Healthy & Spicy Sweet Potato Soup And Cinnamon Rolls!

All weekend I've had an immense craving for cinnamon rolls. Like the big, fat , oozing Cinnabun kind. Mark and I were going to make them yesterday, but figured it would be better on a Sunday morning. They didn't turn out oozing and doughy and gorgeous like I wanted, but still tasty and satisfying. I also decided to make something soothing and delicious for supper tonight. I have really been loving everything I've made from the Best of Chef at Home cookbook. He had a recipe for a southwestern sweet potato soup that looked so good I knew I would be making it, and I would definitely make it again, that's for sure!

The soup starts very simply; you just need :
splash of olive oil
2 onions, chopped
couple cloves garlic, sliced up. 
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and grated
4 cups chicken stock
1 chipotle pepper from can
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cumin
little salt to taste
sour cream to garnish (I didn't use any)

 Cook onions in a tbsp of oil until browned.

 Add sliced garlic, cook for a few minutes.

 Add chicken broth.

 I grated my sweet potatoes before hand, just so you can watch the onions so they don't burn.

 Add sweet potatoes to stock, onions and garlic. Bring to simmer.

 Once simmering, add chipotle, cumin and cinnamon. Stir well and simmer until potatoes are soft.

 Once the potatoes are soft, you use a hand blender or pour soup into blender and puree. Add salt if needed.

 Finished soup! I also made this ahead & re-headed for flavors to get richer.

 When I served it, I grilled a chicken breast, took 1/3 of it and cut it up in my bowl, and poured my soup over it. This added extra protein and flavor, but I just didn't know what else to make with it, and it went just fine!

Bon appetit!

I have no idea what yeast doughs have against me, but I always have an issue with them. I watched and read Michael Smith's recipe of sweet dough cinnamon rolls and thought it would be easy enough. My fiancee is a baker, and has been for ten years, so I figured with his supervision nothing could go wrong, but it did. My dough DID NOT rise at all. It was tough to knead and just wasn't cooperating. Maybe it's cause it was cold out, but I'm pretty disappointed. I'll give the recipe and maybe you'll have better luck than I did. And like most of my recipes, this one has been halved!

 You will need-
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/8 tsp yeast
2 eggs

 Mix half flour and yeast into bowl.

 Warm milk, butter, brown sugar, vanilla and salt until butter is melted. Low heat!

 Pour liquid into dry. Mix with mixer until well blended.

 Add eggs. Mix well. Add rest of flour and use dough hook on mixer to blend.

 Knead dough 5 minutes or so, until no longer sticky. I had to add more warm milk to this before kneading.

Place dough in greased bowl. Let rise about 2 hours or until doubled! Mine did not double.

 This is my dough rolled out after 2 1/2 hours resting.

 For filling, mix 1/4 cup butter with 1/2 cup brown sugar and a few spoonfuls cinnamon. Smooth over dough.

 Roll up dough & cut and place into buttered pans. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes or so.

 Brush with melted butter. Let stand half hour or so, until doubled. And again, mine hardly did anything.

 For glaze, mix icing sugar, with milk and vanilla, until not too thick, not too runny. I just added milk until I got the consistency I wanted.

 Here are my cinnamon rolls! :) 

 YUM YUM!

Hope you like the recipes! I'll be doing a review on a cookbook this week also, so watch out for that. I also borrowed Mastering the Art of French cooking for the library, so be prepared for lots of french cooking!

Until next time, 

Jacqueline

Spaghetti alla carbonara & yummy granola!

Today is the first day I've had a Saturday off in a long time. I decided on making some delicious granola this afternoon, but it took me forever to decide what to make for supper. I wanted to bake a chicken but didn't know what to cook with it. Then I wanted pasta, but wasn't sure what kind. We ended up making delicious spaghetti alla Carbonara alla Nigella Lawson. I've made it several times and had it at a restaurant, and this recipe is still  my favorite. And definitely an indulgence. Just remember not to eat too much!

Spaghetti alla Carbonara

500g spaghetti
olive oil
1/4 package bacon, cut up in small pieces. (You're supposed to use pancetta, but it's ridiculously expensive around here)
60ml white wine
60ml heavy cream
3 eggs
few tbsp parmesan
pepper

Mix eggs, cream, parmesan & pepper. Set aside.
Put a tbsp oil in frying pan & add bacon, cook until crispy. Add wine and reduce until it gets syrupy.
Meanwhile, cook pasta in very salty water. & drain. As soon as you drain pasta add bacon and all syrupy wine, stir. Add egg cream mixture, little at a time, stirring as you go. The eggs will cook on contact of the hot pasta, but not make it like "cooked eggs", it stays saucy. I didn't have to use all the mixture, because I didn't make that much pasta. You can add as much as you like.

Yum yum!

Micheal Smith's Country Granola. (this recipe is halved and adjusted to my taste!)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey
1 tbsp vanilla
1 tbsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
4 cups oats
1/2 cup sliced almonds
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup flax seed or flax meal
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup raisins

Preheat oven at 325F
In a bowl, mix oats, almonds, walnuts and salt.
Keep raisins to the side.
In a saucepan, simmer vegetable oil, honey, cinnamon and nutmeg. Once simmering, add to oats and stir.
Put on cookie sheet and bake 30-40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. Once cooled stir in raisins.

I bagged this up into sandwich bags and its supposed to last up to a week or two. I also added extra cinnamon once it was baked and mixed with raisins. We're cinnamon-aholics at this house!

Tomorrow I'll be posting more delicious recipes! Make sure to come back and see!

Until next time, 

Jacqueline

What's for supper?

I worked until five-thirty tonight, so Mark made my supper. I have been browsing other foodie websites, and one of my favorite foodies is Suzie the Foodie. She lives in Halifax, which is only a few hours from me. Anyways, she had posted on facebook that she eats these spicy peanut noodles a few times a week and I thought that if a foodie makes something so frequently, it had to be good. The recipe only had a few ingredients; rice vinegar, peanut butter, soy sauce, hot sauce and some spaghetti. All you do is whisk 1/4 cup vinegar,  1/4 cup peanut butter, 1 tbsp soy sauce and a tsp hot sauce, and add it to hot pasta and stir it around. We put some grilled steak on top, just a few slices.

 This was supper! What did you have?

Until next time, 

Jacqueline

Fabulous Pork Chops with Apples!

As I may have said before, I extremely love Chef Michael Smith and his recipes. Tonight Mark & I decided to make a Pork chop with "apple sauce" dish. The pork chops were just cooked in butter and oil with salt and pepper, just plain. But the apple sauce was VERY good, but it was more like a chunky, vinegary savory deliciousness, not a true apple sauce. We halved this recipe, since there's only two of us and we want to be able to try out a new recipe everyday instead of having left-overs to eat, so the recipe I'm showing you is the halved version.

Savory apple sauce -
2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions
2 apples, cored and cut in chunks
1/8 cup cider vinegar
1 tbsp rosemary
salt and pepper

heat oil in saucepan, add onions and caramelize them, slowly. It takes about 10-15 minutes or so. Add the apple chunks, vinegar, rosemary, salt and pepper. Simmer until apples are soft, 20-25 minutes or so. You can serve them warm or cold. We served them warm.

Pork chops-
2 pork chops
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp oil
salt and pepper

Preheat pan. Add oil and butter. Pat dry chops & salt and pepper them. When butter starts turning brown, add chops, searing for 2 minutes on each side. Cover and lower heat to medium low, for ten minutes.
Serve apple sauce over meat. :)

 Patting them dry!

I don't have any frying pans with covers, so I just used foil. It does the trick!

And the finished results! :

 This was my portion, with some mashed potatoes. I haven't had any in a long time!

And Mark's portion! LOL I thought his looked nicer.

Mark and I also decided to rate the recipes we made, and today's dish was a definite 10 out of 10. We will be making this again! I hope you liked the recipe, and have a great meal too!

Until next time, 

Jacqueline