Sweet Potato Black Bean Tostadas

At Canadian Thanksgiving I intended to make an appetizer with sweet potato and black beans. I didn't end up making it and then I had a lot of extra sweet potatoes and black beans. I sort of made up a version of the same flavors but in a tostada form.

I would honestly just make these as a burrito filling. Super delicious, hearty, healthy and vegetarian. It would be easy to make these vegan by omitting the cheese and butter. I think that adding some avocados or guacamole would be a great addition as well.

Non-traditional Dumplings

After Thanksgiving, I always suffer from an overabundance of particular foods. Try as I might, within a week I am SICK of turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce. And sweet potatoes. This year I ended up with a tray and half of sweet potato casserole. Nathan and I are only two people... we can physically only eat so much sweet potato casserole!

We did manage to eat the half--it was made more like a pumpkin pie filling with this carmelized deliciousness on top and lots of spices and sugar in the potatoes. I mean, I guess I could have remade it into actual pie... but that seemed redundant.

The second was a more traditional sweet potato casserole with mashed sweet potatoes on the bottom and marshmallows on top. The potatoes themselves weren't too heavily seasoned (they tasted like they had butter in them) so I thought I could work with it and make it into a snack.

And thus:

Savory Sweet Potato Dumplings

Ingredients
Sweet potato casserole
pinch of: thyme, oregano, rosemary, garlic powder, salt, pepper
1/4 cup feta cheese
Gyoza skins or Wonton wrappers
Pam or other cooking spray

soy sauce (for dipping)

Directions
Preheat your oven to 375

First scrape all those pesky marshmallows off the top of the casserole. Maybe it's my upbringing or maybe it's my Canadieness, but I just don't get the whole marshmallow potato thing. Dispose of the marshmallows.

Mix your spices and crumbled feta into your potatoes... I did this to taste, amounts of spices will be determined in large part by the amount of casserole you have leftover. I would say that I had about 3 cups of mashed sweet potatoes. Regardless, taste your potatoes and if they taste good you have the correct amount of spices.

Place a teaspoon of filling in the center of your gyoza skin or wonton wrapper (these are pretty much the same thing. The gyoza's are round and are what I used). With these wrappers as well as most doughs you will use for dumplings, there is going to end up a "right" and "wrong" side of the dough. The wrong side will be more floury than the right. Keep the wrong side down towards your counter as the extra flour will make it hard to seal your dumplings.

Fill a small bowl with a little water. Dip your finger in (or use a pastry brush if you're super germophic) and spread a little water around the edge of your skin/wrapper. Fold in half and pinch to seal--the water will help the dough stick to itself.

Spray a baking pan with cooking spray and line up your dumplings. They are not going to rise or spread, so you have them pretty close together. Spray each dumpling with a 1 second of cooking spray. This helps them get crispy.

Bake for 5 minutes, flip, and bake for an additional 3 minutes. Serve with soy sauce for dipping.

The other leftover that I end up throwing out every year (and you would think I would learn to make less of...) is cranberry sauce. My friends aren't crazy about it so they don't eat much of it... which I feel is more a compliment to my gravy (which is always entirely consumed) than an insult to the cranberry.

Regardless, even after making some delicious turkey and cranberry sandwiches, I still had a good amount leftover. As I was making the sweet potato dumplings, I thought that a sweet dumpling would be a good compliment. Cranberry sauce itself seemed a little watery to fill a dumpling with so I added cream cheese (because what doesn't that make better?) and sealed them up within a wonton wrapper.

These didn't crisp as much and also got kind of explody in the oven their first batch. I think that while baking is healthier, these would probably be better if I had chilled them in the fridge and actually fried them. Next Thanksgiving!

Cranberry Rangoon

Ingredients

Half a cup of cranberry sauce
8oz cream cheese (I used the reduced fat kind)
40 wonton wrappers
Pam spray
powdered sugar (optional for dusting)

Directions

Preheat oven to 375
Mix cranberry sauce with cream cheese. I was lazy and used my food processor.

Put about 1 tsp of filling in the center of each wrapper. Use your tiny bowl of water to seal the edges. I folded mine into a triangle, and then took the two corners along the fold and folded them in to make what looked like an open envelope.

Place folded dumplings on a baking sheet sprayed with pam. Spray each dumpling for 1 second with cooking spray. Bake 4 minutes, flip, and bake an additional 3. Some of them will explode... they will still taste good.

While still warm, dust with powdered sugar if desired (this is more for prettiness).


These were both delicious (though I heavily preferred the sweet potato). They are, however, fairly time consuming to make as each little dumpling has to be assembled. I think this filling of savory sweet potatoes would also be super delicious in a ravioli form or even served on its own in lieu of a traditional sweet potato casserole. The cranberry sauce cream cheese mixture would also be tasty as a dip with crackers/fruit.

We are headed to the Renaissance Faire next Sunday, so it will be a Saturday snack with (perhaps) a faire theme!

Sunday on a Stick

As I was searching for new and exciting recipes last week, I came across these potato pinchos from the food network. While they look delicious (and I may eventually try them out) what I really liked about them was the fact that they were on toothpicks. Nothing says classy like being served on a stick.

Eventually I decided to stick (get it) with two different recipes. The first choice was due mostly to the fact that I bought a couple of sweet potatoes earlier in the week and needed to use them.

Behold sweet potato sausage bites!



I had a really hard time getting my camera to focus on them...

 These were awesomely easy, and I also made them healthier!
Ingredients:
1 sweet potato washed
half a package smoked sausage.. about 7 oz (I used Hillshire Smoked Turkey Sausage... see? healthy.)
pinch of cayenne pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper

for sauce
1/2 cup mayo (I used reduced fat)
1 T lemon juice
1 tsp garlic (I used the pre-minced kind you get in a jar 'cause I was too lazy to chop)
1 T minced parsley

Directions
Preheat your oven to 450F
Cut your sweet potato into half inch "cubes". You'll notice that since the potato itself is round you don't get 100% as squares or rectangles. This is ok, they will taste delicious.

Put your cubes in a bowl and toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Spread across a greased baking sheet.
Bake for about 15-20mins, turning two or three times. They will get sorta carmelized and extra delicious

While your sweet potato is baking slice up your sausage. I did about half inch slices and then halved them so they are half circles. Place your sausage in a hot pan and sprinkle with the cayenne pepper. Alternately you could have bought spicy sausage and just left out the cayenne...

Let the sausage brown on both sides, it will only a minute or two per side.

Make your dipping sauce! These are totally delicious with no sauce at all, so if you're looking to cut your calories even further you can just not make it. Mix all ingredients. Store in fridge. This is actually best if it can sit a little bit to let the flavors meld, so feel free to make it the night before you want your snack.

Skewer your potato and sausage. I did it potato on the bottom, but you could put the sausage on the bottom.

These are good hot, and also good at room temperature so they're awesome for those of us who like to make things a little in advance and eat them throughout an extended period. I would make these exactly the same again and again because they were a great blend of sweet and salty with a bit of spice.

I also made Tortellini Salad Skewers

Ingredients

1 package frozen toretllini (cheese or meat your choice!)

1 package grape or cherry tomatoes

Olives--I used blue cheese stuffed olives from the fancy olive bar at my grocery store about 1/2 lb

1/2 cup vinagrette style dressing--I used Zesty Italian

Directions

Cook about 40 tortellini according to package directions. Drain and rinse with cold water. Set aside.

Halve 20 tomatoes and all of your olives.

Skewer half a tomato, a tortellini, and an olive half on each skewer.

Place skewers in a 9x13 dish. Pour dressing over top. Let sit in fridge for a few hours (I left mine overnight). Remove skewers from dish to a separate serving tray. Discard excess dressing.

Eat!

Here was my issue with this recipe... the olive was super over powering. I ended up eating the olives in one bite (because blue cheese stuffed olives are AMAZING. go eat one right now) and then the tomato and tortellini together in another. This was partially my bad because if you look at my reference recipes below you'll see that it in fact called for snow peas instead of olives but I was thinking a mediterranean flair would be tasty...I think if it were to make this into an actual salad vs a skewered salad I would still include the olives but have significantly higher proportion of tortellini and tomato.

original sweet potato sausage recipe

tortellini salad skewere original recipe