Thanksgiving Sweet Potatoes

Long overdue, I am sorry!  You know how Amherst finals are.  Here is the delicious sweet potato recipe Zach and I prepared for our Thanksgiving this year.  We modified a recipe from smittenkitchen.com pretty significantly and ... well, I'm biased, but I'm thinking ours was better.  The recipe after the jump serves about three; we tripled the recipe for a Thanksgiving of seven and there were leftovers (tasty, tasty leftovers!)  
Happy Holidays to all!  Looking forward to seeing some more holiday recipes.

Braised lamb in peach gastrique with sweet potato scallops, baby eggplant, and poached pears

That's right, there's French in the title. We're getting fancy this week.

Actually, this dish isn't nearly as difficult as it sounds. It's certainly time intensive -- requiring a little more than three hours altogether, from start to finish -- but for the most part you're just chopping things up and then throwing them in a pot of simmering liquid. Also, it's relatively cheap and uses lots of fresh, seasonal produce, with the only semi-expensive item being the lamb shank. I don't know about you, but I can certainly appreciate an entree that constitutes a full meal in and of itself -- no soups, sides, or salads needed to round this one out.

I recommend you cook this on a lazy Sunday afternoon, reading a good book or playing vidja games during the recipe's downtime (of which there is quite a bit). Use it to impress your boyfriend/girlfriend/platonic life-mate while saving the money you might have blown going on a date to a fancy restaurant.

White bean and tomato soup

My grandmother never really liked to cook.  She did it, of course, for many years out of necessity--in the pre-feminist 50's and 60's, with a husband and three daughters to feed, cooking was an inevitability.  And as a good Jewish grandmother, conditioned to shower her family with love in form of food, she continued to make meals for us whenever we visited.

But with the rise of packaged foods, as her children and grandchildren have grown independent and her body has slowly wound down, she's stopped cooking on her own.  Now, at age 87, with a 94-year-old strict-vegan husband, her repertoire in the kitchen is limited to cocktails in the evening and fruit salad in the morning.  Most of her recipes were handed off to my mother long ago; they're Mom's recipes now, and that's how I remember them.

But there's one recipe I do remember well from her kitchen, the only real "grandmother's recipe" I have: white bean and tomato soup.

Grilled Eggplant and Smoked Gouda Bruschetta

I know, the title alone makes it sound delicious, right?

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been trying to cook at least one vegetarian meal a week. I've also been trying to use more seasonal ingredients. This recipe, which centers around eggplant, tomatoes, and the grill, fit the bill perfectly.

It doesn't hurt that these open-faced sandwiches are pretty damned delicious. My dad always hems and haws a bit when I announce that it is vegetarian day, but even he wolfed this down and gave me compliments. The components for this recipe are relatively straightforward and easy to assemble, but once you've sampled the gooey melted cheese together with the tender grilled eggplants and the tomato-parsley salsa, you'll wonder why you never thought to combine them before.

You might not think this is enough for a meal -- "bruschetta" usually calls to mind fancy little hors d'œuve toasts -- but believe me, the combination of the ingredients makes this dish surprisingly filling. If my dad is any indication, it's a pretty great main course option for herbivores and omnivores alike.

Butternut Squash Ravioli in Maple-Cream Sauce

I went to the wedding of Emily's cousin a few weeks ago, and for my main course at the reception I opted for the vegetarian dish: butternut squash ravioli. While I quite enjoy butternut squash -- it's among the many things I look forward to in fall -- the idea of stuffing it into a ravioli pouch never really occurred to me. As it turned out, my dinner was quite delicious and so, naturally, as soon as I returned home I decided to try my hand at this pasta-making business.

This particular recipe is adapted from a recipe I found on the Poor Girl Gourmet. I didn't change much, but I figure that I can be a bit more concise in my instructions than the author is. Also my pasta-making technique is better, in my opinion. After all, I have experience with this sort of thing.

 

Chicken stock/vegetable broth

A disclaimer: last week, my beloved camera up and died on me.  It had a good long life--it saw me through three cherished years of college, which is basically a lifetime for any digital doohickey these days.  I am not devastated to see it go.

However, its passing means that I have no photo for my post this week.  Which is fine, because my chosen subject is not glamorous or photogenic.  It is, however, delicious and versatile--two of my favorite words when it comes to food.

Onward!