Sweet potato bars - an experiment
Being a member of a CSA means you cook what the farmer gave you. We’ve been getting sweet potatoes for many weeks now and I’ve managed to give them to a wide variety of people because I just didn’t want to think about how to use them. I know, I know…”they’re wonderful baked” “delicious roasted”. Everyone I’ve given them to has just been happy as heck to receive them and I’ve been equally happy to get rid of them. However, this week was the last regular season delivery of produce and it had sweet potatoes. It was time for me to face my sweet potato demons and work it out.
I didn’t have a lot of potatoes but I had enough to come up with about a pound of flesh. I scanned my books for a recipe and came up with sweet potato pie but I was thinking more along the lines of a bar cookie. I have Maida Heatter’s Cookie book from the library, but that was no help either. There are a ton of recipes on the internet but many of them call for cake mixes or bisquik or canned sweet potatoes. Any use of processed ingredients like that makes me look elsewhere.
So I’ve devised this recipe using what I’ve learned from all these sources:
1 cup white unbleached flour
1 cup white wheat flour
1/2 white sugar
1 and 1/2 sticks of cold butter, cut into small chunks
1/4 cup of crystallized ginger chop really fine
2 egg yolks
3 tablespoons buttermilk…plus
6 oz buttermilk
1/2 cup toasted pecan pieces
1/2 cup miniature marshmallows
1 pound of sweet potato flesh
2 eggs
1/4 cup 1/2 n 1/2
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/3 cup brown sugar
Bake sweet potatoes in 350 oven until tender. When cooled rub off their skin and set aside. Raise temperature of oven to 375.
Combine flours and white sugar, and ginger in your mixer bowl. Add the butter chunks and mix until the butter is mashed in throughout but still remains in buttery chunks. Add the 2 egg yolks and the three tablespoons of buttermilk and mix well for 30 seconds. With the mixer running on medium add the remaining buttermilk only until the dough comes together, you may not need all of it. Press this dough into a Pyrex baking dish and bake at 375 for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and press the marshmallows and pecans into the crust with a spatula.
Combine potatoes, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar, 2 eggs, and the 1/2 n 1/2 in your mixer bowl and mix well until combined. Spread/pour (it is the consistency of pancake batter) over the crust with the pecans and marshmallows embedded in it. Put it in the oven and bake for 15 minutes on 375 and then 20 minutes on 325. Its done when you can put a knife in it and it comes out clean.
The taste is good, the crust is flaky, chewy, tender and crisp. The pecans add a nice element and the sweet potatoes are fine. I would probably reduce the amount of ginger in the crust to 2 tablespoons. Dave likes it, Dexter says its okay, too many textures for Alex, so he won’t try it. I think its okay…I wish it had chocolate in it.
So dear readers, do you have any ideas on how to make this recipe better or what to do with sweet potatoes?
Apple pecan oatmeal
It is a cold and rainy Saturday morning and oatmeal is a favorite breakfast for a day like this. This week I thought I would try a variation of an idea I saw on Slashfood. I added grated apple to the steel cut oats as they cooked and then when serving I added some more grated apple and some toasted pecans plus the usual brown sugar, cinnamon and butter. It was good and I enjoyed it but the apples covered the oat flavor too much. It was a nice change from our standard but I doubt that I will ever make it like this again.
1 cup steel cut oats
2 3/4 cups water
1 large apple peeled and grated
pinch of salt
1/2 cup pecan halves broken up and toasted
brown sugar
cinnamon
Put a heavy pan on the burner, turn the heat to medium. Add the oats, add the water and the salt, stir and bring to a boil. Add half of the grated apple, I used a huge Honeycrisp. Turn the heat down to a low boil and cook for 20 minutes. Stir occasionally.
When its done add the oatmeal to a bowl with a teaspoon of butter in it. Add some of the remaining grated apples. Top with brown sugar and cinnamon to taste. Toss the pecans on top stir it up and dig in.
Note about the oats: Steel cut oats can be found in the bulk section of most food co-ops. I also buy Bob’s Red Mill brand. Another common name for steel cut oats is Scottish oats and Pin-head oats.
Potato Gnocchi
Just a simple meal of RP’s Pasta Potato Gnocchi and a standard tomato meat sauce.
Sauce
1/2 pound ground beef browned and drained
1/2 onion, diced
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 quart or one large can of ground Roma tomatoes
1/4 cup red wine
red pepper flakes
Italian seasoning
Saute the onion and garlic in olive oil. Add the ground beef, red pepper flakes, and the red wine. Allow this to boil gently for 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes and the italian seasoning and cook down on a big simmer for 30 minutes. I served it with a loaf of focaccia some freshly grated parmesan and a glass of red wine.
