March is just about over! i've spent practically the whole month, outside of work hours, in the kitchen, i think. some of you have asked for recipes (i've been posting pics most every day on facebook), and i thought it was about time to do a little write-up of what's been cooking...
the month started, apropos for the cold weather and the economy, with low-budget comfort food.
Sweet potatoes!
Sweet potato hash, with garlic and sage butter: 
grate raw sweet potatoes (i didn't peel first), set aside. In a good size skillet, melt some butter (2 tbs) and add a couple cloves minced garlic and a bunch of minced sage leaves. Swirl the garlic and the sage in the butter for a 1-2 minutes, to flavor the butter. Then, add the sweet potatoes, mix the butter in, and cook on medium for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Test sweet potatoes for done-ness.
Then, sweet potato muffins--these are delicious! The first recipe I used gave only a faint sweet potato flavor, so the second time I used a recipe for sweet potato biscuits--but after I mixed the ingredients, the dough was too wet to roll out into biscuit form, so I just plopped them into a muffin tin. They were moist and savory!
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine dry ingredients, set aside. In separate bowl, combine mashed sweet potato and milk (I used buttermilk--I just add a little bit, 1 tsp perhaps, of lemon juice to milk to make buttermilk). Then, mix the butter into the flour: you can grate frozen butter (which takes forever) or you can just cut the butter you want to use, and then pinch off little tiny bits with floured fingers, and drop the bits into the rest of the flour. You kind of massage the butter into the flour this way, and distribute it evenly. Then add the liquid ingredients to the flour/butter combo, and mix lightly until "it forms a shaggy mass." LOL You're supposed to be able to turn out the dough onto a floured surface and roll it out and cut out biscuits, but mine was too wet, so I just spooned some into muffin tins. And baked for 12-14 minutes.
Voila!
ingredients:
2 c flour (i used 1 c all purpose, and 1 c barley flour)
1 Tbs baking powder
1 Tbs granulated sugar
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 c milk (I made buttermilk, see above)
1 c baked, mashed sweet potato
8 Tbs butter, frozen (I used only about 5 Tbs)
I served the biscuits with "Southern-style Black Eyed Peas with Bacon" for a simple dinner party. This recipe is super easy, and allows you to hang out with your guests while the black-eyed peas braise in the oven.
The black-eyed pea recipe (link above) was good, but I would probably jazz it up with cumin and dried chile peppers instead of oregano, and use stock instead of water. It had a good flavor (thanks to the bacon) but it was a little one-note. That's partly my fault: I also forgot the parsley at the end--when it says "for garnish" it really should say "for flavor" because fresh chopped parsley added at the end really brightens and sharpens a dish.
You can get a similar flavor on the stovetop, too, if you want to make a flavorful soup in a shorter amount of time. Just sautee onions, add some garlic once they soften; then add some sausage (I like organic chicken sausage from Applegate Farms but you could use any kind, as long as it's savory in flavor) and let it cook together and begin to brown a bit. Then add some beans and water, or chicken stock if you have it, and bring to a boil. Then simmer for 20 minutes, or longer if you have the time. Less time makes a yummy soup, and more time reduces it down into more like a stew.
Well, that's it for today. Coming up, adventures in cabbage, cauliflower, and cornbread.