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Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Tester Chili and Sweet Potato Butter

Being a tester for Bianca's (Vegan Crunk) upcoming cookbook has gotten me really excited to cook recently! With only two dishes down, and I can already tell this is going to be a wonderful testing process and an even better final cookbook!
The first tester recipe this week: Chipotle Chickpea Chili! This is one hearty chili...packed full of beans, chipotle peppers, and a few other surprise ingredients...and it is really delicious! It was just perfect on a cold night like tonight! I served it with sauteed greens and some of my homemade whole wheat biscuits. And yes, that is my homemade sweet potato butter slathered on those little biscuits!
Since I'm not able to give you the chili recipe (I can keep a secret!), I will give you my recipe for sweet potato butter! It's made in the crock pot, but you could use a pressure cooker if you have that instead. Here's a picture of the little cubes going into the beautiful red crock pot:
Sweet Potato Butter (makes about 3 cups)
1 1/2 lbs sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
1 qt water
1 Tbs cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp cloves
pinch of cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbs sugar
1 Tbs maple syrup or agave nectar
juice of 1 lemon

In a medium or large crock pot, place the water, diced sweet potatoes, and sugar. Turn on to high and allow to cook for at least 8 hours, or until the sweet potatoes are very well cooked and the water has almost completely reduced. Add the spices, salt, maple syrup, and lemon juice to the cooked sweet potatoes. Stir and cover again. Allow to cook for 2 more hours on high. Turn off heat and allow to cool. Pour mixture into food processor or blender and puree until smooth...an immersion blender would work here too! Put into jars and refrigerate.
**If there seems to be extra water in the crock pot after cooking the sweet potatoes, drain a bit off before adding the spices, etc.**

The cold weather of winter has made me crave more rib-sticking and homestyle foods. Some examples from this past week:
Oven-"Fried" Zucchini
(based on my oven-"fried" okra recipe)

Hot Sauce-Glazed Tempeh (from Veganomicon) with
Maple Dijon Mashed Potatoes and Roasted Broccoli
--I will have the potato recipe soon...it's my WIP Wednesday dish!--

More tester recipes and homestyle cooking to come!

5 comments:

Lisa (Show Me Vegan) said...

your sweet potato butter sounds like the perfect topping for biscuits! Have you posted your biscuit recipe? One of my goals is to learn to make vegan biscuits. And that zucchini looks delicious too!

Lisa (Show Me Vegan) said...

Unfortunately I'm hardly ever in Columbia, but it sounds like a cool town with a good music scene. We didn't get much response to your thread about a MO meetup did we? I was wondering whether I should post something on my blog in case there are MO readers who didn't see the thread. I could link them to the thread you started if they are interested.

Bianca said...

I'm not sure why I haven't found your blog yet! Ha! But I'm so glad you're liking everything so far. The chili does get better after sitting in the fridge overnight. I had leftovers today, and all the liquidy tomato stuff had been absorbed so it was all chunky-like.

And I'm soooo glad you posted that sweet potato butter recipe. I have a huge box of sweet potatoes in my pantry that need to be used before they go bad. Do you seal yours in a water bath like canning? I think I'll do that this weekend!

Anardana said...

I can't beleive that I have never made that hot-sauce glazed Tempeh!

Andy said...

for a delicious sweet potato butter, try this one: www.cunninghamfarms.com