Roasted Sweet Pototoes, Carrots and Turnips

The recipe that I use the most in my kitchen is not a recipe at all. It's more of a formula: chop vegetables, toss with oil and herbs and roast until tender and slightly caramelized. A wide variety of vegetables can be thrown into the mix: winter squashes and potatoes, carrots and onions, turnips and garlic. The herbs vary as well: rosemary, thyme, sage, parsley, basil. The mixture depends on my mood, the contents of my pantry, and the accompanying dishes. Roasting is easy, always satisfying, and always at my fingertips for a last-minute dish.

This particular combination is a real winner. The addition of some tiny hakurei turnips to my planned dish of carrots and sweet potatoes provided variety in color and texture, as well as adding a little  zing. The carrots remained firm and lightly sweet through the roasting process, while the sweet potatoes became soft and dissolved into an almost candy-like sweetness. Throw them all together and you have seriously good eats - something appropriate for a Thanksgiving table as well as a Monday night dinner.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Carrots and Turnips

1 1/2 lb sweet potato, cut into 1" chunks (you don't need to peel them - the best nutrition will come off with the skin - but my sweet potato looked a little mangy, so I did this time)
1 lb carrot, cut into 1" chunks
1/2 lb turnip, cut into 1" chunks (I used several small ones, but a large turnip or rutabaga would be fine as well)
1 tsp dried thyme (fresh would be better - I didn't feel like stumbling around my herb garden with a flashlight to find some!)
1/2 tsp dried winter savory
salt and pepper to taste
2 tbsp olive oil

Preheat oven to 400° F.

Combine the sweet potatoes, carrots and turnips in a large bowl. Sprinkle with herbs, salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil, and mix to combine (I prefer to toss the mixture with my hands). Transfer to a foil-lined baking sheet.

Roast for 30-40 minutes, depending on your oven (my batch took 35), stirring once or twice to keep the vegetables from sticking to the foil. Serve hot!

Sweet Curry Carrots with Yogurt Sauce

I was invited by Cathy Elton of What Would Cathy Eat? to participate in her Healthy Thanksgiving Challenge. I first found Cathy's blog earlier in the year, after I'd been diagnosed with high cholesterol and was frantically looking for heart-healthy recipes. There are some totally delicious recipes on her blog - I definitely recommend checking it out. I may even be making her Caramelized Onion Tart with Greens and Cashew Cream to bring to my in-laws for Thanksgiving!

As my family has learned over the past several years, dealing with my dad's heart condition (and now my cholesterol), making a fantastic, healthy holiday meal isn't as difficult as it sounds. Of course you should treat yourself - no Thanksgiving table is complete without pie - but you don't have to make every dish a special (read: diet-busting) treat.

Fall vegetables should be at the center of every holiday meal. Sweet potatoes, winter squash, cauliflower, kale and Brussels sprouts are some of my favorite things and all quite delicious without much adornment. Naturally, I had a very difficult time deciding what to make for this challenge. How could I choose? What ultimately happened was my CSA chose for me. Last Friday, part of my last farm share of the season was a bunch of gorgeous baby carrots - adorable, delicious and photogenic. This was the inspiration I was looking for. They brought to mind this recipe I'd pulled out of Better Homes and Gardens back in April. While this recipe was meant to grace an Easter table, it will do just as well for Thanksgiving.

The carrots are soft and delicious, the honey-curry glaze sweet and savory all at once, and the yogurt sauce adds a creamy finish. Jeff and I sat down and nearly finished off the platter by ourselves (of course, they'll go farther at a Thanksgiving table with several other side dishes - the original recipe claims it serves 8-10). I just hope I can get my hands on some more of these sweet babies to make for my own Thanksgiving dinner!

Sweet Curry Carrots with Yogurt Sauce
Better Homes and Gardens April 2012

1-1 1/2 lbs baby carrots (the tops should be trimmed down but still on)
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt, divided
3 tbsp honey
1 tbsp curry powder (a heaping tablespoon, if you know what's good for you!)
2/3 c plain fat free Greek yogurt
1/4 c thinly sliced green onions (darker green ends only - reserve the white parts for something else)

Preheat oven to 425° F. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Spread the carrots on the baking sheet, drizzle with oil and sprinkle with 1/4 tsp salt. Roll the carrots around with your hands to coat them in oil. Roast for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, put the honey in a microwaveable bowl and heat for about 30 seconds, until nice and runny. Whisk in the curry powder. When the carrots are done, remove the tray from the oven and drizzle with the honey. Roll the carrots around in it to coat. Return to the oven for 10 minutes, until all the carrots are tender.

While the carrots finish roasting, combine the yogurt, green onions and remaining 1/4 tsp salt in a bowl. Serve alongside carrots for dipping.

Old-Fashioned Chicken Soup

Sometimes the tastiest recipes take me by surprise. So it was with this chicken soup - it was thrown together almost as an afterthought after a full day of fall canning, but turned out to be the most delicious thing we made all day. In fact, I took the above picture of my bowl after I'd already started eating it - I had no intention of blogging this recipe. But when I took the first bite and realized that it was the most delicious chicken soup I'd ever had, I knew I had to get it on the blog - as much for your benefit as for mine, so we can recreate this recipe soon!

We made chicken soup because we had a chicken carcass available. We've done this before - no big deal. But this time was a little different, because the carcass was raw. Last week I made a recipe calling for bone-in chicken parts, so I bought a whole chicken and had Jeff cut it up into the pieces we wanted. His butchery skills (as he admitted at the time) leave something to be desired, so we ended up with a lot of meat left on the carcass. Soup was the perfect solution - we could get all of the flavorful goodness out of the bones and have some meat to add to the soup. Brilliant!

In practice, once I began the recipe, I was skeptical. Raw chicken grosses me out. Raw chicken stewing in its own juices sounds like a terrible idea. I added everything to the pot, turned up the heat, and wondered if we'd end our evening by ordering take-out. There was no way I was going to eat that. Fast forward two hours, though, and the chicken had cooked through and created a rich, gorgeous stock. A delicious, homey aroma wafted around our house as the stock simmered. My attitude changed. The raw chicken was able to poach in its own juices and fats, making the meat tender and moist. I don't think a pre-cooked chicken could achieve this same texture and flavor. Clearly, what I initially thought was a bad idea was really the best idea ever!

The final product is worth the long wait. Trust me. This is no over-salted Campbell's creation - this is real soup, homemade and unprocessed, perfect for a lazy, chilly weekend afternoon.

Old-Fashioned Chicken Soup
Adapted from a food.com recipe.

1 raw chicken carcass, preferably with some meat still attached
8 c water
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 onion, quartered and unpeeled
6 carrots - 2 roughly chopped and 4 sliced into small half-moons
2 celery stalks - 1 roughly chopped, with leaves, and 1 sliced
2-3 sprigs fresh dill
2 handfuls egg noodles
2 tbsp parsley, chopped

Place chicken carcass, salt, pepper, onion, 2 roughly chopped carrots, 1 celery stalk (with all leaves) and dill in a large Dutch oven. Pour water over them (we cut the carcass into pieces so that the water would mostly cover it - I'm not sure how much this matters, though, as long as the pot is covered). Bring to a boil and simmer, covered, for at least two hours.

When the stock is ready, pour the entire mixture through a cheese cloth or wire mesh strainer, reserving the liquid (I skimmed off about half of the fat that rose to the top at this point). Remove the chicken bones and pick the meat off of them, reserving it for later. (Eat the delicious mushy carrots.) Discard the remaining solids (chicken bones, soggy celery, onions, dill).

Add the remaining sliced carrots and celery and chicken stock to the pot. Add 2-3 more cups of water or other stock, if necessary (we neglected to cover the stock pot the whole time, so ours reduced down a lot more than we wanted - we had less than half the liquid we had started with, which wasn't enough for the rest of the soup, so we added liquid - half water, half veggie stock - to get it back up over the original mark). Bring the soup to a boil, then simmer 30 minutes. Taste and re-season, if necessary. Add uncooked egg noodles and cooked chicken, simmering until egg noodles are cooked through (our noodles took 12-14 minutes). Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve.

Minestrone

Today is a day of great productivity. I wrote about a thousand words of my current dissertation chapter, which had been stalled for a few weeks and now I'm writing a long overdue blog post. Let's hope I can keep this up in the future!

I have been sorely remiss in posting lately. I know this. I've been incredibly busy. And the post I've had in the works since the beginning of the month requires Jeff's input. Getting the two of us in a room together and unoccupied has been a mighty feat. You'll hear about another delicious dinner in Philly soon, I hope. Until then, I have some soup to tide you over.

I put it on this minestrone on the menu for earlier this week because I have a large pile of green beans in my freezer that needs to be used up. Freezing green beans sounded like a great plan last summer, but they're really only good for soup. The texture is soggy and unappealing for other sorts of dishes. For soup, though, they're perfect. I just didn't make enough of these soups this winter to use them up! (You may notice that the soup bowl pictured above is chock full of string beans - I overloaded this recipe with them in an effort to use my stash up. Don't worry - the amount included in the recipe below is more reasonable.)

It's really a shame I haven't been making more soups, because this minestrone is delicious. The addition of wine, honey and red wine vinegar to the broth adds fantastic depth. Beans and pasta make it hearty. The other vegetables are super-healthy. Add a salad and it's the perfect light dinner for a spring evening (just not the 85 degree evening on which I served it - next week I will look at the weather before I plan my menu!).

Minestrone 
Adapted from the Rolling Prairie Cookbook.

2 tbsp olive oil
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 large onion, chopped
2-3 carrots, chopped
4 celery stalks, chopped
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
2 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt
4 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp honey
5 c vegetable stock
1 c red wine
1 1/2 c diced tomatoes
1 1/2 c chopped green beans
2 c cooked kidney beans
4 oz small cooked pasta (we used whole wheat shells)

Heat olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Add garlic, onion, carrots, celery and herbs. Cook 3-4 minutes, stirring frequently.

Add pepper, salt, vinegar, honey, stock, wine, tomatoes, and green beans. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer about 30 minutes, until vegetables are tender.

Add beans and cooked pasta and heat through. Enjoy with crusty bread and a salad!

Maple-Orange Glazed Carrots

I'm tempted to change the name of this to "candied carrots." Most of the dishes I prepare now, particularly vegetables, are things that I never would have touched as a kid. But not this. I would have sat down with a bowl and devoured it as quickly twenty years ago as I want to today. I've tried to exercise some adult discretion on that, but it's not easy.

These carrots cook down in a sauce of butter, maple syrup and orange juice until it forms a thick, sticky glaze. The carrots end up soft and succulent. The maple and orange compliment each other beautifully in the sauce. To top it all off, it's a pretty quick side dish that involves a minimal amount of attention. Just give it some occasional stirs and let the sauce magically reduce into deliciousness. Easy peasy.

Maple Orange Glazed Carrots
From Simply Recipes.

1 lb carrots, peeled and sliced into 1/4" thick rounds
2 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 c maple syrup
1/3 c orange juice
1/2 tsp orange zest (while, of course, fresh zest would be delicious, I've been using dried zest, just because I have it on hand, and it's fine as well. The sauce cooks for long enough to rehydrate it effectively.)
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg

Heat a high-sided pan over medium heat. (Seriously, a high-sided pan. The first time I made this I thought a normal skillet would be fine, and it was, until I began to stir and tossed carrots all over my stove.) Melt the butter in the skillet. Add carrots and toss a bit to coat. Cook 3-4 minutes.

Add the maple syrup and cook another minute or two. Then add the orange juice and zest, cinnamon and nutmeg. Cover and cook 4 minutes. Uncover, increasing the heat to medium-high, and cook, stirring occasionally, for another 5 minutes or so, until the liquid has become a thick glaze. Serve warm, and try not to eat it all at once!

Carrot and Sweet Potato Soup

My kitchen smelled like comfort this morning - the beautiful, homey smell of buttered carrots. It reminded me of holidays when I was younger - the scent of warm, simmering goodness wafting upstairs, luring me down from my bedroom. I'm not sure what about the scent made me so nostalgic, really - I can't remember my mom ever making anything like this soup (probably because her picky, stubborn children would have refused to eat it).

I will eat it now, though, and gladly! I originally pulled out this recipe to use up some of the six pounds of carrots I got at my last CSA pickup of the season. Jeff and I thought it was delicious - the sweetness of the carrots and sweet potatoes complement one another beautifully, and the spices are a lovely accent. It's a delicious creamy soup for a chilly day. Hopefully it will be just as lovely a beginning to tomorrow's Thanksgiving dinner!

Carrot and Sweet Potato Soup
From Cooking Light's Way to Cook Vegetarian.

3 tbsp butter, divided

1 c onion, chopped

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1 1/2 lbs sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed

1 lb carrot, chopped

3 c vegetable stock

3 1/2 c water

1/4 c half-and-half

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

Heat a Dutch oven or other heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Melt 1 tbsp of butter. Add the onion to the pan and cook 4-5 minutes, until softened and tender.

Add the nutmeg and cinnamon and cook another minute, stirring. Move the onions to one side of the pan and add 2 tbsp butter to the other. Increase the heat to medium-high to melt the butter and let it brown slightly. Add the sweet potatoes, carrots, stock and water. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer about 35 minutes, until vegetables are soft.

Ladle one-third of the soup mixture into a blender. With the center piece of the lid ajar so as to release some steam, and covering the lid with a dish towel to prevent splashing, puree the soup until smooth. Pour into another vessel, then repeat with the remaining two thirds.

When all the soup is pureed, season with salt and pepper (since I use salt-free homemade stock, I need to add a lot more salt than the recipe calls for). Add half-and-half and stir until well-combined. Serve hot!

Chili Almond Asparagus

Asparagus season has finally reached NJ! To celebrate the first of the local crop, I decided to make my favorite recipe.

I got this recipe off of a vegan blog. I have a great deal of respect for vegetarians and vegans - I think that they are necessarily better cooks than us carnivores. You need to be creative to bring a satisfying vegan or vegetarian meal to the table. Think about it - if you're eating a juicy burger, you might not mind a bit of bland steamed broccoli on the side. But if that broccoli is your main dish, you're going to want something a bit more exciting. At least, I would.

This dish does not lack for exciting. Crunchy almonds, zesty lemon and zingy red pepper flakes over beautiful roasted veggies. It's the perfect accompaniment to that juicy burger (which is exactly what we served it with, for a lovely spring dinner on our deck).

Note: I crowded everything onto a too-small baking sheet. If you want more browning, the veggies will need to be spread out a bit more.

 Chili Almond Asparagus
Slightly adapted from Vegan Yum Yum.

1/4 c sliced almonds, roughly crushed

1 vegetable bouillon cube

1 tsp red pepper flakes

1 lb asparagus spears (I prefer the skinny kind for this recipe - if you use thicker spears, you may need to roast a bit longer)

3-4 carrots (I used 7, which was too many for my pan, but I was trying to use them up. You can peel the carrots if you'd like - I didn't bother)

2 tsp peanut oil

1 tsp toasted sesame oil

1 lemon (juice and zest)

Preheat oven to 450° F.

Crush the bouillon cube with a mortar and pestle. Mix with half the crushed almonds and the red pepper flakes. Trim the carrots to the length of the asparagus (if possible - mine were far too short for that) and cut lengthwise into thin, flexible pieces. Trim the asparagus ends, if necessary. In a large bowl, toss the carrots and asparagus with the oils. Add the seasonings and toss to coat.

Arrange the vegetables on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake 5 minutes, then broil until just browned. Top with remaining almonds, lemon zest and lemon juice to serve.

Beef Stew

I've told you about this stew before. I made it when I had my family over for dinner last month, and it went over very well. Although we were left without any leftovers that day, I had some stew beef left over in the freezer, so I knew I'd have to make it one more time before winter ended. Fortunately, I chose this week to do it - I have a cold and nothing currently sounds better to me than that leftover stew gracing the refrigerator.

I always felt stew would be complicated and involved - it does have complex layers of flavor - but this recipe couldn't be easier. It just involves a little pre-planning, since most of the ingredients go in five hours before the stew is ready to serve. Just pop the prepped stew in the oven, and remove to the stovetop to finish off with vegetables an hour or so before serving. The vegetables probably could go in from the beginning, making your work even easier, but the blogger I got this recipe from says she adds them later so they don't get as soggy. That sounds good to me, so I've done it the same way.

This may be the only regret I have about winter going away. You should make it soon, while it's still a bit chilly out there! I think I'm going to go finish off those leftovers for lunch right now . . .

Beef Stew

From For the Love of Cooking.

1 lb stew meat

1 sweet yellow onion, chopped into large pieces

6 cloves garlic, chopped

1 tbsp olive oil

14 oz can diced tomatoes

1-2 tsp dried thyme

2 bay leaves

salt and pepper to taste

6 c beef stock

1 c diced carrots

1 c diced celery

2 c diced baby red potatoes (I recommend you cut them smaller than I did this time - they still came out nice and soft, but were a little large in comparison to the other ingredients)

Preheat oven to 250° F (also, check to make sure your pot will fit in the oven - I usually forget to remove a rack until it's done preheating, which is awkward). Heat olive oil in a large Dutch oven (mine is 5 quarts) or other oven-safe pot over medium heat (I imagine this could be made in a crock pot as well, but I'd brown the meat on the stove first, for flavor). Add the stew meat and onions and cook for about 5 minutes (you should have more beef than this - I used less than half a pound because I was trying to get rid of leftovers - but the stew was still excellent with reduced meat!).

Add the garlic and cook about 30 seconds, until fragrant. Add the tomatoes, thyme, bay leaves, salt and pepper, and stock. Cover and move to the oven. Cook for at least 4 hours.

Remove from the oven and return to the stovetop over medium heat (I even turned it a bit lower, since mine kept threatening to boil over). Add the carrots, celery and potatoes.

Taste the broth and re-season if necessary. If it's too thin, you can add a slurry of cold broth and corn starch to thicken it up (I did this the first two times I made it, since I like a thick broth, but I forgot to this time and never noticed the difference). Cover and cook 1-1 1/2 hours more. Remember to remove the bay leaves before serving!

Skillet Rosemary Chicken

I've been on a huge comfort food kick lately. I guess it's the cold. And the fact that it snows significantly every five to seven days (or maybe three to five days, judging by the current 10-day forecast). All of my meal choices seem to revolve around having a pot simmering on the stove for several hours (this may also be because I'm in love with my new Dutch oven - it's orange!): chicken cacciatore, beef stew, arroz con pollo, baked potato soup.

I know, I know - you want to know why I didn't blog about most of these. Sometimes one is so concerned with getting the stew in the pot so it'll be cooked by dinnertime that taking pictures falls by the wayside. And other times one takes meticulous pictures of, say, a baked potato soup that comes out more like mashed potatoes (the most delicious mashed potatoes ever, but not quite a soup). These things get filed under "next time."

But what I have for you today is better, in many ways, because it has all the comfort of comfort food in a fraction of the time. Roast chicken is awesome - simple, yet juicy and tender. Carrots and potatoes will soak up all the juices and flavor from the bottom of the pan. But it can take hours, depending on your chicken and your roasting temperature. And you have to handle a whole, raw chicken, which I find nasty.

Never fear, however. You can have all the benefits of roast chicken without all the hassle. This recipe takes about 40 minutes and the results are just as good as if it had spent hours in the oven. The biggest hassle, in my eyes, is portion size. It uses bone-in chicken breast halves, which are far too big for one person. I suppose they could be cut in half, if you had a meat cleaver and felt like butchering raw chicken. If you, like me, do not have such inclinations, you can be careful to only eat half. It's worked for me so far.

Skillet Rosemary Chicken

Adapted from Food Network.

3/4 lb small red-skinned potatoes

2 tsp kosher salt, plus more for potatoes

2 sprigs fresh rosemary, plus 1 tbsp leaves

1 clove garlic, smashed

pinch red pepper flakes

1 lemon, halved and juiced (don't throw away the juiced halves!)

1 tbsp olive oil

2 bone-in chicken breasts (the original recipe calls for four, but I found that two is plenty for my skillet)

3 carrots, cut into chunks

Preheat oven to 450°F. Quarter potatoes and put in a pot. Add enough cold water to cover. Salt and bring to a boil. Boil for ~8 minutes, until tender. Drain and reserve.

Pile rosemary leaves, garlic, 2 tsp salt and red pepper flakes in a mortar and grind to a paste. (Fresh rosemary is obviously going to work best here, since it will release oils which will contribute to the paste. Unfortunately, my rosemary bush is covered in snow at the moment, so I used dried leaves and some extra garlic for lubrication. It seemed to work fine.)

Transfer the paste to a bowl. Stir in the olive oil and half the lemon juice. Add the chicken breasts and turn to coat.

Heat a cast-iron (or other oven safe) skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chicken, skin-side down. Cover and cook ~5 minutes, until skin is browned.

Turn the chicken. Pile the potatoes and carrots underneath the chicken and drizzle with the remaining lemon juice. Add rosemary sprigs (again, I skipped this for want of fresh ones and it was still ok) and lemon halves. Transfer the pan to the oven and roast, uncovered, 20-25 minutes until the chicken is cooked through and the skin is crisp. Enjoy!