My favourite gadget and some musings about bacon

Hello everyone!

Real life has caused me to take a brief hiatus, but I am back to preach the yummy gospel. To your right you'll see a photo of what's called a RASP. This baby is not only useful at grating citrus zest, but hard cheeses, nutmeg, ginger, and garlic. Think of a cheese grater crossed with a 5-blade lady razor.

That's not all this gadget is good for. I hate wasting food, as I'm sure most people do. As a single chick who does most of her cooking for one, it's a common issue, especially with seasonings like ginger, jalapenos, and lemongrass that I use in my Asian cooking. I learned a little trick from one of my favourite TV chefs who freezes ingredients like these and grates them frozen into his cooking. This not only prevents wastage, but allows you better control over your seasonings. What would you normally do with a half a jalapeno? Probably chuck it, or awkwardly try to work it into recipes it doesn't belong in (about to expire jalapeno oatmeal anyone?).

Genius, I know. It would really be genius if they were paying me to hock their product.

Another trick I've learned over the years is to freeze bacon on cookie sheets lined with waxed paper. Want a couple of slices for a club sandwich? Throw them frozen into a pan. They cook up just like if they were thawed. Bacon bits you ask? Frozen bacon is infinitely easier to slice prior to cooking.

Prevent against the crimes against bacon. Don't let it spoil.

Sweet potato bonanza!

Words cannot express how much I love sweet potatoes. They're so versatile and yummy and when you slap on as much butter as I do you totally forget how healthy they are.

They come in all shapes and sizes. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the last time I went shopping for sweet potatoes, they only had ones the size of footballs. Maybe not NFL footballs, but certainly peewee footballs. Seriously, these things were almost 2 pounds each. Now, I'm single and do 90% of my cooking for just me, and have no desire to sit down and eat 2 entire pounds of sweet potatoes. Then I would have no room for bacon. So I had to get creative with my left overs.

Step 1: Cook
Peel and cube your gigantic sweet potato. Put it in a pot, cover with water. Bring to a boil uncovered and then turn down to medium low and simmer for 10-15 minutes or until fork-tender.

I love that expression. Fork-tender. Sexy.

Drain.

From this point, sweet potatoes can be cooled and added to salads, or kept warm and mashed with lots of butter and garlic.

Step 2: Flavour!

Garlic-mashed Sweet Potatoes

Dump sweet potatoes in a colander in the sink. Leave them there to drain. Put the pot back on the stove and add butter and crushed garlic. Melt the butter and let the garlic unleash some of its fragrant goodness. Turn off the heat. Throw the sweet potato tots back into the pan with the butter, toss 'em around and then mash everything together. Salt and pepper.

Good with steak. Also, good garnished with finely chopped red onion, fresh parsely and crumbled feta cheese.


White bean and sweet potato salad

1/2 red pepper, diced
1 can white kidney beans
1 1/2 cups cooked diced sweet potato (or roughly the same measurement as the beans)
1 apple, diced
1 small red onion, finely chopped

Dressing:
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
3 tablespoons mayo
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 large pinch dried tarragon
zest of 1/2 lemon
salt and pepper

Mix all that stuff together. It's not rocket science.

Salads like this are best after refridgerating for a while so that all those flavours in the dressing work their way into the beans and potatoes.

Step 3: Leftovers!

Breakfast, lunch or dinner. So good.

Sweet potato pancakes

1/2 cup leftover garlic mashed sweet potatoes
1 egg
2/3 cup milk (or soy milk)
1 tablespoon olive oil

Whisk together in a large bowl. Who likes dirtying two bowls? No one. So put a sieve over the bowl full of wet ingredients and add:

1/2 cup spelt flour (if using regular flour, use a bit less than 1/2 cup)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Stir dry ingredients around a bit in the sieve and then shake into the wet ingredients. Whisk together. Thick batter (like the consistency of yogurt) will make thick pancakes. Thin it out if you like them thinner, like crepes. They also cook faster if they're thinner. In a lightly buttered pan over medium heat, spoon batter in and cook until bubbles appear around the edges of the pancake (3 or 4 minutes) then flip.

If made like crepes they can be filled with...cheese? goat cheese? cream cheese? Whatever, like you can ever go wrong with cheese. If made like pancakes, just crumble cheese on top.

I made them like crepes for breakfast and filled them with sheep's milk feta, spinach, and sauteed red onion.

Run out of hamburger buns?

Use waffles.