sweet potato oven fries

Sweet potato oven fries.* Kendal sometimes makes these late at night when I'm feeling snackish. They're great with grilled cheese and reruns of How I Met Your Mother.

First, you need some sweet potatoes.

(These are not the same sweet potatoes that you're about to see getting baked. But I couldn't let this perfectly good sweet potato photo go to waste.)

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Then, line a baking sheet with some foil. Wash and dry the sweet potatoes, slice them into wedges, and place them on the baking sheet.

Sprinkle on whatever seasonings you want. Kendal sometimes uses red pepper flakes, but he made this batch mild for Miss M's sake. He used a little kosher salt and our go-to Trader Joe's seasoning.

Add a little oil--we used canola. Enough to coat the fries, but not so much that they're sitting in a pool of oil.

(See? Glistening, not drowning.)

Put the tray of fries on the oven center rack, and bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes. Begin catching up on the latest episode of How I Met Your Mother while you wait.

(Yeah, Miss M is watching it, too. Don't judge.)

When the timer buzzes, flip over the fries.

(Just flipped.)

Cook them for ten more minutes, or until they're whatever shade of brown that you prefer.

Dip them in ketchup or barbecue sauce, or mayonnaise (if you're weird). Enjoy with the aforementioned grilled cheese sandwich and hilarious sitcom.

A quick note: Kendal usually peels the sweet potatoes, but this time he left the skin on. The skin was a little thick, so I ended up peeling it off Miss M's and my fries. Easy fix.




*(I struggled with calling them "fries" when they're really baked. But "sweet potato oven bakes" just sounds odd.)

One Way To Roast A Chicken

You know that old Paul Simon song, Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover? Well, there are probably fifty ways to do just about anything, including roast a chicken.

Here is one way. The way Kendal did it most recently.*

Butter it up.


(Poor, headless chickie-chickie. Sometimes I think I should be a vegetarian.)

While the oven is preheating to 500 degrees, rinse and dry the chicken and then coat it with enough butter to cover the whole bird.

Put it down.

Place the chicken in a roasting pan, breast side down, and cook for 20 minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, mix up a sauce with which to baste it. Kendal used Worcestershire sauce, barbecue sauce, Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute, and 2-3 cloves of garlic (minced). No specific measurements, simply to taste.

Douse it.

After the first 20 minutes of cooking, baste the chicken with your mixture.


(What it will look like at this stage.)

Flip it.

Now, flip that bird over, and baste the other side.

The chicken is now breast-side-up. Put it back in the oven this way, and cook for another 8 minutes.

Turn Down the Heat.

Turn the oven down to 325 degrees. Baste the chicken again. (Don't flip it over this time.) Cook for another 30 minutes, or until it is done. One way to tell if the chicken is done cooking is if the juices run clear when you pierce it.


(Done!)

Be careful not to overcook it--too dry. Be careful not to undercook it--too salmonella-y. Cook it just right and it will be moist--gah! I hate that word, but it's the only one that fits--and delicious.


*Adapted from How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman (p. 358).

Homemade Pizza

We love pizza, probably more than we should. When I was growing up, Friday night = pizza + TGIF. If you know what TGIF is, then you're probably at least 30 years old, and you just may be following Candace Cameron on Twitter.

Anyway, here's a fun way to do pizza at home. It's especially great for those nights when you want to break out one of your heavyweight wedding gifts:



Yes, you'll be using that beautiful stand mixer...with the paddle and the dough hook.

Kendal adapted this pizza dough recipe.

For the dough:

3 cups unbleached white whole wheat flour
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute
1 (.25 oz.) package active dry yeast
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 cup warm water (110 degrees F)
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 tsp. honey

In your stand mixer bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients (except the sugar). You can stir them by hand, or if you're feeling fancy, you can use the paddle on your stand mixer.

To the cup of warm water, add the packet of yeast and the sugar. Stir, and let sit for about 5 minutes.


(The yeast/sugar/water mixture brewing and bubbling.)

Next, add the canola oil and honey to the water mixture.

Add the water mixture to the dry ingredients in the stand mixer bowl. Use the dough hook when combining the ingredients, and let the mixer run for a few minutes until a nice dough forms.


(This is the best shot I could get, because I'm not very tall. I'm going to have to start standing on a stool for these photos.)

Coat the dough with a small amount of canola oil, and let it sit while you prepare the other ingredients.

What are the other ingredients? Whatever you want to use as toppings. For this pizza, we used:

marinara sauce (we used Newman's Own)
approx. 8 oz. shredded mozzarella
red onion (we used about 1/4 of the onion)
about 1/3 lb. ground turkey, browned and seasoned with a little crushed red pepper





Roll out the dough on a baking stone. Layer on your toppings as you see fit. Kendal likes to have toppings dispersed throughout, so he spreads on the sauce, then adds the veggies and meat. Then he adds the cheese, and finally puts more meat and veggies on top of that.

Bake at 375 for 25 minutes. (We didn't preheat the oven, because we used a stone, and didn't want to have any mishaps like I've had in the past. Just so you know, a frozen pie + a hot stone = a broken stone.)

This is what the pizza looked like before we placed it in the oven...



And this is how it looked when it came out...



We like our cheese extra brown, so this was perfect.

One quick note: This recipe results in a pretty thick, soft crust. If you're in the mood for a thinner, crispier crust, then try this dough recipe here. Kendal tested it, I tasted it, and it's awesome. ("Awesome" is sung in my fake opera voice.)