This is a really simple, homey recipe. There are no quantities listed because it all depends on how many you want to make and sweet potatoes vary in size. These tacos are slightly sweet and the orange-honey dipping sauce gives them an extra kick. Very good on on a cold day.
Sweet potatoes
Water
Cinnamon stick
Corn tortillas
Olive oil
Peel and slice sweet potatoes into large chunks. Put in saucepan with just enough water to cover them. Add cinnamon stick.
Bring to boil, then lower heat. Cook until soft enough to mash but still firm.
Strain the cooked sweet potatoes and reserve the liquid they boiled in.
When the potatoes are completely drained, mash and set aside.
Heat corn tortillas on a griddle and scoop a spoonful of sweet potato into each one. Fold over and squish it so that it holds together. Assemble until you’re out of sweet potato.
Heat olive oil in a large skillet. Add enough to cover tacos.
When oil is hot enough slide in the tacos and fry until hard and crispy on each side.
Remove from oil and drain excess oil.
Serve with dipping sauce.
Dipping sauce
Juice of an orange
Honey
Reserved liquid from sweet potatoes
Mix the juice of an orange with some of the reserved liquid from the sweet potatoes and add enough honey so that you get a syrupy mixture. That’s it.
Fiestas Patrias is a big deal for me. I usually go all out and have a big party, invite tons of people, make mountains of red, white and green food, have papel picado and paper flowers decorating the house, my Aztec dancer group dances, the big Mexican flag is out, there’s music (sometimes mariachis) and we all go out the door at midnight and scream at the top of our lungs, “Viva Mexico! Viva Zapata! Viva la Patria!”
Yeah, we’re those crazy, noisy, party-loving Mexicans down on your block.
Last year, I didn’t host the party. I was ill and battling something for months that made me incredibly tired, a slacker blogger and have serious lack of stamina to stand in a kitchen for hours cooking. This year, I had thought I could do it. I’m feeling great actually so I was geared up to throw a huge one and make up for last year. Then I got the call from my daughter telling me she was HIV+. I suppose this has no place on a cooking blog, but it’s my blog and my life so there you go. Welcome to my world. She’s my only daughter. I’ve three sons and one daughter. After finding out, I went to bed for a little over a month and barely left it. Not like me at all. I’m usually the optimist and the “let’s fix it” person. Not this time. This knocked me down hard and it took a long time getting back up. I’m up. I’m fighting because that’s me. I’m learning all I can and I’m being strong for my girl.
As far as Fiestas Patrias goes, I decided not to do it at all. Not in a party mood, although I did go to Olvera Street for a little while to get my fill of it on Sunday afternoon. Check out my photos of the event there, si quieren. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: celebrations, chayotes, chiles, family meals, fiestas patrias, ground beef, prickly pears, salsa, salsas, tacos, tunas
So there was this chocolate sauce just sitting in my fridge, left over from the eclairs. The chocolate glaze was in there too. Seriously, they were calling me, begging not to be left in there on their own. Several times, i walked over and thought maybe I should make more eclairs. Maybe creampuffs. No, it’s too hot. Then today it got to be too much. I finished the chapter in the book I was reading and headed for the kitchen . I sat at the table with the recipe and my cup of coffee and decided to go for it.
The chocolate glaze had hardened so I set it in simmering water. I decided to do the same lavender-orange pastry cream since it turned out so delicious and decided at the last moment to pour a little lavender into the chocolate glaze. I love lavender chocolate.
The pâte à choux was easier to do work with this time. I’m not sure why but it was. In fact, the whole thing was so simple, I am worried for my hips. I could easily make these all the time.
I piped big fat circles onto parchment paper covered baking sheets and set them to bake. I know! Baking again in August. Crazy I tell you. Estoy pero bien loca. That means I’m pretty crazy in Spanish.
The circles puffed beautifully, everything went like clockwork. I decided to scoop the remaining chocolate sauce on the bottom of each cream puff, then load it with the cream and top with glaze. They were delicious, rich and sinfully decadent.
I think I’m going to live to regret having these in my repertoire…you see my dilemna.
Tags: baking, chocolate, cream puffs, dessert, glaze, god help my hips, i'm in trouble now, lavender, pastry cream, recipes
The Challenge: Chocolate Eclairs from Pierre Hermé’s book, Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé.
The Hosts: Tony Tahan and Meetak
Many, many thanks to our wonderful hosts this month. What a wonderful recipe they chose and how supportive and marvelous they were. (Insert applause here).
Hurry up Autumn, I’m getting a little tired of baking in a 100 degree kitchen and worrying I’m going to drip sweat into dough or something. This month’s challenge was Pierre Hermé’s (swoons cuz he’s my loverman and I worship the pastry laden, rose petal Isapahan ground he walks on) luscious chocolate éclairs.
Did I stay true to my idol’s recipe? Um well I changed one little thing. The cream filling was not chocolate but something summery and lighter. Lavender-orange pastry cream. The rest was true to Mr. Hermé’s recipes (is it not wonderful that he is not only a pastry God but has the same last name as that vintage buttery leather 72k handbag on ebay)? I’m just saying. Pastry, Birken…ecstasy, heaven. Okay, okay get on with the recipe. No one cares about my obsession with Hermé, both the bags and the chef. And yes, I know the bag is Hermes but its close enough for me.
Marissa dropped the kids off early and we washed up and got ready to bake. The first thing we started with was the pastry cream. It turned out perfectly, smooth, thick and lucious until i put it into its ice water bath. I turned to grab ingredients for the chocolate sauce and Aiden took the opportunity to add about a quarter cup of ice water INTO THE CREAM! Yeah, so. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t. He’s three, he thought he was creating something wondrous and being helpful. I wanted to fix it, but I couldn’t. It was his little creation. So we had runny cream filling, so what?
Tags: baking, Challenges, chocolate, cooking, Daring Bakers, desserts, dough, eclairs, Fillings, fun, glaze, lavender, orange, pastry cream, pate a choux, Pierre Herme, recipes, sticky
Today, Marissa and the kids came by and I decided to give it a shot. I pulled out rice, onions, garlic, red peppers, the Bijol (a Mexican spice blend), saffron and oregano. I didn’t have peas but Marissa doesn’t like them anyway, so I figured we were good to go.
I handed Marissa the camera and got to work chopping onion into nice thick squares, slivers of garlic, rounds of red pepper. Jasmine and Aiden started to get excited and Aiden helped pour out the oregano. I only know my grandmother’s recipe, which is no recipe – it’s a handful of this, a bit of that, un poquito aqui, un manito aya. I hope my readers can figure it out from the pictures and the story because this time, this time it was like my memories of a fluffy mound of golden delicately flavored rice that melted on the tongue and the tenderest, chicken falling off the bone and flavored with the soul of the crocus. It was magical.
Arroz con pollo/Chicken with rice
One cut up chicken
Enough olive oil to coat the bottom of a large frying pan
1 onion
five cloves of garlice, sliced thinly
chopped red peppers (not the hot kind)
dos manotes de arroz (two big handfuls of rice)
a manito (little handful of oregano) I think this ended up being about a tablespoon
un poquito de saffron (a little bit of saffron) like a pinch
un poquito de Bijol (about a ¼ tsp)
salt and pepper to taste
peas (optional)
chopped tomatoes (we were out of fresh so I used a 16 oz can of stewed)
water
Coat the frying pan with olive oil and let it heat on the stove. Not too high a flame, you don’t want smoking oil. Just get it nice and hot.
Wash the chicken pieces and pat them dry. Season with salt and cracked pepper.
Add the chicken to hot oil and let fry till crispy brown on one side, then turn and do the same with the other side. It takes as long as it takes. Use a lid or it will pop all over.
Once the chicken is browned completely, scoop it out and set it aside on a platter.
Drain the oil from that pan and pour it into another large skillet (one that has a tight fitting lid).
Add the oregano, garlic, saffron, and peppers to the same pan and deglaze it with about a cup of water. Set that aside.
Heat up the oil in the second skillet. Add in the onions and about two cups of long grain rice and let brown completely, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon.
When it’s all browned, add the water and spices from the deglazed pan to the rice. Add salt to taste, I’d say about a teaspoon.
Add the chicken pieces one by one, skin side up around the pan. Add just enough water to be about a half inch from the top of the pan. Cover, lower flame to the lowest it will go and then simmer for about 40 minutes. The rice should be fluffy and golden and the chicken so tender it falls apart at the touch of a fork. All the water should have been absorbed by the rice.
Serve and enjoy!
Buen provecho.
Tags: arroz con pollo, chicken, cooking, recipes, rice
Oh,…I looked out the window and what did I see,
Popcorn popping on the apricot tree.
Spring had brought me such a nice surprise, popcorn popping right before my eyes.
I can take an armful and make a treat, a popcorn ball that would smell so sweet.
It wasn’t really so… but it seemed to be… Popcorn popping on the apricot tree.
Aiden learned this song in his nursery class at Sunday School during church last week and he’s been humming it ever since. Jasmine wanted to know the words, so I sang it to them this morning and spent most of the morning teaching them the words and finger motions to it. Then all of a sudden Jasmine says, “Grammy, what’s a popcorn ball?” and I about died. I couldn’t believe I had been so remiss as to not make popcorn balls with the grandkids. Yikes! There was nothing for it, but get out the aprons and head for the kitchen.
I popped popcorn and tried to get shots with the camera while it was popping but didn’t really get good photos. I did however, manage to decorate the just mopped floor and demonstrate to the grandkids why we must never take the lid off as a stray popcorn missile hit me in the arm with its heat.
Once that process was done, we set the popcorn to cool in a baking dish and I went about making syrup, keeping the kids safely outta the kitchen. I decided on a whim to flavor the syrup with cardamom and vanilla and it turned out really well.
Aiden was having a hard time waiting for the syrupy popcorn to cool but he spent the time decorating himself with butter. He was a shiny, greasy bundle of love by the time the popcorn was cool enough to mold. We made a few popcorn balls and that was it, we were done. We ended up with a few balls, lots of gooey caramel corn and two sticky, hyped up grandkids. Now that’s a Saturday!
Cardamom-Vanilla Flavored Popcorn Balls
Ingredients:
A couple of apron-covered kids like these:
Freshly popped popcorn, we used two cups un-popped for this recipeButter
Syrup (recipe to follow)
Add popcorn to buttered baking dish and set aside till syrup is done.
Cardamom-Vanilla Syrup
6 tbsps.of butter
1 c. corn syrup
3 c. confectioner’s sugar
3 tbsp. water
1 c. marshmallow cream
1 tsp.cardamom
1 tbsp.vanilla
In a saucepan, combine the butter, corn syrup, water, confectioner’s sugar and heat over a medium flame, stirring slowly but constantly. Once it’s to a boil, add in the marshmallow cream and cardamom. Lower the flame and keep stirring till well-mixed.
Remove from heat and add the vanilla.
Stir.
Slowly pour over the popcorn in the baking dish, mixing gently with a wooden spoon until the popcorn is thoroughly coated.
Add syrup to popcorn and let cool till it’s warm enough to work with your bare hands but not too cool.
Butter your hands so the popcorn doesn’t stick. Mix all the syrup and popcorn well, then shape into balls of whatever size you like. Let cool and wrap in plastic wrap. That’s it!
Well, Jasmine wanted pink sprinkles on hers and I got to thinking about dipping them in chocolate but restrained myself (barely).
Tags: cardamom, fun, fun things to do with kids, J&A, marshmallow cream, messy, popcorn, popcorn balls, sticky, syrup, treats, vanilla

















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