Sweet potato okra enchiladas with roasted fig and black bean sauce

This was a surprisingly successful experiment. Surprising because I ended up wanting more fig than I had put in (and less hot peppers...rarely a desire of mine) even though I worried all day that the downfall of the dish would probably be too much fig. Also, this recipe might have come to me as I was trying to fall asleep two nights ago and was so exciting to me that I had to get up, write it down, and start looking through the internet for other people who might have tried this combo. No one had but there were many black bean fruit sauces. I figured if they're all in season at the same time it couldn't be too disastrous, right?

The dish came together quickly despite the several steps I decided to work through. I started out by chopping up a sweet potato (skin on) into pretty small, bite-size pieces so it would bake quickly. I mixed the potato with a little olive oil, a few chopped cloves of garlic, about 1/2 of a chopped red bell pepper and a couple of roasted hot peppers I've had in the fridge for a few weeks now and some salt and pepper. I would have added onion but I only have purple ones right now. I roasted this in a cast-iron skillet at 400 degrees F for about 15 minutes.

After starting the filling I moved onto the sauce, slicing about 6 figs in half (next time I might even try doubling this? Maybe I should just go to 10?) and threw them in a smaller cast-iron skillet, and started roasting them in the oven too. Probably 5 minutes later I pulled the figs out to check on them, sprinkled some cinnamon and olive oil on top and stuck them back in the over for at least 5 minutes...maybe 10? I know if you leave them long enough they'll start to break down which I could have waited for but I just let them puff up and brown on the bottom a bit.

I then stuck the figs on the stove top (reason #17 why I love cast-iron skillets), threw in some chopped garlic and more chopped hot pepper (probably should have only thrown 1 in...not 3)let all that start to sizzle, then poured about 4/5 can of black beans in (because I was trying to keep the ratio even-ish with figs). Let that cook down for about 7 minutes. Next time I'll leave a little more of the black bean liquid in there or try adding yogurt or something else maybe to create a more liquid-y consistency. Also, had I had cumin I might have sprinkled a bit of that in too but I, distressingly, do not...have to make yet another grocery run this week.

While everything's cooking and roasting away I: grease a pyrex dish, pull my corn tortillas from the fridge--microwaved, and chop a few okra. (If you were adding cheese I'd go ahead and get that ready for assembling.)

To finish off the sauce I blended most of it with a little added water and returned this to the skillet with the remained black beans (just because I like some of my black beans whole).

Assembling was pretty self-explanatory. The amount of each component worked perfectly for 6 tortillas which pretty much filled my dish anyway! Then I poured the black beans on top. Baked at 350 for about 20 minutes, or however long it took to do a couple days worth of dishes...

The end result was delicious. In the future though, I'll definitely add more fig and something to make the black beans more saucy. Maybe some lime juice too. Also, I thought about picking up some cojita to crumble over the enchiladas which I'm sure wouldn't have negative effects...I almost thought about spreading a little goat cheese down the middle of the tortillas before loading them up but that seemed too indulgent. Instead I spent half an hour standing in the kitchen spreading goat cheese ajavascript:void(0)nd jam on that Irish brown bread two hours later...

Will add photos later!

Lemon Squares

1 cup butter melted
2 cups and 4 tbs flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 scant cup confectioners sugar
4 eggs
6 tbs lemon juice

Combine butter, 2 cups flour, 1 cup confectioners sugar.  Pour batter into buttered 13 x 9 x 2" pan.  Bake 20 minutes at 350.

Beat eggs, 2 cups sugar, baking powder, remaining flour and lemon juice  Pour over baked crust and bake 30-35 minutes more.  Make square marks and then let cool.  Sprinkle with confectioners sugar.

recipe de ma mere

Sweet potato, black bean, okra scramble

Ever since visiting Rachel in Portland and making an amazing scramble the morning after the Fourth I've been meaning to throw one together myself. Definitely a good crisper emptier and so easy to alter for multiple meals. Since okra made an awesome appearance in Friday's dinner scramble (with red bell pepper, onion, garlic, and green beans) I made sure to grab some from the market.

I sautéed a few cloves of garlic (CLG), about half of a yellow onion (CLG), a fresh pepper from my prof's garden and a couple of roasted hot peppers (CLG), and a sweet potato (Kroger: local section) in olive oil on medium heat until the sweet potato was thoroughly cooked. I threw in a can of black beans (drained of course) and seven sliced okra (okras?). At this point I took about 3/4 of the food out of the pan (tupperwared for tomorrows breakfast, lunch and dinner?) and then cracked an egg (local to AR) into the pan. Stirred the mixture a bit, let two corn tortillas start to warm up on one side of the skillet, took off the stove once the egg looked thoroughly cooked.

So filling and tasty with the many fresh ingredients. Plus, got my breakfast taco fix for the day and I didn't even need to throw salsa or hot sauce on top--though I'm sure I'll do that tomorrow!

Irish Brown Bread

Two weeks ago I bought buttermilk for the OA intern potluck. My plan was to make Irish Brown Bread from Alice Waters' new book, however the potluck was cancelled...and it's hard enough to find a recipe for buttermilk...I used half for the lemon buttermilk cake and last week I used the other half for, what else, Irish Brown Bread. For some reason it never occurred to me that I could make Waters' bread despite the cancelled dinner, but it made for a pleasant Thursday evening activity. I used a recipe from one of my latest blog finds: Kiss my spatula.

My favorite part of this bread was the whole wheat flour. I finally put my
CLG flour that I've been stocking up on to amazing use! The bread came together fairly quickly and I was afraid to over-knead it so I ended up under-kneading I think...next time I'll use less salt, knead it more, and make more shallow cuts in the top of the bread. Fresh out of the oven, with a little CLG butter melting into the bread, very satisfying. I also wanted to add something into the dough like flax or poppy seeds but I'm not sure if they'd act funny?