POTATO, MY SWEET

Tags

Alton Brown, Boniato, butter, cooking, Food Network, Garnet, Georgia Jets, Japanese roasted potatoes with scallion butter recipe, Japanese sweet potato, Julia Child, Monty Python, Mr. WIzard, postaweek2011, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Sweet potato, Thanksgiving, William Woys Weaver

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It’s almost Thanksgiving and the sweet potatoes are downright Felliniesque ~ bizarre shapes, subtle variations of flesh, and enigmatic as Maddalena, whose dark sunglasses concealed a bruised eye.  The tubers are heaven on a fork.  I eat this good-to-the-last-morsel comfort food year-round.  These understated beauties are loaded with countless vitamins and minerals. But let me be clear on this ~  these virtuous veggies are not yams. Yup, another culinary myth Swiss cheesed up.

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Willliam Woys Weaver is a contributing editor at Gourmet.  He’s also a master gardener.  He says sweet potatoes are actually morning glories with tubers. There’s a kind of poetry in that.

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At a farmer’s market or organic grocer, labels are your friend.  Here are my favorites ~

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Georgia Jets are small with pointy ends, pinkish-brown skin and moist flesh that’s as orange as Georgia clay.

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The Japanese Sweet Potatoes are rose-skinned, white-fleshed and drier than what we are used to.

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The Boniato, a tropical sweet potato, has a chestnutty sweetness.

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Garnets have a plummy, coppery skin with a creamy orange flesh.

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The Food Network website lists 1,087 results for sweet potato recipes.  Most popular? Sweet potato fries. Who doesn’t love this Holy Trinity ~ Sweet.  Salty.  Savory.  2G2BT.

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Alton Brown’s first Thanksgiving special was in 1999. The Food Network airs it every year and it continues to get huge ratings. It’s become their Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I love his Mr. Science-meets-Chef approach. With skits, puppets and props, Alton Brown is part Julia Child, part Monty Python and part Mr. Wizard.  Here’s The Mastermind’s segment on sweet potatoes ~

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I think when it to comes to sweet potatoes, the simpler the better. Bake them till they’re soft in the center, then add a dollop of real butter.

Unless of course, it’s Thanksgiving.

ROASTED JAPANESE SWEET POTATOES WITH SCALLION BUTTER

SERVES 8

• 8 small slender Japanese or Garnet sweet potatoes (4 to 5 lb total)
• 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, well softened
• 1 1/2 tablespoons miso paste (preferably white)
• 3 tablespoons finely chopped scallion

• Preheat oven to 450°F with rack in upper third.
• Prick potatoes all over with a fork and put on a foil-lined large baking sheet. Bake until very soft when squeezed, 45 minutes to 1 hour.
• While potatoes bake, stir together butter, miso, and scallion until combined.
• Slit hot potatoes lengthwise and, using oven mitts, push in sides to puff up potato. Serve with some scallion butter in center of each and with additional scallion butter on the side.
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  Comfort, indeed.
  Toni 11/7/11

A SLICE OF PARADISE

Tags

Bread, Cook, cooking, flour, Food, Home, Pizza, postaweek2011, recipe, Zojirushi

Yesterday I was here.   ADIP  (another day in paradise)

www.thecafeonfifth.com

Today, I’m not. Back to RW.  (real world)

But, as Dorothy says, there’s no place like home.  And hearth.

Friday night pizza is a tradition around here for my caperingly cheerful Chef and me. For years and years. So, what’s new? My Little Joy Bank.

It’s a MiniZo, a happy machine that makes proper lush bread…and more.

In addition to an endless variety of breads, my MiniZo turns out binge-worthy coffee cakes, sublime sweet breads and delumptious pretzels. It makes muffins, foccacia, rolls, buns and breadsticks – palate-pleasers all.

And. The. Best. Pizza. Dough. Ever.

In no time at all, we go from this…

 

 

 

 

 

 

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to this ~  one divine cheeky chew.

Whatever kind of pizza we make, the result is an exquisite combination of texture and taste.  Soft but crispy, tender but chewy. It’s the antidote to a rainy day, crackling good fun to eat and is, in short, a slice of paradise.

Here’s the recipe for the perfect pizza dough. The only one you’ll ever need. Honest.

1 cup water

1 TBSP Olive Oil

2 1/2 cups King Arthur bread flour

1TBSP sugar

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp active dry yeast

Toni 10/21/11

NOTE TO SELF ~ DIY IS NOT ALWAYS A GOOD THING

Tags

candied hazelnut toppers, cooking, give a perfect party, humor, Martha Stewart, number cake, postaweek2011

Martha Stewart is the woman who convinced me, along with a million others, that we have the time, the means and ~ damn it ~ the duty to raise honeybees, build stone walls and have ditch-the-planner-and-throw-your-own Perfect Parties.

Is your friend turning 20?  50?  65?  100? It’s Party time! And Martha’s Who’s Counting? cake is fist-pumping perfect for the occasion. Draw and cut out stencils for the numbers, whip up a sheet cake, cut out the numbers, ice them with Swiss meringue buttercream, and top them with a zillion M&Ms.

Of course, you also need to make really fun party hats

and a serving tray,

design and print invitations,

assemble candle holders,

blow up balloons,

prepare a scrapbook,

construct place mats,

and decorate a wall with photos of the guest of honor, plus shots from all eras with lots of friends and family. A big bold visual statement. Like only Martha can.

She delivers nutty punch lines ( be sure to print photos on edible paper before smoothing them onto frosted cupcakes) and puckish promises ( candied-hazelnuts toppers are so simple to make).

So coolly tossed off ~ simple to make. The recipe for these phat-2- death toppers are on marthastewart.com ~ the directions are a worry.

Gently insert pointed end of a long wooden skewer into the side of each hazelnut. Place a cutting board along the edge of a countertop; place newspaper on the floor, directly under cutting board ~ and that’s just for starters.

By the time you get to break each string to desired length (string? I didn’t see string in the ingredients), then carefully remove the skewers, I imagine beads of sweat flavoring the caramel that I have to rewarm because it has hardened while I string and skewer and seethe.

That’s another thing about Martha.  She does not perspire. She doesn’t panic when sugar crystals form (wash down sides of pan with a wet pastry brush). She fears nothing (plunge pan of boiling syrup into an ice bath to stop the cooking). And she makes it look easy.

Candy-hazelnut toppers look elegant and sumptuous in the photo and I yearn to make them.  So what’s holding me back?

First, the guileless word ~ hazelnuts.  Apparently I need to propagate, plant, and pick them. And toast them. And skin them. And stick a skewer in each one.

Second, when the dripping syrup becomes a thin string, I must secure the opposite end of skewer under cutting board. Oh, really. I’d need to grow another hand.

Third, the candied hazelnuts must be used the same day.  Hmm.  The day of the Perfect Party.  I’m sorry, Martha, but I just can’t do it.  I refuse to get up at dawn and drip syrup for dinner’s dessert.

That’s the trouble with Martha parties and candy-hazelnut toppers.  Like E.T.’s phone call home or Gandalf’s “all we have to decide is what to do with the time given to us” speech, they are founded on illusion. It seems that anything is possible, but in the end, there are lots of tears.

Toni 8/25/11