Recipes

Sweet potato mash

Canadian Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away and my mouth is already watering for that turkey.  I’ll give you my stuffing recipe and how to know when your turkey is done.  I’ll give you my secret for rolling out pie dough without ending up with a bunch of crumpled little fragments, a headache and tears.  But today I’m going to give you my sweet potato mash recipe.  Well it’s not really a recipe, because I’m not going to give you measurements.  That would be pointless as everybody is going to have different amounts of people to cook for.  But I’m going to tell you how I make it. What I love about this dish is that you can prepare it the day before, stick it in the fridge and then pop it in the oven when you take the turkey out and begin making the gravy.  My husband and boys love this dish.  I like it, but to be honest, I prefer just a plain old baked sweet potato or yam with lots of butter, a couple shakes of salt and a spoonful of light brown sugar.  Maybe it’s because it’s what I grew up with. 

Sweet potato mash

Ingredients: yams or sweet potatoes, brown sugar, salt, butter, rum, cinnamon, miniature marshmallows.

I call this sweet potato mash, but actually, around three-quarters of the time I use yams.  It got the “sweet potato mash” name because the first time I made it, the yams were looking a little beat up and tired, so I bought sweet potatoes instead, and so when I made this up, the name stuck.  Also, when you are shopping at the store, if they have organic yams or sweet potatoes get them, they are so much better for you than the ones full of pesticides, and are tastier too.  Don’t pick out the biggest honkers you can find, because I find that although they look impressive, they can sometimes be sort of stringy and fibrous inside, whereas the smaller ones can be more tender. 

-Wash the yams/sweet potatoes thoroughly to get all the dirt off.  Then quarter them and plop them into a large pot of water, skins and all.  I feel the skins adds texture and interest to the mash.
-Boil until soft.  You should be able to poke a fork into it with ease.
-Strain water out. 
-Mash with salted butter (for four regular sized yams I would use around 1/4 to 1/3 a cup)
-Add a glug or two of rum
-Add light brown sugar, salt and cinnamon to taste.

Always start slow when you are seasoning.  You can always add more, but once you’ve added it, you can’t take it back out!  You want to make sure that the sweet of the sugar is balanced out with the savory of the butter, salt, and the bite of the rum. 
When you have it just the way your tongue wants it, dump the concoction into a baking pan.  Sprinkle the top with miniature marshmallows, make sure the marshmallows are evenly spread out so they cover the whole surface.  Then stick directly in the oven.  Temperature doesn’t really matter, thank god.  Because I don’t know about you, but on Thanksgiving my oven is always stuffed full.  And some recipes are very finicky about what temperature they have to be cooked at.  Not my sweet potato mash.  It’s nice and adaptable.  So you can bake it at anywhere from 300 degrees to 425.  Cook until hot all the way through and the marshmallows are a puffy golden brown.  If you want to prepare this the day before, then delete the popping-in-the-oven part.  Instead cover and stick in the fridge to be cooked tomorrow.

Posted by Meg Tilly on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 in Recipes

Meg’s Tasty Beef Stroganoff

If you want a proper beef stroganoff recipe I suggest you get it out of a recipe book.  This is my slap-dash version and once you get the hang of it, you can have the whole thing ready in 30 to 40 minutes.  However, with every new recipe, it is best to familiarise yourself with it first, so you feel comfortable.  Not only that, you don’t want to deal with that new recipe nervousness while trying to be host/hostess with the mostest to a house load of guests.  Use your family as guinea pigs and try it out on them first.

Ingredients needed: beef tenderloin, onion, butter, sour cream, heavy whipping cream, a beef bullion cube, white mushrooms, dry white wine, salt, pepper, nutmeg, egg noodles.

Meg’s Tasty Beef Stroganoff

Put a large pot of water on to boil.  Cup your hand and pour around a chocolate turtle sized amount of salt into your palm.  Toss it into the pot with a drizzle of olive oil.
-1/2 a beef tenderloin (about 3 pounds)
I use tenderloin because I’m lazy, but if beef tenderloin is out of your budget, no problem.  Buy a cheaper cut of beef and get yourself one of those kitchen implements that look like a square two headed hammer, I’m not sure of the name but it’s to tenderize the meat. 
-Cut the meat (against the grain) into thin slices (the size really can vary, but for those of you who want something specific, say around 2 inches long (against the grain) by 3/4 of an inch wide and around the thickness of a wood ruler) And if you are using economy beef, bang the hell out of the beef strips with the tenderizer hammer. 
-Dice 1/2 a large white or yellow onion, or 1 medium one.  A nifty way to dice a large mass of onions is to peel the outer skin, cut off the top pointy part, then cut it into sort of a multi-lined tic-tac-toe.  Be careful to cut straight down and NOT to cut the slices right off the onion.  You want the cut onion to still be held together by the rough roots area at the bottom.  Then, when you have finished your lattice work pattern, you turn the onion on it’s side and slice it.  Voila!  The diced onion just falls away from the onion into a nice little pile.  Then when you get down to the back end of the onion you chop and dice it up, just like you used to do.  The whole thing takes less that 20-30 seconds and the best part of all is…NO MORE TEARS!  Because believe me, I’ve tried all the other tricks, slicing onions gripping a slice of sandwich bread between your lips.  Doesn’t work, I couldn’t see over the bread to what my hands were doing, would still bawl my eyes out and to top it all off, I looked well and truly ridiculous!
-Heat a large frying pan to medium heat.
-Saute the onions in a slab of butter (around 1/4 of a cup)  until clear.
-Turn pan heat up to medium high. 
-Saute your strips of beef in the onion/butter mixture. In 2 or 3 batches until brown (around 4-5 minutes per batch)  Remove each batch into a bowl, and cover with…whatever, a dinner plate, a frying pan lid, a cookie sheet.
-When all the beef is browned, turn the pan off.  Sprinkle the meat with salt and pepper and around 5 or 6 dashes of nutmeg.  Toss meat.  Cover. 
-wash around 10-15 mushrooms depending on how much you like them.  (I know the fancy chefs would prefer you not to wash mushrooms because the mushrooms absorb water, but pulleaze who has time to gently dust each individual mushroom off with a dainty little brush?  Not me.  I have a hungry family to feed!)  Slice the mushrooms.  When you are around 1/2 way through slicing the mushrooms turn the frying pan back on medium high heat.  When the pan is warm, start frying the 1st half of mushrooms while you finish up slicing the rest.  When the edges of the mushroom are slightly brown, throw them into the bowl on top of the cooked beef.  Cook rest of mushrooms and throw them in the bowl too.
-Pour 1/2 a cup of dry white wine into the pan. 
-Add 1/2 a beef bullion cube, mash it up in the wine. 
-Throw in 3/4 of a cup of sour cream, stir that around until all the lumps have dissolved.
-Turn pan temperature to medium low

*If your water is boiling now, throw in around 3/4 of a bag of wide egg noodles. 

-Pour into the wine and sour cream mixture 1 1/2 cups of heavy whipping cream.  Blend.  Then add beef and mushrooms.  Blend.  Taste.  Add more salt and pepper if needed. 

*When egg noodles are soft, strain, add a dash of butter, salt and pepper to taste. 

-Spoon out onto dinner plates, ladle a generous heaping of beef stroganoff on top, and devour!

(This last step is not mandatory for those of you who actually know how to present food.  I’m not going to give suggestions as how to garnish it because I suck in this department.  My food tastes good, but I always serve it county style.  Also know that with this recipe, nothing is set in stone.  You don’t like sour cream?  Don’t put it in.  You want some garlic in there too?  Be my guest, slice up a clove and bung it in.  Another shake of nutmeg?  Shake away.  Whatever you do, I’m sure it will taste wonderful!)

Posted by Meg Tilly on Friday, September 21, 2007 in Recipes

coffee cake, apple and otherwise

The wonderful thing about cooking is that nothing is set in stone.  Other than the set things like baking soda, baking powder, amounts of flour, and so on, you are really free to play and have fun.  Ask yourself the “What does my mouth feel like?“ kind of questions.  I think many people when faced with a cookbook, get gripped with fear.  Like there is a wrong way and a right way and if you don’t do everything exactly so, you’re screwed.  Not true. 
Take my “Blueberry muffin” recipe.  That’s the batter from a coffee cake I like to make.  If you feel like delicious coffee cake instead of blueberry muffins this is what you do.

Meg’s Apple Coffee Cake
Heat oven to 375* Grease (with butter of course) an 8 x8 cake pan, or a bunt cake pan, or a bread loaf pan (you see what I mean, you can really do whatever you like)
Use the batter recipe for the Blueberry Muffins, EXCEPT omit the blueberries and add to the flour mixture
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
3-4 dashes of nutmeg
Then cut up:
1 apple peeled and diced into little chunks around the size of your baby fingernail (smaller than your baby fingernail for those of you who have fabulous long ones)
Add the liquid mixture to the flour mixture with the diced apple, (do not over mix, just stir blended and all the flour mixture is mixed)  Then scrape into your baking pan.
In a separate bowl cut together:
One handful of flour
two handfuls of brown sugar
one handful of white sugar
around ten shakes of cinnamon
3-5 tablespoons of butter (depending on how big your hands are)
Sprinkle this mixture on top of the cake batter, pop the whole thing in the oven and wait.  The cooking time will vary depending on what kind of pan you used, as well as the accuracy of your oven.  The coffee cake will be done when a fork, straw, or kebab skewer is poked into the middle of the cake and comes out clean.

To make this in to a regular Pecan Coffee Cake which is sort of the like the original recipe I started making many years ago.
Leave out the cinnamon, nutmeg and apple in the recipe for the batter and mince a cup of pecans and add them to the topping mixture.  Serve with pipping hot.  Make sure you have butter on the table, because I always like to tuck a little pat of it inside my piece of cake to make it truly decadent!

Posted by Meg Tilly on Saturday, September 15, 2007 in Recipes

Meg’s Blueberry Muffins

The thing I love most about summer is the arrival of the summer fruits. I look forward to this with even more anticipation than the release of my children from school and the gift of long glorious days of unstructured time stretching out in front of us. The ripe juicy peaches and nectarines, which I eat voraciously. The really wonderful ones have to be eaten outside, or over a sink, to catch all the rivulets of that run down the arm and drip off the elbow. The wild blackberries, plucked from the roadside bushes, sweet and tender, still warm from the sun. The cherries. The ten pound flats of plump, taut organic blueberries I buy from Kate when her truck rolls in off the ferry. I have to confess, I never buy just one flat. She only comes once a week and the blueberry season is only a month and a half long. If I'm lucky. I buy three flats each week, four if we have company. And we have a huge enormous bowl out on the table. We toss fistfuls of blueberries into our mouths like popcorn. I refill the bowl several times a day. I'm like "mother bear" in the children's book, Blueberries for Sal, written by Robert McClouskey. "Eat all you-" gulp, "can possibly hold!" swallow. "eat lots of berries and grow big and fat. We must store up food for the long, cold winter." And we do. Then, so that I have the memories and the tastes of summer in the grey winter months, I freeze huge plastic freezer bags of Kate's blueberries. And all winter long, I bring great sackfuls out and we eat frozen blueberries in a cup. I make a blueberry compote that I pour over sponge cake, and dollop big spoonfuls of freshly whipped cream on top. You also can use the compote to put inside crepes, and yes, whipped cream goes well with that as well. Sometimes I add raspberries, strawberries and/or blackberries to the compote. It depends on my mood and what I have in the freezer. I shall share these recipes with you, but not today. Today I'm going to give you my Blueberry Muffin recipe. I made it up. Hope you like it.

Meg's Blueberry Muffins

-Heat oven to 375 degrees. Grease 12 cup muffin tin or place cupcake liners in the muffin tin instead. Place 1/4 cup of butter in a mixing bowl and chop the butter into pieces. Put the plug in the sink and fill the sink with around an inch of hot water. Place the mixing bowl with the butter in the sink so the warm water will soften the butter and when it comes time for mixing, your arms won't get so tired. (Do not sneak use margarine or oil. It doesn't taste nearly as good!)

In separate bowl mix
1 ½ cup flour
(I like organic flour the best. But organic is more expensive and unbleached regular flour is fine too)
1/4 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of baking powder.

Set flour mixture bowl aside.
-When butter is soft, remove from sink and add:

½ to 3/4 a cup of white granulated sugar
(depending on how tart your berries are)

Blend well with butter. Then add to butter mixture:

1 large egg
2/3 cup milk
½ teaspoon of pure vanilla (don't use imitation vanilla, please.)

Add the butter etc. mixture to the flour mixture. Do not over beat. Just turn with fork until moistened. Now add several large handfuls of:

frozen blueberries

Stir in. Add more as needed. I love lots of berries, but some of you might prefer less. I leave it up to the individual. Spoon muffin batter into muffin tin and place in heated oven. Bake until golden brown on top. Give it 25-35 minutes. It all depends on your oven, and how many fistfuls of frozen blueberries you used. The more blueberries, the longer it takes. If you're using fresh blueberries then it won't take as much time to cook as the frozen ones. You can test to see if the muffins are done by either pressing lightly on the top of a muffin with your fingers. If it is done, the muffin will spring back into place. Or you could use a straw, a thin wood skewer, or jab a fork in one. If the implement comes out clean, (berry juice doesn't count, just no dough) then the muffins are done.

Take out of the oven, serve hot with a nice slab of fresh butter. If your family doesn't eat all of them at breakfast, don't worry. These muffins taste good cold too. Leave them out on the table and you can be certain that by lunchtime, they'll all be gone!

And don't worry. If you don't have access to a Kate with a truck full of berries, no problem. Any grocery store worth their salt will have bags of frozen organic blueberries in their frozen food section.

Posted by Meg Tilly on Monday, September 03, 2007 in Recipes

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