potatoes, cut in 3/4 inch chunks
salt and pepper
1 tbsp butter
8 oz (250g) mushrooms, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion, chopped
1 1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
1 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
1 tbsp Dijon mustard

Preheat oven to 375◦F. Butter a 9x13 inch baking dish. Place pork in center, tucking thin end underneath. Arrange potatoes around pork, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a large skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Add mushrooms, garlic, onion, paprika, and 1/4 tsp each salt and pepper. Saute until mushrooms are browned, about 8 minutes. Stir in broth and mustard. Whisk flour into milk, stir into pan and bring to a boil. Boil, stirring for 1 minute.

Pour sauce over pork in pan, roast 10 to 15 minutes longer, or until a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the pork registers 160◦F. Let rest 5 minutes, before cutting pork crosswise into thin slices. Serve with a scoop of mushrooms and potatoes and a drizzle of sauce. 

 "Roast Pork Tenderloin and Mushroom Dinner.” http://www.dairygoodness.ca/recipes/roast-pork-tenderloin-and-mushroom-dinner. Dairy Goodness, n.d. Sunday, December 4, 2011. 

Potatoes: Sweet versus White

Ahh, potatoes! The ultimate comfort food. I have already bored you in a previous post with all of the diferent ways you can prepare them. Now I am talking about the different varieties of potatoes. White and sweet potatoes are by far the most popular two, but there are many more kinds, including red, blue, baby, new, russet, fingerling, etc. Potatoes are considered both vegetables and healthy starches. White potatoes often receive a bad name, highly due to the recent craze of the low-carb diet. Sweet potatoes contain more vitamin A and vitamin C and have less of an effect on blood sugar than white potatoes, but otherwise the two are pretty similar. White potatoes are generally available year-round while sweet potatoes have a much shorter season, so I like to indulge in sweet potatoes while I can. My favourite way to enjoy them: sweet potato fries. They are so simple to make and go well with almost any meal. All you need to do is cut sweet potato into fry-like wedges, add some oil and salt, and bake. Much better than getting them frozen!

Pan Fried Haddock, Asparagus, & Sweet Potato Fries

This was tonight's delicious supper. It is incredibly simple, yet tasty. Just dredge some haddock fillets in some flour, dip in beaten egg, coat with breadcrumbs and pan fry. Slice a few sweet potatoes into wedges, add some oil, salt, and pepper, as desired, and bake at 350◦F - 425◦F for 30-60 minutes, until desired crispness. Cook up some fresh asparagus spears to go with it, and you've got yourself a marvelous supper! Not difficult at all. I particularly enjoyed this meal because I am a huge fish fan, I really enjoy sweet potatoes, especially as a change from the standard white potatoes, and I love in-season vegetables such as asparagus. Bon appetit!