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

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! 🙂

Pie Crusts with Lard and Other Thanksgiving Meal Questions

November 29, 2014 by Mary 17 Comments

I trust that everyone had a great Thanksgiving! It is such a wonderful holiday – all about being together, with great food. What could be better? No worrying about presents or decorations, the focus is on food. With the major snowstorm we had all day on Wednesday, our electricity kept blinking, but still going, so the bread got baked without a hitch. I make my grandmother’s recipe for Polish bread every holiday. This year, unfortunately I forgot to bring the recipe, but Zach’s girlfriend is from Poland and her family makes a similar bread recipe! Together, from our collective memories, we pieced together the ingredients and process and it turned out great! (Lucky!!!) Our other son, his girlfriend and her father all arrived safely early afternoon on Thanksgiving, and Agata made us another guest outside!

So I have a question for all of you. Knowing that hydrogenated vegetable oil is not good for you, as it essentially never leaves your body, this year I decided to use lard in my pie crust recipe. I had to special order it from our little local grocery store. I made the dough the day before so it was fully chilled. It handled absolutely beautifully in rolling it out. I then even had time to chill the formed crust again before baking. However, my beautiful crimped sides all fell during baking.

You can see that here. What did I do wrong? Should I have used half lard and half butter?

But here you can see how flakey it was on the pecan pie. Yum!

Meanwhile, the fresh pumpkin extracted with the hammer and screwdriver produced the BEST pumpkin pie – epic – as our oldest said!

Then the next thing I want to ask you is what do you do for your green vegetable at the big meal? In my book and at our last two Thanksgiving celebrations, I did this Brussels sprouts recipe with a fish sauce – from Momofuku and published at Food 52. My husband and I liked this but as my friend Judy said, it’s an acquired taste. So my boys vetoed that recipe out of the meal this year. I replaced it with sugar snap peas (blanched for one minute) with red pepper strips tossed with a sherry vinaigrette and topped with nitrate-free, all natural bacon bits.

My theory was that this would be a great refreshing dish, a counterpoint to the richness of the dressing, turkey and gravy with the crunch of the just blanched snap peas, and the sherry vinaigrette would be a nice contrast to the maple glazed sweet potatoes. A cool, salad-like dish to be clean and different on the plate, right?

Wrong. I hated it. To me, it broke up the whole warmth of the entire meal. So what do you do? Please share!

Roasted Butternut Squash with Crispy Sage Leaves

November 24, 2013 by Mary 17 Comments

I love butternut squash. I will be serving a butternut squash and bourbon soup for Thanksgiving as a first course. That recipe, is of course in my e-cookbook. (That soup is bowl-licking good. In fact, I just finished making it for Thursday – delish!) But this past week, I made one of my favorite recipes for a side dish – Roasted Butternut Squash with Crispy Sage Leaves. You roast the squash with onions, put on some good honey three quarters of the way into the roasting period and then top it with some browned butter and crispy sage leaves. It’s the perfect fall dish!

This past week, The New York Times dining section talked about how you must have something orange on your table for the Thanksgiving feast. I have my sweet potatoes with maple syrup and ginger, but you could easily have this dish too, if you’re making a different soup, as you wouldn’t want to repeat the vegetable in the meal.

Here’s my recipe to make and serve with LOVE.

ROASTED BUTTERNUT SQUASH WITH CRISPY SAGE LEAVES – serves 6

One butternut squash – 2.75 – 3 lbs. – peeled, seeded and cut into 1” chunks
One large yellow onion, cut into 1” chunks
2 tbs. olive oil
Salt
Fresh ground pepper
2 tbs. honey
4 tbs. butter
36 large fresh sage leaves, washed and thoroughly dry

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine squash and onion on a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle on the olive oil, sprinkle on salt and pepper to taste. Toss all together thoroughly and roast in the oven for 30 minutes. Take pan out and toss again. Drizzle on honey and return the pan to the oven for 10 – 15 minutes more, until the squash is fork tender.

When squash is nearly done, melt the butter in small skillet or saucepan until really hot. Throw in the dry sage leaves and stir until butter is browned and leaves colored a bit.

Transfer squash to shallow bowl, so you have more surface area on top. Drizzle on the browned butter and distribute the crispy sage leaves. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

True confessions on a perfect side dish

November 21, 2012 by Mary Frances 4 Comments

I have a confession to make. I saw this recipe about two weeks ago when Caitlin, our wonderful project manager, and I, were noodling around Food 52, Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs’ new food blog. Actually the blog is just new to us. Well, we came upon this recipe and I said, “Brussels sprouts with fish sauce!! That sounds gross.” Caitlin agreed.

Well, I don’t know, the recipe stuck in my head, maybe because it sounded so weird. Fish sauce is only anchovies in a liquid of water, sugar and salt, and I love anchovies. So I went back to it a few days later, read the whole thing for the first time and thought, you know, this could be very good. All the Momofuku restaurants are fantastic, always showcasing unusual combinations. I have never eaten at any of them but my older son has been at the noodle bar several times and would often bring me home desserts to taste. So one night, I decided to give this Brussels sprouts recipe a whirl.

It was delicious!! And unusual. And perfect for a Thanksgiving dinner side dish. The vinaigrette makes it light and refreshing instead of an additional heavy dish with the typical bacon or chestnuts. And, you don’t even have to serve this hot – it can be at room temperature – perfect for all the commotion that accompanies a Thanksgiving day feast. I think it’s the perfect side dish. It is going to grace my table on Thursday and I hope you’ll try it too!
Photo by James Ransom

MOMOFUKU’S ROASTED BRUSSELS SPROUTS WITH FISH SAUCE VINAIGRETTE – FROM FOOD 52
-serves 6 as a side

Roasted Brussels Sprouts
2 tablespoons very thinly sliced cilantro stems, plus 1/2 cup leaves
3 tablespoons chopped mint
2 pounds Brussels sprouts (smaller ones are better)

Combine the vinaigrette (below), cilantro stems, and mint in a bowl, and set aside.

Peel away any loose or discolored outer leaves, trim the dry end of the stems with a knife, and cut the sprouts in half. Cut any especially large ones in quarters. Wash and dry very well.

To roast the Brussels sprouts, heat the oven to 400 degrees. Heat 2 tablespoons grapeseed oil (or just enough to evenly coat the bottom of the pan) in 2 oven-safe wide skillets (12 to 14 inches) over medium heat. When the oil slides easily from side to side of the pan, add the Brussels sprouts cut-side down. When the cut faces of the sprouts begin to brown, transfer the pan to the oven to finish cooking, about 15 minutes. The sprouts are ready when they are tender but not soft, with a nice, dark brown color.

Serve warm or at room temperature. When ready to serve, place the Brussels sprouts in one big bowl, top with the dressing to taste and cilantro leaves, and toss once or twice to coat.

FISH SAUCE VINAIGRETTE
1/2 cup fish sauce (adjust to taste — some fish sauce brands are saltier)
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
Juice of 1 lime
1/4 cup sugar
1 garlic clove, minced
1 to 3 red bird’s-eye chiles, thinly sliced, seeds intact (or substitute dried red chili pepper flakes to taste)

Combine the fish sauce, water, vinegar, lime juice, sugar, garlic, and chiles in a jar. Cover and shake. Taste; if too salty, add more water and/or lime juice. This vinaigrette will keep for up to a week in the refrigerator.

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

Pie Crusts with Lard and Other Thanksgiving Meal Questions

Roasted Butternut Squash with Crispy Sage Leaves

True confessions on a perfect side dish

Pages

Blogs We Love