Yam Appetizers, Chess Pie, Leftover Makeover, Blanching Almonds

Happy Holiday week!   May all your dishes make you happy.

Yam Appetizers x2
This basic recipe we liberated from a local megamart holiday flyer.

Yam App 1
This is the original that appeared in the flyer, with only minor tweaks.  I made these for Sally to take to one of her favorite "wine and painting" classes.

20-24 Yam disks,  about 2" in diameter and 1/4" to 3/8" thick, skin on
4 oz. softened Goat Cheese
2-3 Tbsp Milk or Half & Half
Sweetened, dried Cranberries
Chopped Pecans
S&PTT

Toss the yam slices with a couple Tbsp of olive oil,  and salt & pepper to taste.  Bake the slices @ 425F for 8-9 minutes per side.  You want them tender but not mushy.  Cool completely.

Whisk together the milk and cheese until smooth and fluffy and increased in volume.  I used a hand mixer with a whisk attachment and it only took a minute or so...

Put a dollop of the cheese on each yam round, the top with 1 or 2 cranberries and a pinch or two of nuts.

Simple, easy, and very tasty even the 4 leftovers that were in the fridge (covered) for 3 days!

Yam App 2
Our vegan friends don't eat cheese, so I came up with this, even simpler, appetizer when we went to their house on Saturday evening.

1 can whole berry Cranberry Sauce
Yam Rounds
Pecans

Instead of firing up the oven, I decided to nuke the yam rounds, laid flat on a plate.  If I remember rightly 5 minutes did the trick; but work up from 3 minutes, in 1 minute or even 30 second increments.

Top each round with a dollop of the cranberry sauce.  Best use I've ever seen for the canned cranberry sauce -- I'll  make my own from fresh cranberries and an orange for the holiday table.


Chess Pie
Is it 'jus pie.  Or is it ch'ess pie?  No one is sure how the name came about.  It's been a long time since I made this Southern classic!  I hardly gets any simpler to make a pie than this.  The secret ingredient is a tablespoon or so of white vinegar.  The photos here are grabbed from the 'Net.  I'll show you how mine turned out next week.

I'm making my Thanksgiving pie 'jus plain.  And then topping it with home-made orange curd and segments of mandarin orange.

'Jus the Pie
1 pre-made Pie Crust
2 cups Sugar
2 Tbsp Corn Meal
1 Tbsp AP Flour
1/4 tsp Salt
1/4 cup melted Butter or Margarine
1/4 cup Milk
1 Tbsp White Vinegar
1/2 tsp Orange extract
4 Eggs, beaten

Pre-bake the crust according to package instructions.  Cool.

Pour in the filling, well mixed.  Bake pie at 350F for 50-55 minutes.  Shield crust edge with foil after about 10 minutes to prevent too dark of crust.  Cool on a rack before topping with curd and mandarin slices.

Orange Curd -- my whey
Love the stuff -- on toast or crumpets, in a pie, you name it, I love it.  You can buy citrus curd.  You can spend more than half an hour over a hot stove whisking curd to perfection.  Or you can do what I do and use the microwave for less than 5 minutes!

3/4 cup Sugar
1/2 cup Orange (or other citrus) Juice
1 Tbsp Lemon Juice -- yes, not extra OJ...
3 large Eggs at room temperature

Whisk the eggs very well.  Push them through a mesh strainer to remove any potential bits of scrambled eggs, and put them in a microwave safe bowl.  Add the sugar, lemon juice and OJ, and whisk very well once more.

Set the microwave timer to 4 minutes.  At the end of 1 minute and 2 minutes, whisk the concoction; and then whisk every 30 seconds until the timer counts down to zero.  Ladle into a jar and let it cool before lidding.



Leftover Makeover -- for Susanne Duplantis, the Makeover My Leftover Queen
Sally's Mum took us for lunch yesterday to The Cracker Barrel.  I had Chicken Fried Chicken and the ladies had fish.  Sally's trout was two huge slabs, so we brought home the leftovers including some corn.  Can you say "plokkfiskur"?  I knew you could.  The perfect thing to do with leftover white fish to make the Icelandic "fish-potato pie" we discovered while on vacation.

I peeled and cooked a couple large potatoes, flaked in the leftover fish and corn, and brought it all together with about 3/4 cup of white sauce.  Put it in a baking dish, dusted the top with paprika, and broiled the concoction for about 8 minutes to brown the top.  

Here you can easily see the flakes of fish among the pieces of potato and corn.

Quick and tasty supper, with enough leftover for Sally to have it for lunch on Monday.  Not bad!


Blanched Almonds
Coming up on Wednesday will be The Great Christmas Pudding Making.  Sally's Mum is going to pass down her Christmas Pudding recipe and techniques.  Next week I'll show you what they made. 

Among the ingredients are "blanched almonds".  That is, partially cooked, peeled almonds without any brown skin.  Simple really.  Measure out your almonds.  Boil "some" water.  Toss in the almonds, turn the fire off, and let things set for a minute while you get out your colander.  Drain the nuts and then lay them out on paper towels.  Let them cool fifteen minutes or until you can handle them easily. 

Then just squeeze the nuts, one at a time, and the skin will slip right off.  Easy peasy!