Holy Jicama!

(Hint for non-Spanish speakers: Those words start with the same sound.)


This is a jicama. Until this week, I had never eaten the "Mexican potato," but I had a recipe from Julie's slowcooker book that called for some as a topping to yummy beef tacos. So I bought a big one. Much bigger than necessary. And I was left with a load of jicama and no idea what to do with it.

This is one of my favorite situations: having odd leftovers that I must somehow use, for, lo, I am loath to waste even the smallest bit of food.

It's potato-like, I thought, so why not make mashed jicama? I looked up a recipe on line that turned out to be a no-cooking, raw foods kind of recipe, but the ingredients looked yummy. So I modified it into a cooked version to suit my own tastes. I was very pleased with it. Here you go. What to do when you have too much jicama:

Rosemary Garlic Mashed Jicama

Ingredients:

4 cups peeled, chopped jicama
1 1/2 cups cashews (I omitted - for lack thereof - with no detrimental effects)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary (or dried)
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1-2 T. butter, softened
Black pepper, to taste

Directions:

Boil jicama, as you would potatoes for mashed potatoes, for 20-30 minutes, or until tender. Drain. Blend in a food processor (It's a little tougher and chunkier than potatoes--or maybe I just didn't boil it long enough...), along with the rest of the ingredients. Blend till combined.

I had to get rid of some sour cream, so I had the mashed jicama with a very easy Sour Cream chicken and gravy. The gravy was nice, because it counterbalanced the spicy jicama concoction with its mildness. Any similar dish will do, but here's the one I did just for the heck of it.

Ingredients:

1 cup sour cream
1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup white wine
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts (I just used three huge ones)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Combine the sour cream, soup and wine. Mix well. Place chicken breasts in a 9x13 inch baking dish. Pour sour cream mixture over chicken and bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour.

Lemon Rolls

(Cool pattern, eh? This is pre-frosting.)

This is my problem. I have a drive to bake--especially if it carries the added challenge of experimenting with something new: trying a new recipe, modifying an existing one, substituting ingredients and such. In this instance, Jeff wondered if we could make orange rolls, but we had neither oranges nor orange juice. So we decided to try lemon rolls. It was delicious, and I'll include the modifications in the recipe below, but here's the thing: the full recipe made 24 rolls.

And there are two of us.


So when I make something delicious, we each end up eating much more than we should.

How do I solve this problem?! We ended up taking the rolls over to a party at a friend's house and distributing them around. Good thing, too, because they just weren't as good on the second day. Can I freeze the rolls and bake them 4 at a time? Can I use a partial packet of yeast? Ideas on smallifying recipes for two would be appreciated.

This recipe, like so many of my favorites, is from the Ivy Bake cookbook. Honestly, next time you are in Nauvoo, you must jog (drive, really) on over to Ft. Madison and go to the Ivy Bake Shoppe. It's a Shoppe, after all. And it's scrumptious.

Now that I've advertised for them, my conscience is clear and I can feel free to share this recipe. [Modifications in brackets.]

Orange Rolls [Lemon Rolls]

Ingredients:

Rolls:
2 cups milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening
1 T. (1 pkg.) yeast
2 tsp. salt
7 cups flour, divided
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp. lemon extract [1 tsp. lemon juice-but only because I didn't have lemon extract]

Filling:
2 T. grated orange [lemon] peel
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup orange juice [I used 1/2 cup lemon juice mixed with 1/4 cup water, but it ended up kind of funny. The lemon curdled the butter into little bits so it didn't really blend, and the lemon/water combination was very watery, so when I spread it on the dough, it started leaking off. I had to dump as much liquid as I could back into the bowl (though I used it later for the glaze) to keep it from spilling off of the dough when I rolled it up. I don't know if it's that runny with the orange juice. If I made the lemon again, I'd probably use half as much liquid.]

Glaze:
4 cups powdered sugar
Orange juice [I used the leftover lemon/water combo, but straight lemon juice would have made a more flavorful icing. But what am I saying! My end result was completely mouth wateringly scrumptious. I don't know that it needs changing.]

Directions:

Heat milk, sugar, and shortening in a saucepan to 115 degrees [I just made sure it was all melted]. In mixing bowl with paddle attachment, place yeast, salt, and 3 cups flour. Pour in heated liquid and beat for 2 minutes on medium speed.
Add beaten eggs and lemon extract. Slowly add rest of flour and beat until dough pulls away from side of bowl. Pour into a greased bowl, and turn one time. Cover with a damp towel, and let rise about 1 hour. Pour out of bowl onto floured table. Cover and let rest 10 minutes. Roll out dough on a floured board into a large rectangle.
For the filling, mix all ingredients together thoroughly. Spread dough with filling and carefully roll up, tucking in the ends. Slice and place on a greased baking sheet. [I learned this trick in the Family Living Center on my mission in Nauvoo: slice by wrapping a string of dental floss around the rolled loaf and then pulling the ends - crossed over the top - to slice it through. Does that make sense? It's like pulling the strings on the hood of your sweatshirt to make the sweatshirt small. Kind of. Anyway, it prevents the loaf from squishing.] Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for 45 minutes. Bake at 350 degrees until lightly brown, about 12 to 15 minutes. Make glaze while rolls are baking. Combine powdered sugar with enough orange [lemon] juice to make a glaze consistency. Glaze rolls while still warm. Makes approximately 20 small rolls. [yeah, right! More like 24 big rolls!]

These are best warm. Enjoy!

Spicy Black Bean-Corn Casserole

Sorry for the lack of picture. Camera stolen. So sad.

It really is sad, though. Because this was a very yummy (and healthy!) meal and I wanted to tempt you to try it by including a pretty picture. This one is from my Cooking Light book, and it filled us with warm and happy goodness. I had forgotten how wonderful corn bread is.

You know what. I won't stand for this. You're getting a picture, and a food-related one at that--and if I have to pull a totally random one out of my library, then so be it.


Ingredients:

3 T. diced green chiles, divided
1/2 cup salsa
1/4 cup chopped green onions
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro (Which I totally left out. Bleh! Nasty!)
1 15-oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 11-oz. can corn with red and green bell peppers, drained
1 10-oz. can enchilada sauce
1/2 cup egg substitute (I just used 2 eggs.)
1 8.5-oz. package corn muffin mix (One of those little Jiffy boxes works well.)
2 T. chopped bottled roasted red bell peppers (or just chopped tomatoes)
1 1/2 cups (6 oz.) preshredded reduced-fat Mexican blend or Cheddar cheese (I used 3/4 cup regular cheese, which was plenty)
6 T. reduced-fat sour cream
1 1/2 t. thinly sliced fresh cilantro (Yuck! Don't do it!)

Directions:

1. Mix 2 T. of the green chiles and the next 6 ingredients (or 5 if you're skipping the cilantro) in a 3 1/2-quart electric slow cooker. Cover and cook on LOW for 4 hours.
2. Combine remaining 1 T. green chiles, egg substitute, muffin mix, and roasted red bell peppers in a bowl. Spoon batter evenly over bean mixture in cooker. Cover and cook 1 hour or until corn bread is done.
3. Sprinkle cheese over corn bread. Cover and cook 5 minutes or until cheese melts. Top each serving with sour cream (it really is better!); sprinkle with cilantro (No! Don't!).

Yield: 6 servings (more like 4, if you've a healthy appetite). Serving size: about 1 cup casserole w/ 1 T. sour cream)

And for you healthy eater types:
Calories: 366, Fat 12.4 g, Fiber 5.6 g

Slow Cooker Sweetness

The following recipe is one more reason I have to be grateful for Jeff. You see, he's mentioned a couple times that slow-cooking is his favorite way to prepare meat--it just gives it such a tender texture. In my family, we had two or three classic slow cooker meals, but our crockpot was very rarely used beyond those few. Taking Jeff's cue, though, I've tried two slow cooker meals from one of our wedding presents ("Fix-it and Forget-it Cookbook: Feasting with your Slow Cooker") and I'm planning on trying many more. The winner this week?

Orange Chicken and Sweet Potatoes

*Official Endorsement: This recipe is ridiculously yummy and, as is the way of the crock pot, simple in both ingredients and effort.*

Ingredients:
2-3 sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced (I used 3. I love sweet potatoes!!)
3 whole chicken breasts, halved
2/3 cup flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
dash pepper
dash garlic powder
10 3/4 ounce can cream of celery or cream of chicken soup (I used celery, and the recipe was amazing, but it might be amazing either way)
4 ounce can sliced mushrooms, drained
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 tsp. grated orange rind
2 tsp. brown sugar
3 Tbsp. flour

Directions:
1. Place sweet potatoes in bottom of slow cooker.
2. Rinse chicken breasts and pat dry. Combine flour, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper, and garlic powder. Thoroughly coat chicken in flour mixture (Don't throw away extra flour--see below). Place on top of sweet potatoes.
3. Combine soup with remaining ingredients (for the 3 Tbsp. of flour, I used the leftover flour from coating the chicken, as there was at least 1/4 cup left). Stir well. Pour over chicken breasts.
4. Cover. Cook on Low 8-10 hours or High 3-4 hours. Serve over rice.

"Victory for inventiveness, Katie"

That's what Jeff just said to me. This one's easy, and it came to me from above:

Put a slice of banana inside of a cookie-sized ball of peanut butter cookie dough. Bake as directed. That's all.

Cookievana.

P.S. From further experience, peanut butter oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips are possibly even better and aren't so funnily shaped.

Pumpkin Ginger Snap Ice Cream

This, I am quite proud to say, was an experimental recipe that I thought up entirely on my own. Jeff and I got an icecream maker as a wedding present, and this was, I think, our fourth time using it. I had some extra pumpkin and wanted to make pumpkin ice cream. There are plenty of good recipes online if you want to make it yourself, or you can just buy some.

My innovation was mixing in cookie dough, but ginger snap dough, not chocolate chip. I made my favorite ginger snap recipe from the Ivy Bake book, but I left out the baking powder and soda and the egg (they're unnecessary, since I wouldn't be baking the cookies, and unwanted, since it would leave raw egg in the icecream). Instead, to get the ingredients moist enough to stir into dough, I just added water (milk would probably have worked better). I froze the ginger snap dough for an hour or two, then took it out and cut it into small cubes. Then I mixed it into softened pumpkin icecream for a delicious treat. Extra good in crepes!

Greek-style Sloppy Joes

We inherited some ground lamb from a generous ward member with an overflowing freezer, but I wasn't sure what to do with it. When I looked up ground lamb in our ever-trusty Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, I found this simple, delicious recipe. Even better was the discovery that you can turn the Kaiser rolls in the recipe into bread bowls! Add a cup or so of beef broth to a couple servings' worth of sloppy joe mix, crumble feta on top, and you've got a Greek-style Sloppy Joe Soup.


Ingredients:

• 1 pound lean ground lamb or beef
• 1/2 cup chopped onion (1 medium)
• 1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
• 1/3 cup bulgur
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano, crushed
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 2 cups shredded romaine lettuce
• 6 kaiser rolls, split and toasted
• 4 ounces crumbled feta cheese with tomato and basil or plain feta cheese

Directions:

1. In a large skillet cook ground meat and onion until meat is brown and onion is tender. Drain off fat. Stir in tomato sauce, bulgur, oregano, salt, and pepper. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer, uncovered, about 5 minutes or until desired consistency, stirring occasionally.

2. To assemble, arrange romaine on bottom halves of rolls. Spoon meat mixture on romaine. Sprinkle with feta cheese; replace top halves of rolls. Makes 6 sandwiches.