It seems almost unpatriotic to serve a burger without fries. So when grilling my favorite hamburger, I always make sure to have a few servings of these grilled sweet potato and white potato fries ready!
These fries are yet another expression of my love for sweet potato wedges and/or sweet potato fries. Like those recipes, these grilled fries are a healthy alternative to deep-frying. Throwing them on the grill makes them quick and easy to make, with less mess. The colors and grill marks …
Making the perfect couscous is kind of like doing laundry. It requires washing, drying, steaming, and sorting. Just boiling a pot of water is not going to cut it. The same way wrinkled sweat pants don’t quite compare with creased slacks, instant couscous has nothing on old-fashioned Moroccan-style couscous.
And just as dressing well takes effort, so does making the perfect couscous. But if you have the time, it is well worth the effort. You will need …
Like strangers on the same page of a phone book, sweet potatoes and white potatoes share nothing more than a common last name. Both potatoes are, of course, plants. But sweet potatoes belong to the morning glory family, while white potatoes belong to the nightshade family – sometimes called the potato family. More to the point, sweet potatoes are roots of the dicotyledonous plant; white potatoes are underground stems (tubers) of the potato plant.
Yams, meanwhile, belong to the yam family, and are tubers of the monocotyledon plant. But even though they are tubers, yams have a closer lineage to lilies, than to either the white potato or the sweet potato. The confusion over yams …
Having a food blog doesn’t stop me from asking silly food questions.
On a recent trip to the grocery store, I could not find the risotto. After several minutes of scrounging around the different rice and grain shelves, I decided to solicit help. As I explained to the store clerk, I was making three-cheese risotto, and all that was left on my list was what the recipe referred to as “risotto rice.” He kindly pointed me to arborio rice.
Risotto, I learned, does not refer to an ingredient, but rather to a dish.
The key to risotto…
Spring officially arrived a few weeks back, but from the look of it here in St. Louis, you would never know it. Between a light snowstorm to start the week, and freezing rain at week’s end, the thaw of Spring remains in hiding. Given the wintry conditions, I decided a few winter vegetables would make a suitable side.
Roasting over high heat gives the vegetables a crisp outer skin while keeping the inner flesh moist. The high heat also serves to caramelize the natural sugars in the sweet potatoes and carrots, for a sweet, yet healthy, cold-weather treat.
If you like, …