Recipes

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15
Jan 11

What Are Some Traditional Sweet Potato Recipes in North America?

I love eating sweet potatoes. Aside from being really abundant, sweet potato is a good source of complex carbohydrates for energy boosting purposes, dietary fibers for proper digestion, and even beta carotene nutrients for better eyesight. This is why in almost all continents; there are several sweet potato recipes being  cooked customarily.

In northern part of America, sweet potatoes are being served during Christmas holidays and Thanksgiving Day. This is because these are the times when they are usually abundant since sweet potatoes are harvested there from August until October.

During these seasons, people in North America usually prepare different sweet potato recipes like the candied sweet potato, the sweet potato casserole, pie made from sweet potato, slices of sweet potato, fries, baked sweet potato, butter and mush.

The first recipe, the Candied sweet potato recipe, is quite remarkable and significant because it is traditionally served on the table of American during Thanksgiving Day. It is usually cooked with brown sugar, orange juice, marshmallows, syrup made from maple, molasses and other sugary condiments and ingredients. This dish also represents specific customary American way of cooking. This recipe is actually one of the plenty of healthy sweet potato recipes being served in the country.

In making the healthy recipes for sweet potato, you can also try searching the internet and find preparations that will match your taste. Make sure as well that the ingredients of the recipe you will choose are all available in your supermarket. As much as possible, do not change or substitute any ingredient. This is because I believe that changing even a single part will make your sweet potato taste different than what it is ought to be. Hence, always stick to the plan and be faithful to the nitty-gritty of preparations. Otherwise, if the ingredient is not available in the nearest supermarket, try to choose other recipes instead.

Cooking / Recipes — No Comments
25
Dec 10

Easy and Delicious Vegetarian Side Dishes

It is easy to get stuck in a rut when planning what to make for dinner every night.  When healthy meals and saving money are important meal planning concerns, vegetarian side dishes can add a lot of nutrition and variety to weeknight meals without taking too much time to put together.  Pureed soups make a fantastic accompaniment to sandwiches of any sort, and can taste rich and creamy without any dairy products at all.  A delicious butternut squash soup recipe using only a handful of ingredients adds cheerful color and flavor to the most ordinary grilled-cheese sandwich dinner, and the leftovers are great to take for lunch the next day.

Roasted vegetables are so easy to make, and if you have a bit of time before dinner needs to be on the table, the rich caramelized flavors that ordinary root vegetables gain in the oven will liven up the rest of your dinner plate.  Just tossing uniform-sized chunks of potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, and whatever other vegetables you’ve got on hand in a bit of olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper, and baking for an hour or so in a 400 degree oven gives you a hearty, tasty side.  This one can be as simple or fancy as you like.  Jazz it up with sprigs of fresh thyme, chunks of rutabaga and parsnips if you are feeling more creative.

Great grain side dishes can be prepared easily with the help of a modern rice cooker.  Fuzzy logic rice cooker recipes are widely available and free up the cook to tend to last minute details of the main dish.  A rice pilaf is often more visually appealing and appetizing than plain white or brown rice, and is a good way to use small amounts of flavorful ingredients that might otherwise go to waste.  It’s only a couple more steps to make than plain rice, and adds so much to the meal overall.  Consider adding some new sides to your rotation to make your meals more interesting and nutritious.

Recipes — No Comments
14
Dec 10

Scottish Short Bread Recipe

One of the traditional accompaniments to tea and a quick serve when you have guests during the holiday season such as Christmas is home made Scottish biscuits. The other name of these crunchy delights is short bread and they are a great reminder of sweet moments with family and being at home. It is likely that you can find a short bread recipe in virtually any area where people gather together. Different family members will have encountered different versions of the same thing. In this article you will find the most basic recipe and you are welcome to make amendments and add your own ingredients to make it uniquely yours.

The ingredients you require are: one cup of butter, a quarter teaspoon of salt, half a cup of sugar, half a cup of icing sugar, 2 cups of all purpose flour. Since this is a baking recipe you will need to have the baking pan for the cookie mixture. The method for making the short bread is: mix the flour, the sugar, the icing sugar, and the salt evenly and then blend them together with the butter. Beat the mixture until it develops a thin cream like texture. Though you may use a mixer to do this, the hand mixed mixture always tends to develop a much more traditional taste. Once the mixture is finely and evenly mixed you are ready to start baking.

Before you start you can pre-heat the oven to 150 degrees. Take your greased baking pan and spread the mixture on it thinly. Put it into the oven for about six minutes, and then remove it. To create the decorative pattern on the top, use a fork to make small indentations on the top spreading them out as you like. Then you can pop the pan back into the oven and bake the cookies at 150 degrees C for about 25 to 30 minutes or until they have a cooked beige hue (this mixture only cooks, but will not turn golden brown).

Once baked remove from the oven and cut them into different cookie shapes with a cookie cutter. Then allow them to stand so that they can cool for about an hour or more so that they are hard as cookies should be. The thing that takes everyone right back to their grandmother’s kitchen with this crunchy snack is the way that you serve the cookies. You can select any one way that works for you.

I hope you enjoyed the short bread recipe.

Food / Recipes — No Comments
16
Oct 10

Two Dishes from Northern Italy

Two traditional  dishes from Northern Italy are risotto and tagliatelle. Risotto is said to have been discovered by accident when some one tried to cook rice in a pan that was far too small and therefore had to add water little by little. To make a good risotto you need a type of rice rich in starch, ideally a type that grows in Northern Italy called Arborio rice, which is widely available elsewhere these days. You should use a wooden spoon to stir your rice but you do not want to stir too much not too break the grains as the starch should be released gradually from the grains. Once you learn how to make a decent risotto you can then experiment with hundreds of different combinations. Risotto is easy to make, cheap, can be vegetarian or even vegan and can be adjusted to fit different dietary requirements and  be served in so many different ways. Here you can try a strawberry risotto recipe which is not something that you would expect but I assure you that it is delicious.

If you prefer to try some pasta you could start with tagliatelle. Unlike other types of pasta tagliatelle do not come from the South of Italy but from the area of Bologna. The legend says that they were invented by a creative chef for Lucretia Borgia’s wedding. You can add many different types of sauces to tagliatelle the most common one is the famous bolognese sauce but you can find here recipes for tagliatelle with pumpkin flowers. Again tagliatelle can be a vegetarian dish and also part of a healthy Mediterranean diet,  it is also a cheap and quick dish to prepare.  Tagliatelle are long and  flat ribbons of pasta commonly yellow but there is also a green version often made with spinach and occasionally with nettles.