Later On

My dinners continue to be grub-oriented and delicious. Tonight’s meal came together so nicely and tasted so good I thought I’d share.

I also made roasted garlic, prompted by The Eldest describing her technique. She usually pops it into the oven when she’s roasting something else (potatoes, for example), but mine went solo.

Peel the cloves of two heads of garlic, toss with a little olive oil (very little is needed: 1/2 tsp perhaps, 1 tsp at the most), salt, and pepper, and wrap in foil. I put it into a 390ºF oven for 40 minutes, then put the dinner on:

Cast-iron skillet with 2 tsp of oil.

1/2 large onion, chopped
1 handful chopped celery
5 cloves garlic, minced
4 brussels sprouts, halved and then sliced thinly crossways—shredded is the effect
1/3 large sweet potato, cut into slabs, then sticks, then dice—this is the last of that potato, which I used up over three meals
1/2 turkey breast tenderloin, cut into small chunks (about 3 oz)

I let the onion sauté for a while in the skillet, then added a good handful of the chopped celery I now keep on hand. After the onion is transparent and starting to brown, I added the chopped garlic for just a minute, then dumped in the brussels sprouts, sweet potato, and turkey.

I stirred that, added a very little salt and some pepper, then as it cooked down a little, added:

1 bunch baby broccoli, chopped (stems and all, natch: the whole bunch)

I stirred that, add a little sprinkle of crushed red pepper, and probably 1/3 c sake—the rest of a bottle.

Cover, turn down heat to lowish. At that point the roasting garlic cloves had 23 minutes to go, which sounded about right for the grub, so I rested.

When the timer went off, the roasted garlic was soft—ready to be spread like butter, as The Eldest says—and the grub in the skillet was done and still moist but with most liquid cooked away.

The roasted garlic is for later, the grub I’m having now, and it’s extremely tasty.

A word on sweet potatoes: although the Jewel and Garnet varieties are sometimes called “yams” in the supermarket, they are in fact sweet potatoes. A yam is a white, more or less tasteless tropical root vegetable whose nutritional value doesn’t match that of the sweet potato, though yams do have some advantages of their own.

My understanding is that the US grocery industry wanted a way to make customers understand that sweet potatoes were not like the traditional (white-fleshed) potatoes (the kind my grandmorther called “Irish potatoes” to distinguish them from “sweet potatoes”), and so they appropriated the term “yam”. But the “yams” you find in the supermarket are in fact sweet potatoes, which come in several varieties, from pale orange flesh to dark orange.

For more info, look at the Wikipedia articles at the links above.