Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes with Chicken...

Twice-baked Sweet Potatoes with Chicken

This was an off-the-cuff experiment, and they were fabulous and very filling!  I'm putting recipe here so I can remember how next time!  I didn't serve anything with these, but a salad would go nicely.

Ingedients:

2 or 3 frozen chicken thighs

2 or 3 strips bacon

2 large or 3 medium sweet potatoes

2 Tablespoons butter

1/4 cup sour cream

1 Tablespoon Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix

1 teaspoon of Tajin seasoning

1/2 cup Monterrey Jack cheese

Directions:

Lay the frozen chicken thighs side by side in bottom of slow cooker.  Lay strips of bacon across the tops of the chicken.  Set on Low for 4 hours.

When the chicken has been cooking for 3 hours, flip the chicken and bacon, so that the bacon is resting on bottom of slow cooker, and chicken is on top of it, and continue cooking for remaining time.  Wash and place the sweet potatoes on a foil lined baking sheet.  Cover with foil, and place in a 350° F oven for 50 minutes.  (Rather than individually wrapping the potatoes, the bottom and top covers simplify the preparation later.)  At the end of 50 minutes remove from oven and set aside the top layer of foil.  Pierce the sweet potatoes to be sure they are cooked through, if they are, place them on what was the top layer of foil, then pick up the foil and potatoes and place over the first piece of foil on baking sheet.  This is just to make sure that any sweet juices that leaked from the potatoes during baking won't harden and make potatoes stick to that first layer of foil.  Let sit for a few minutes while you use a fork to shred chicken and bacon,

Slice one long side of each sweet potato and scoop out most of the flesh (leaving about 1/4 inch to line the skin) and place flesh in a medium size bowl and mash.  Add the remaining ingredients (except for the chicken/bacon) to the bowl and stir to combine.  Add the flesh back to the skins, top with shredded chicken and bacon, and sprinkle a little more cheese on top.  Return to the 350° oven for about 10 minutes or till heated through and cheese on top is melted.  Enjoy!

Kale Salad Dressing

Tonight's supper was kale salad with wild rice, roasted vegetables, and salmon. (And avocado, because I love avocado with any kind of salad).  

Wash and trim kale.  It is SO good with a hot salad dressing poured over it, and plating with  roasted vegetables and a grain.  I'll put the dressing recipe at the end of this post.

The roasted vegetables included butternut squash, carrots, beets, red onion, and mushrooms (both white and baby bellas).  The firmer vegetables I cut a little smaller than the mushrooms.  I put them all in a single layer on a foil lined baking sheet and drizzled on olive oil, salt and pepper, and about a tablespoon of soy sauce (to harmonize with the soy in the kale dressing) and tossed them by hand on the baking sheet.  I popped them in a 425° F oven and let roast for about 20 minutes, then stirred and returned to oven for another ten to 15 minutes.  When I took the vegetables out of the oven, I put the salmon in at same temperature setting.

Once the salmon was done, I assembled the plates starting with a bed of kale, topping that with some wild rice, topping the rice with baked salmon, then placing roasted vegetables and sliced avocado around the plate perimeter.  So, so delicious.  And enough left over to make two bowls for lunches, without the salmon, but just as filling and just as yummy cold.

Kale Salad Dressing (from Green Vegetarian Cuisine)

In a small saucepan, combine:

1/4 cup oil (I used olive oil)

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced or crushed

2 Tablespoons of soy sauce

1 Tablespoon of red pepper flakes

Simmer for 3 minutes over medium heat, stirring frequently.  Remove from heat and immediately pour over kale in a large bowl.  Toss and let it sit while you get other ingredients finished up.

Zuppa Toscana, aka Tuscan Coddle...

 

Kasey made Zuppa Toscana for Sunday family supper a month or so ago.  We all liked it, and Jared, noting the similarities to our favorite Dublin Coddle, asked if it was Tuscan Coddle, so that's how I think of it now.  Kasey texted me the link to the recipe found at 40 Aprons.  Their version is Full 30 compliant.

The original recipe calls for link sausage sliced in rounds, but I had ground italian sausage which I needed to use.  In fact I made several additions/substitutions based on what we had on hand and/or needed to be used up.   My added/substituted ingredients are marked by an " * " below.

Ingredients:

• 6 slices bacon
• 1 pound Italian ground sausage*
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 pound new red potatoes, halved or quartered to bite size*
• 6 corn on the cob mini ears cut into 2 or 3 rounds*
• 4 cups chicken stock
• salt, pepper, garlic powder* to taste
• 2 tsp Italian seasoning

• 4 cups milk*
• 1/2 cup sour cream* 
• handfuls of fresh baby spinach*

Directions:  

Cook the bacon and sausage until done.  Drain some of the rendered fat, then add the onion and cook till translucent.  Place in slow cooker and add potatoes, corn, chicken stock, and spices.  Cook 4 hours on high.  Temper the milk (if using sour cream, whisk it into milk first) by adding a little hot broth to the milk in stages to warm the milk up enough so that it doesn't break (curdle) when added to the soup pot.  Then add the baby spinach, and continue cooking for about 15 minutes.

Beef & Winter Vegetable Stew...

My recipe was inspired by a recipe from Mary Roe, a friend of a friend.  Her version had only sweet potato and cranberries with the meat .  I love winter vegetables, and thought that more vegetables could only make it better.  This has some sweetness with the sweet potatoes, parsnips, cranberries, and cider.  The salty base of the French Onion soup is a good balance.

Ingredients:

1 to 2 pounds beef stew meat

1 leek, sliced thin

1 small to medium onion, sliced thin

4 to 6 parsnips, peeled and sliced

1 rutabaga, peeled and cubed

1 sweet potato, peeled and cubed

1 to 2 medium white potatoes, cubed (I used multi-colored new potatoes whole)

1/2 cup fresh cranberries

2 cans condensed French Onion soup

2 soup cans of water

1 soup can of apple cider

salt and pepper to taste

dash of cinnamon and nutmeg

Directions:

Heat a little olive oil in the bottom of a large pot.  Add stew meat in a single layer and brown on all sides.  Season with salt and pepper while browning.  After well browned, remove meat and set aside.  Add leek and onion to the pot and let cook till translucent.  Add meat back to the pan, and add remaining vegetables.  Stir to combine.  Pour the cans of French Onion soup, water, and apple cider over top of meat and vegetables.  Add a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg to the pot and stir to combine all.  Bring to a slow boil, then reduce and simmer for a couple of hours.  Test vegetables to make sure all are cooked tender.  Serve with cornbread, or a dark crusty bread would also be good.

(My Ninja slow cooker has a stove-top setting, so I did the meat browning and assembling vegetables and liquid together on the high stove-top setting.  Then I switched to slow cooking mode and cooked 4 hours on high slow-cook setting.)

Pancake/Waffle Mix...

Original recipe from Kathryn at Do It On A Dime.  Thanks, Kathryn!

Ingredients:
10 cups all purpose flour
9.5 ounces instant dry milk
1/2 cup sugar
4 Tablespoons baking powder
1 Tablespoon salt

Measure all the dry ingredients into a very large bowl.  Whisk together to mix well.  Transfer the dry mix to a one gallon glass jar to store.

To make batter:
Put 2 cups of the pancake/waffle mix into a bowl.  Add 1 cup of water and 1 egg and stir till well combined.  Pour batter onto a griddle or waffle iron and cook till golden brown.

My notes:  We like breakfast for supper at our house.  But every time I want to whip up some waffles, it seems I am short of milk.  The dry milk in this mix makes that a non issue for me.  

On my first batch of mix, my batter turned out too thick to pour.  I assume that my flour had settled in the canister and so my mix is flour heavy; I should have whisked the flour in the canister before measuring.  I just added another egg and another cup of water (so in total, 2 cups mix, 2 eggs, 2 cups water).  My batter was pretty thin, but it cooked up fine and had a nice rise.  I'm sharing this to let it be known that the mix is pretty forgiving. 

Kathryn puts a label on her storage jar that says: 2 c mix, 1 c water, 1 egg.  No forgetting!

Shrimp Salad...

Ingredients:
1 pound shrimp, cooked and roughly chopped
3 ribs of celery, diced
1/4 of a small onion, finely diced
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 Tablespoons sweet pickle relish
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 teaspoon Tony Chachere Original Creole Seasoning
salt & fresh ground pepper to taste

4 tomatoes
Salad greens

Cocktail Sauce:
1/2 cup catsup
2 to 3 teaspoons  prepared horseradish

Townhouse Crackers

Directions:
For the cocktail sauce, stir together the catsup and horseradish well.  Set aside.

Combine first 7 ingredients.  Adjust seasoning to taste.

With a sharp paring knife, remove the stem core from each tomato.  Starting at top of each tomato,  cut into six wedges without cutting through the base of the tomato.

Arrange salad greens on a plate.  Top with a tomato, carefully spreading out the wedges so that it stays intact.  Scoop a generous portion of shrimp salad into the center of each tomato.  Top with a dollop of cocktail sauce, and serve with Townhouse crackers.

Mom's Cinnamon Rolls...

I make the dough from my mother's recipe for bread.  It makes two loaves of bread or a big pan of cinnamon rolls.  

Ingredients for dough and filling:
2 cups warm water (warm, not hot)
1 packet yeast
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil
5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (approximately)

1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup sour cream

1 cup brown sugar
2 Tablespoons of cinnamon

Ingredients for icing:
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
     (cream cheese is optional, if omitted, use a little more milk instead)
1/4 cup of butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 Tablespoon of milk (or more as desired)

For the dough:
In a small bowl, place about 1/2 cup of the warm water, 1 teaspoon of the sugar, and the packet of yeast.  Let sit for about 10 minutes to activate...it will begin foaming a little.

In a large bowl combine salt, remaining sugar, remaining water, vegetable oil, and the yeast mixture.  Gradually add in about 4 cups of the flour, mixing with your hand between additions, scraping the sides of bowl to incorporate all the flour.  If the dough is too loose and sticky, gradually add in a little more flour at a time until it is smooth and pliable.  Lightly flour your counter top, and turn the dough out onto the floured surface.  Flour your hands, and knead for about 3 to 5 minutes, adding in a little more flour if needed until it feels rather light and smooth and not sticky.  Butter a glass bowl, and put the dough in it, turning the ball of dough to let a little butter coat its surface.  Cover the bowl with a tea towel, and set it in a warm part of the kitchen.

While the dough is rising, stir together well brown sugar and cinnamon and set aside.

After about 30 minutes, the dough should be approximately double in size.  Punch down the risen dough, and turn it out onto a floured counter. Flour a rolling pin and roll the dough out to about a 12" x 18" rectangle.  

Spread dough with 1/4 cup of soft butter, then spread with about 1/4 cup sour cream.  Sprinkle the brown sugar and cinnamon evenly over the entire rectangle of dough, and starting on the long side, roll it as evenly as possible until it is rolled and seam side down.  

Lightly grease a pastry scraper or chef's knife and cut the roll into 1" slices.  Place the spirals onto a large buttered baking pan, leaving a little room between the spirals.  Top with plastic wrap sprayed lightly with cooking spray so the dough won't stick to the plastic.  Let rise for about 40 minutes.  

Preheat oven to 325.  Remove the plastic from the rolls, and bake for about 20 minutes, turning the pan after about 12 minutes so they bake evenly.  They should be just lightly browned.  

For the icing, mix together the softened cream cheese, butter and vanilla.  Add the powdered sugar and mix until smooth.  If you want to thin it slightly, you can add a Tablespoon of milk at a time until it is the consistency you desire.  Spread it evenly over the cinnamon rolls while still warm.