Sausage & Sweet Potato Squares with Garlic-Lemon Mayo

Southern Living magazine has so many wonderful recipes and they put together so many great cookbooks. I'm kicking myself for letting my magazine subscription run out because I'm probably missing more really neat recipes like this one.

This relatively simple appetizer has such a great visual presentation and pops with flavor. If I was a food stylist it might have looked more like the photo in the magazine (Sept. 2008). As you can see in the photo below, mine didn't turn out as shiny and I forgot to include the absolutely amazing garlic-lemon mayo in the photo. Cutting sweet potatoes into 1" chunks isn't easy. Using a restaurant dicer would've been much easier. You definitely want to get the sweet potatoes diced to the same size so that they cook evenly. You also want to cut them to a size that complements the size of the sausage you serve with them.


This appetizer was so good. Being a vegetarian I just dipped roasted sweet potato into the garlic-lemon mayo. It was so wonderful! Definitely worth making again and again.

Ingredients

• 2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 32 (1-inch) cubes
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 pound spicy smoked sausage, cut into 32 (1/2-inch) pieces
• 32 wooden picks
• Lemon-Garlic Mayonnaise
• Garnish: fresh thyme sprigs

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450°. Place sweet potato cubes on a lightly greased 15- x 10-inch jelly-roll pan. Drizzle potatoes with 2 Tbsp. oil, and sprinkle with pepper and salt. Toss to coat.
2. Bake at 450° for 15 to 20 minutes, turning cubes twice.
3. Cook sausage in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat 3 to 4 minutes on each side or until browned. Drain on paper towels.
4. Place 1 sausage slice on top of 1 sweet potato cube; secure with a wooden pick. Repeat with remaining sausage slices and potato cubes. Serve with Lemon-Garlic Mayonnaise. Garnish, if desired.
   

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/sweet-potato-squares-with-lemon-garlic-mayonnaise-10000001831906/

Magazine Note:

Serve Sweet Potato Squares warm or at room temperature. Make garlic-lemon mayo in advance.

Mediterranean Pasta with Fire-Roasted Tomatoes

So the other weekend was a very busy weekend, with swim class for the little guy, cleaning the house and hosting two dinners. This might not sound overwhelming, but when you have kids to feed both nights and you don't want to make a separate meal, it can be challenging to try and find something for everyone. Saturday night was a special challenge because one of the guests has a peanut allergy and a pet allergy. It was easy enough to make arrangements for the dog to be taking to my parents house for a night of pet-sitting. Trying to keep the exposure to peanuts at a minimum is challenging since my son eats peanut butter practically every day and this particular day he got peanut butter on his pants and in his hair, requiring a bath and a change of clothes before our guests arrived.

So after grocery shopping and checking all the food labels for peanut allergy warnings I decided to make Mediterranean Pasta with Fire-Roasted Tomatoes. I've made this one time before and I remember really enjoying the flavor-packed tomatoes. I got this recipe from a magazine ad for McCormick's Spiced Sea Salt.

The plan was to serve four adults and three children. I bought two pounds of roma tomatoes, as the recipe called for, and the rest of the ingredients. After I got home I prepped and popped the tomatoes in the oven and then I re-read the recipe. It called for 8oz of pasta. I don't know about you, but between me and my husband we can eat 8oz of pasta with no problem. I had a one pound box of fettuccini so I cooked it all. The smell drifting out of the oven was to die for! The perfect blend of tomatoes, garlic and the sea salt mixture was pure Heaven.

Considering all pasta basically tastes alike, you'd think I'd like fettuccini, but I don't. I prefer small, bite-size pieces of pasta. I was trying to replicate the photo with the recipe and it looked like a thicker noodle so I used the fettuccini.

My guests arrived as two instead of four. No longer was a peanut allergy an issue, but what was an issue was the amount of pasta I had cooked. It looked like plenty for the original seven, but it didn't look like enough fire-roasted tomatoes. After smashing half of the tomatoes and tossed everything in with about 3/4 of the pasta. We all helped ourselves to dinner and sprinkled on extra sea salt to suit our preferences.

My final thought are that I should've used angel hair pasta. I think the lighter, thinner pasta would've complimented the tomatoes better. I also should've only used half of the cooked pasta, especially since I had two less diners than expected. The meal was wonderful, I just wish I had gotten more fire-roasted tomatoes.

http://www.mccormickgourmet.com/Recipes/Main-Dishes/Mediterranean-Pasta-with-Fire-Roasted-Tomatoes.aspx

This recipe is slightly different than the one I used. It looks like they've tweaked it a bit.

Tilapia with Balsamic Butter Sauce, Thyme Mashed Potatoes and Hericot Vert

Fish is on the dinner menu once a week and the hubby likes Tilapia for it's light texture and flavor. I found a tilapia recipe that seemed easy enough to make in Bon Appetit magazine back in January 2007. If you've been following my blog here and there then you know I've been trying to plan a dinner menu a month at a time and I'm trying recipes that I've been saving for years that I've never prepared before. Here's one of those recipes. I wish I hadn't waited so long because the feedback was possibly the best I've received from my husband in the 9-10 years we've known each other.

I had a few problems making this dinner...well, three. The third problem involves FIRE, but I'll get to that in a minute. Oh wait! Four problems come to mind. I can't believe this meal made it to the table and the feedback I got. I should've thrown in the towel over and over again.

So I gathered up all the ingredients that I needed to successfully prepare a wonderful meal. I started by boiling the potatoes for the Thyme Mashed Potatoes. I've cooked boiled potatoes hundreds of times. It's not hard and 20 minutes is all you need. 20 minutes is all the recipe called for. 20 minutes is all I cooked the potatoes for. But, wouldn't you know it? I messed them up, kind of. If I had been making anything other than mashed potatoes I would've needed to head back out to the grocery store.

When I went to drain the potatoes, they were a mushy mess. They practically mashed themselves as they boiled away. I guess it made my job easier, but they looked rough. To mess up the THYME mashed potato recipe further, as I was mincing the thyme I noticed something seemed off. No, I didn't buy the wrong herb. It looked like thyme, but it smelt so good - like flowers or lemons. I checked the container it came in and sure enough, it was lemon thyme. Okay - not a total disaster, but not what the recipe called for. What ever - a hint of lemon sounded nice with a fish dish.

So with two disasters down and two more to go, including the one with FIRE, it was time to get the Balsamic Butter Sauce going. In a small sauce pan I put in the 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar and the minced garlic. The recipe calls for this to simmer over medium heat for 5 minutes. I needed to start on the fish so I turned the heat down and let it simmer away...until I smelt, nope, not FIRE, but a burning smell. My sauce was turning into charcoal in the pan. Crap! Again, not a complete disaster because I had plenty of balsamic vinegar and garlic left and I just needed to dump it and scrub the pot clean.

So, with three disasters dealt with I moved on to preparing the fish. The fish was not frozen. The instructions called for the pan to be heated on HIGH with a TBS of oil. Not a problem, but when the oil was starting to smoke I felt that the temperature was up too high. I turned it down a bit and added the fish. Well, I guess the pan didn't cool down enough and the fish was cooking very fast. I added some more oil to keep the fish from sticking but the kick back from the oil was crazy. It was although I was cooking something frozen in the pan. Oil was shooting everywhere. I was gentle shaking the pan back and forth to prevent the fish from sticking when all of a sudden, you guessed it, FIRE! Flames were circling around my electric flat top stove. This isn't a gas stove so I was a little freaked out. I called out to my husband, who had no idea I wanted a new kitchen remodel this badly! By the time he got to the kitchen, everything was under control again and no damage was done. I have a handy fire extinguisher, but luckily I didn't need to use it.

I shewed my husband back out of the kitchen and finished cooking the meal. I presented it after all of my near-secret disasters and heard nothing but great feedback. The fish was cooked perfectly, the potatoes were seasoned perfectly and were so smooth, and the sauce was incredible. The meal was truly restaurant quality. Hearing all of this made the whole effort worth it!

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2007/01/tilapia_with_balsamic_butter_sauce_thyme_mashed_potatoes_and_sugar_snap_peas