Sweet Potato Rolls

Sweet potatoes are a new favorite in my house. The past month we have had simply roasted, sprinkled with a little flaked sea salt and topped with créme fraîche, in challah, French fried, and recently in dinner rolls. We just love this root crop that makes everything taste milky sweet. The dinner rolls are super soft and delicious hot with butter or filled with cheese or meat spread. I baked another batch today for my daughter's office Christmas party and will make them again for Christmas and maybe another recipe with ube (purple yam) powder as well.

Sweet Potato Rolls
1 packet instant yeast
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup cooked and mashed sweet potatoes
1 egg, room temperature
½ cup buttermilk or whole milk
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3 tablespoons butter
extra flour for dusting, optional

• In a bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, mix 1 cup flour and yeast, add egg and mashed sweet potatoes and mix on low for 1 minute.
• In a saucepan heat buttermilk, sugar, salt, and butter. Stir until butter is melted and temperature of mixture reaches 120°F. Pour milk mixture into the mashed sweet potato mixture. Mix on low speed for 1 minute. Stir in 1 cup of the flour and beat at medium speed for about 2 minutes. Add enough flour to make a soft dough. Remove paddle attachment and replace with dough hook. Knead on medium speed until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl, brush top of dough with oil , cover tightly with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.
• Remove dough from bowl and transfer onto a clean surface. Knead dough lightly to remove air bubbles. Cut into 18 pieces and shape into ovals or rounds. Place on silpat or lightly greased sheet pan 1 inch apart, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise until double in bulk, about 40 minutes.
• Dust tops of rolls with flour, if desired. Bake rolls in a preheated 400°F oven for approximately 20 minutes.

Sweet!

I'm sending this over to Joelen's Culinary Adventures Tasty Tools Event for December, 2008: Baking Sheets

And On The Tree All The Ornaments Glow...

The National Christmas Tree in Washington D.C., a live 40-foot Colorado blue spruce on the Ellipse, the grassy area near the White House. It is surrounded by 56 smaller decorated trees representing all 50 states, five territories, and the District of Columbia.


and Festival of Lights at the Mormon Temple in Kensington, MD

live Nativity scene

The title of this post is a line from Christmastime, a song from Aimee Mann's Christmas CD, One More Drifter In the Snow.

Chicken Adobo Tostado

After reading about THE ADOBO BOOK over at Marvin's, I was convinced and finally got my copy. I was hesitant in buying this book when I first read it in Market Manila's blog a few years back because of its author. I purchased two of Reynaldo Alejandro's cookbooks, I kept one (taking up much needed space in my cookbook cabinet) and the better of the two I gave to a friend who does not cook very often. I checked amazon.com and some insane person is selling it for a ridiculous price of $324.95, and another for the more reasonable but still waaay too expensive $34.95. This book costs $5.00 in the Philippines and if you have relatives or friends coming to visit, you can ask them to buy it for you. It is thin and small and won't occupy much space in their luggage. The recipes are from some well-known Filipinos (at least to me they are), a few from the author himself, and some from the relatives of the other author who belongs to a family of restaurant owners in the Philippines. After reading and cooking a few recipes, I can say it is very good because it has some recipes that my own mother had prepared which rarely get mentioned in any other Filipino cookbooks. I give this cookbook a two-thumbs up regardless of the absence of photographs.

One of the recipes that I cooked is Maverick's Adobo Tostado because it is very similar to one of the adobo recipes I make, with wine vinegar or sherry and then deep fried. The recipe is from Marivic Rufino Buenaventura whom I met and worked with briefly at the Philippine Airlines ticketing office over 30 years ago. I was in that office for only two weeks when she was hired answering telephone inquiries. I did not know who she was until she approached me and asked if I have heard rumors about her (I had not at the time). She confided in me that she felt the women in the office were gossiping about her, talking amongst themselves in front of her in their dialect (Cebuano) followed by giggling. I later learned what the rumors were about which followed her wherever she was assigned that went round and round the 2 years she worked at the airline. I did not know her that well because she left after 2 weeks but I do believe that she was and still is a very nice soft-spoken gracious person, and her adobo recipe is delicious. I'm not sure how she got the nickname maverick, though.

I made chicken adobo adapted from her recipe adding ¼ cup of cider vinegar because her recipe has only a cup of wine vinegar and I prefer my adobo a little bit more sour. It also does not specify the cooking time, you have to eyeball and cook it by instinct, how much sauce you want, taste it and adjust accordingly.

Maverick's Adobo Tostado
1 cup olive oil
3 heads garlic, crushed and finely minced
1 kilo pork belly, cubed
1 kilo chicken parts
1 cup wine vinegar or leftover white wine
¼ cup Kikkoman soy sauce
1 - 2 bay leaves
rock salt, to taste
1 tablespoon freshly ground peppercorn
corn oil for deep frying
a bit of Tabasco

• Fry 2 heads of garlic in olive oil until brown. Set aside garlic.
• Sauté pork, add chicken. Continue to cook till brown.
• Add wine vinegar, soy sauce, bay leaves, wine, salt, peppercorn, and the fried garlic. Simmer for hours on low fire. When cooked, drain chicken and pork. Keep sauce separate.
• Heat oil, add the remaining garlic and deep fry chicken and pork cubes until crispy. Drain and serve in a large platter. Serve sauce in a separate bowl.

Note: the Tabasco does not appear in the recipe. I guess you can sprinkle the cooked adobo before or after frying or maybe add a few drops to the sauce.

Sniff Sniff

the stinky lunch

One lunch we had last week made quite a stink, literally. After having too much turkey, we were ready to move on. I decided to make a light meal of white lasagna and paired it with the leftover uncooked Brussels sprouts. Bad.Idea. The aged Romano cheese in the baked lasagna and the notorious sprouts gave off a combination of an odor so strong that I had to burn scented candles and spray the whole house with Oust in between bites. Pardon me for sounding crude but my daughter dubbed the food combo foot-and-a$$, hahaha.

A lot of websites give advice on how to prevent the unpleasant odor by not over-boiling them. They suggest roasting or pan frying which I did with half of the sprouts. We didn't smell anything then, or maybe the roasted turkey masked the odor of the sprouts. This time I steamed them in a microwave bag which helped retain their bright green color but I suspect was the reason for the smell.

Stinky aside, I loved the lasagna and the steamed, buttered, and salted Brussels sprouts were a revelation, simply delicious! They are sweetish and have just a hint of bitterness which I find strangely appealing. I've had these tiny green stink balls just once almost 20 years ago. I remember them being very pale green, bitter and almost mushy and vowed never to serve them at home. But my daughter asked for them for Thanksgiving this year and I compromised by getting the freshest sprouts. I bought a whole stalk from the grocery which costs about the same as the loose ones. The advantage in buying the whole stalk is there are more of the tiniests (is this a word?) which cook faster and have a sweeter flavor. I am loving this vegetable regardless of the smell.

delicious tiny stink balls

Lasagna Margarita
8 sheets no-cook lasagna, soaked for a few minutes in cold water to soften
16 ounces ricotta cheese, divided into 4 portions
8 ounces farmer's cheese (paneer or queso blanco), diced and divided into 4 portions
2 cups shredded Parmesan or Romano, divided into 4 portions
3 cups white sauce, divided into 5 portions

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Pat dry the lasagna sheets on kitchen towels.
• Ladle one portion of the white sauce on the bottom of an 8-inch square pan. Put 2 sheets of lasagna on top of sauce. Ladle another portion of sauce on top of the lasagna and spread evenly. Sprinkle the cheeses evenly. Repeat with the rest of the lasagna, sauce, and cheeses. Bake until bubbly and golden on top.