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Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Candied Yams for Thanksgiving

November 25, 2015 by Mary 10 Comments

Candied yams finished in a Le Creuset baking dish.

Sorry I had to rant in my previous post. It’s been something I’ve been wanting to talk about for a long time now. You know, kinda brewing… but Thanksgiving is tomorrow…and so is my birthday this year!! We are super blessed with all good things – our children and their mates are happy and healthy and we are too! My brother and his wife in CT are hosting Thanksgiving this year, so I can be a real queen for the day, on my birthday. How cool is that?

I’m so excited for tomorrow. After all, this is my favorite holiday and usually I love cooking for it but I have to tell you, this year, with all that’s going on business-wise, I’m DELIGHTED to take a step back. And I know there’ll be great wines. You all should check out my connoisseur brother’s wine blog – he’s amazing!!

So I wanted to share with you the one recipe for Thanksgiving that has been in my repertoire forever. It is a riff on the original Candied Yams recipe from — drum roll please — Joy of Cooking!! Yes! I received that cookbook from my sewing teacher, Mrs. Mellor, as a wedding shower gift. Julia Mellor was also the mother of one of my brother’s best friends and she taught Home Economics at the public high school. Of course, I went to the Catholic all-girls private school, where they didn’t even teach home ec. (go figure) My mother wanted to insure I knew how to sew… don’t ask. And this original recipe is from that “bible” of American cooking back then. It has withstood the test of time. Of course, I’ve changed it…

The great thing about his recipe is that you can make it ahead of time and then just slip it in the oven to glaze while your turkey is resting, right before you serve your meal. Easy peasy and nice!

Enjoy!!

May you and yours have a very blessed Thanksgiving holiday!! Cook, eat and serve with LOVE!

CANDIED YAMS RECIPE – serves 4 – adapted from Joy of Cooking

3 yams
Kosher salt
1 Tbs. butter for yams
Extra butter for greasing
Fresh ground pepper
Sweet paprika
Powdered ginger
1/4 cup maple syrup

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cook the yams in boiling salted water for 25 minutes or until fork tender. Drain and let cool, peel and slice lengthwise.

Butter the baking dish and place the yams in it in a single layer. Salt and pepper the yams. Lightly sprinkle on sweet paprika and powdered ginger to taste. Cut butter into small pieces and place on top. Drizzle a quarter cup of maple syrup on the yams.

Bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

Remove and spoon the glaze on top of the yams. Serve with LOVE and don’t eat too much! 🙂

Filed Under: Dinner, Sides Tagged With: candied yams, Joy of Cooking, Thanksgiving side dishes, Thanksgiving sides, yams, yams with maple syrup glaze

Another great beef tenderloin dinner

February 12, 2012 by Mary Frances 19 Comments

Beef tenderloin is actually the perfect weeknight entertaining choice. For a special dinner, it’s big, it’s fancy and it’s quick and easy. My Mother used to always say, “Make a roast, Mary. It’s easy!” And you know, she was right.

So, remember, it’s always about the ingredients and their quality. So as long as you’re spending money on a tenderloin, get the best that you can. My butcher, Bob, at Esposito’s, has the best! His man, Solomon, did a spectacular job trimming and tying this piece of meat. See how even it is all the way through. These butchers take enormous pride in their job and it certainly shows. (They’re located at 38th Street and 9th Avenue.)

Now I don’t think I’ve told you, but we’re moving our offices (I do have another day job running a brand design and marketing communications firm) down to TriBeCa so I’ve been a little off this week and I will be until the end of the month. We’ve been in our current space for 10 years and accumulated way too much stuff. I promise I’ll get back on track when this is all over. But we’re very excited about our new space!

Back to the dinner party I had this past Thursday night. I made up this recipe as a combination of what I made on Christmas day and what I used to make years and years ago from, believe it or not, Joy of Cooking! I received this cookbook from my sewing teacher, the wonderful Mrs. Mellor, at a bridal shower 30 years ago!! (OMG) My Mom was so afraid that I would be a tomboy and useless wife, and because I went to Catholic school, we were not taught home economics, so she coerced the woman who taught sewing at the public high school to give me private lessons one summer, in order for me to learn how to sew. Mrs. Mellor was a wonderful woman with an infectious laugh, twinkling eyes and everything was always okay with her, even if you really screwed up – she would fix it. She ended up making all of my bridesmaids dresses from this beautiful silk I had bought – 4 of them – all as a gift!! Sweet, sweet woman! Her son, Jimmy, was a good friend of my two brothers and we recently reconnected through Facebook! Good ol’ Facebook. He’s an airline pilot for American Airlines flying the St. Louis to LaGuardia route. I always look for him when I fly back home. He said I should just knock on the cockpit door next time, that they get lonely in there. Well, these days I think I’d get shot!

Here’s what I made.

Bacon wrapped beef tenderloin on a metal platter.

So good!!

BACON-WRAPPED BEEF TENDERLOIN
– serves 10 – 12

1 (5.5 lbs.) beef tenderloin, trimmed and tied
1 rounded tbs. kosher salt
Fresh ground black pepper
6 garlic cloves, minced
15 slices of bacon
1/2 cup creme fraiche
2 tbs.white horseradish
Several dashes of Tabasco

Season the tenderloin all over with the salt, pepper, and garlic. Cover the meat and refrigerate overnight. Let it come to room temperature for 2 hours before roasting.

Heat oven to 500 degrees. Wipe off as much garlic and seasonings as possible with a paper towel. The flavors have penetrated the meat overnight. Place the meat on a rack in a large roasting pan and wrap the bacon around it.

Place the roasting pan on the middle rack of the oven and immediately reduce the heat to 400 degrees and roast for 30 – 40 minutes, until an instant-read thermometer reaches 120 degrees (for rare). Let the meat rest for 10 minutes before carving.

In a small bowl, whisk the crème fraîche and horseradish plus a few dashes of Tabasco. Serve alongside the tenderloin.

Filed Under: Dinner, Meat Tagged With: bacon, bacon-wrapped beef tenderloin, beef tenderloin, creme fraiche, entertaining, Esposito's, garlic, horseradish, Joy of Cooking, love, roasts, weeknight entertaining

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Mary Frances

Mary Frances

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