Let The Recipes Begin!

[Ombligo]

Time to go down South and that means Sweet Potato Pie. Very easy to make, and no, it is not a fake pumpkin. Notice it does not have the gajillion spices pumpkin needs, the natural sweetness of the potatoes does the job with just a hint of orange from the zest. You can even make it safe for dieters by using Splenda and 1% milk (not skim). Personally I consider a single cup of sugar spread amongst 6-8 slices of pie to be acceptable.


Sweet Potato Pie
Ingredients:
1 deep pie crust or two normal crusts
2 large or 3 medium Sweet Potatoes
3 eggs
½ stick butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1 orange (for zest)


Set oven to 350 and put sweet potatos in to bake – 60-90 minutes until fully cooked through.
Cream together butter and sugar
Add eggs and vanilla to sugar mixture and beat together
Remove skin from sweet potatoes and chunk into sugar/egg mixture
Mash together potatoes and sugar mixture until combined into porridge like consistency
Zest the outer skin of the orange into the mixture – only the zest, not the pith
Add in ½ cup of the milk to the mixture and stir together
Add remaining milk a bit at a time and stir until it is a thick soup (may not need all the remaining milk)
Pour mixture into crust(s)

Bake 350 until a toothpick comes out clean from the middle (about 60-75 minutes)

Allow to cool, plain or top with fresh whipped cream



ohh, and you can use the juice from the orange in your fresh Cranberry sauce.. you do make it from scratch I hope.

[CJsNvrUrly]

I need a recipe for green bean casserole. I'm not a fan, but have been asked to make and bring it to Thanksgiving dinner. Anybody care to share?

[mrlynn]

eustacetilley wrote:
. . . Every spice has its time, and its place.
My aversion to cinnamon is due to its ubiquity; it's as if a conspiracy was formed a while back that concluded that this particular recipe needs some spice, and let's just use cinnamon. Everybody else uses cinnamon. And cinnamon is cheap.

I agree with the "Every spice" admonition. Many years ago some friends and I had dinner in a hotel (Holiday Inn?) restaurant in Durham, NC. I had spaghetti with red marinara sauce, and was appalled to discover that they had put cinnamon in it. Cinnamon does not belong in spaghetti sauce.

Speaking of apples, my favorite use of them (besides tart apple pie) is my mother's Dutch Apple Cake, which my wife still bakes for my birthday. I might be induced to post that recipe later.

/Mr Lynn

[eustacetilley]

Almond Cream Cheese Buttered Sugarcookies

You need to go no further, if you really cook. You can figure it out just from the title.

Butter sugar cookies are everywhere. The most irritating commercial examples include such thing as as palm oil.
Palm oil is cheap, and really repulsive. At one time, it only saw use in compasses. Really cheap compasses.

Here is what you need to do: take any decent butter sugar cookies recipe, and reduce the butter by half, and fill in that half with thoroughly subdued cream cheese.
If your recipe doesn't include butter, toss the damn thing away. Get a better butter sugar cookies recipe.

While groping the ingredients into something like cookie dough, add a few drops of almond extract. Do not mistake Cyanide for almond extract, unless you really want to use Cyanide, and live in an Agatha Christie world.

Place a teaspoon-sized and shaped cookie dough dollop on your heavily buttered and sugary egg yolk enhanced cookie pan. Repeat, copiously. And when you are done, firmly place half an almond on each dollop, and slather then with the egg-yolk/sugar concoction. (You have course have prepared it beforehand; the whites are used later for meringues. Your sisters do so much like meringues.) Sprinkle some really coarse sugar crystals on top. These can be difficult to find, so you just may have to make your own. It's easy- just place a saturated water/sugar solution in a pan, and let it dry thoroughly. Whack crudely with a mallet, and there you are- coarse sugar crystals. You can flavour the solution beforehand with a few drops of whatever.

This is a result- a cookie with a thin hard crust, and a chewy almond center. It keeps for days, unlike regular sugar cookies, and when the centers do start to eventually dry out, just dunk a cookie for a couple of seconds in a nice cup of tea, and then place between the tongue and the roof of your mouth, and squeeze, and suck the life out of it.

Eustace

[eustacetilley]

Ombligo wrote:
Time to go down South and that means Sweet Potato Pie. Very easy to make, and no, it is not a fake pumpkin. Notice it does not have the gajillion spices pumpkin needs, the natural sweetness of the potatoes does the job with just a hint of orange from the zest. You can even make it safe for dieters by using Splenda and 1% milk (not skim). Personally I consider a single cup of sugar spread amongst 6-8 slices of pie to be acceptable.


Sweet Potato Pie
Ingredients:
1 deep pie crust or two normal crusts
2 large or 3 medium Sweet Potatoes
3 eggs
½ stick butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1 orange (for zest)


Set oven to 350 and put sweet potatos in to bake – 60-90 minutes until fully cooked through.
Cream together butter and sugar
Add eggs and vanilla to sugar mixture and beat together
Remove skin from sweet potatoes and chunk into sugar/egg mixture
Mash together potatoes and sugar mixture until combined into porridge like consistency
Zest the outer skin of the orange into the mixture – only the zest, not the pith
Add in ½ cup of the milk to the mixture and stir together
Add remaining milk a bit at a time and stir until it is a thick soup (may not need all the remaining milk)
Pour mixture into crust(s)

Bake 350 until a toothpick comes out clean from the middle (about 60-75 minutes)

Allow to cool, plain or top with fresh whipped cream



ohh, and you can use the juice from the orange in your fresh Cranberry sauce.. you do make it from scratch I hope.

That is a _great_ recipe, very well written, and I might actually try it. My problem with most recipes involving sweet potatoes has to do with sugar- most people use entirely too much. You have figured this out, and went ahead anyway.
Sweet potatoes, pumpkin, and spaghetti squash all have a similar problem- they have subtle flavours that many people just don't like, so bring on the spices! You might as well just use Tofu, and too many people do just that.
Here is where sweet potatoes really shine- roughly squared in a roasting pan just under a roasting leg of lamb, along with similarly abused carrots and potatoes. The result is just terrific. The subtle flavours work off each other, and if they don't, just add a lot of salt and pepper, and a whole lot of butter.

My sister recently let me in on a forgotten secret- buttered parsnips. I have no idea where she found parsnips; I've never seen them in the local grocery aisles. But it's been a long time since I've seen garden peas in the pods there either. I like to think that there is a Parsnip Underground, and that she is in it.

Eustace

[Lemon Drop]

my late grandmother's sweet potato pie appeared at every Thanksgiving and Christmas when I was growing up, and I make it now every fall - we use nutmeg instead of orange for a little flavoring. just make sure you are using real southern sweet potatoes that are dark red/orange on the inside, not yellow yams. (names of these vegetables are often reversed in the west)

Mammy's Sweet Potato Pie (makes 2 pies)

4 med/large sweet potatoes, peeled, cooked and mashed
Add one stick butter while potatoes are still hot
Beat in:
4 eggs, one at a time
1 cup evaporated milk
1 cup sugar (can adjust to taste)
1 t nutmeg (or more to taste, I use a T)
1/2 t vanilla

Pour into pre-baked crusts, bake 30-40 minutes at 350, turn off oven and leave in oven for another half hour or so while pies set
cool, wrap and store in fridge
flavor improves day 2