Sweet Potato Hash

Pound for pound, sweet potatoes are by the far the best deal in the super market when it comes to nutritional benefits for the price you pay. Sweet potatoes are packed with lots of vitamins and mineral and can be used in so many ways. Anything you can do with a regular potato you can do with a sweet potato and more. They are great in pies, awesome as chips and yummy as fries. Sweet potato hash is not only delicious along side some eggs in the morning but as a side dish with supper too. It's colorful and has so much to offer not only your taste buds but your eyes too. After all, we do eat with our eyes first!


What You Need:

3 slices thick cut bacon

1 large sweet potato, diced

1 onion, chopped

1 red bell pepper, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

½ tsp thyme

½ tsp sage

½ tsp ground cumin

What To Do:

Dice the bacon and cook until it’s rendered all it’s fat and is slightly crisp. Remove the bacon but leave the fat in the pan. Add in the sweet potato and let cook for a couple minutes before adding in the rest of the ingredients. Continue cooking until the sweet potatoes are soft and cooked through. Stir the bacon back in and serve.

Jessica (college girl on a budget):

We really, really, really, loved the depth of flavor in this recipe.  I wasn't a sweet potato fan before, and I still wouldn't consider myself one. I think I would love this recipe even more with regular potatoes.  Either way, it was a great side dish to our meal and we even made it twice in one week!  It's simple, quick, and the smells that come from this dish are to-die-for!

Mustard Roast Pork

What You Need:

Pork Loin (3-4lbs boneless)or Pork Roast 

¼ c Dijon mustard

¼ c stone ground mustard

4 tbs room temp butter

Juice and zest from one lemon

2 cloves garlic, pressed

Salt and pepper

3 tbs veg oil

What To Do:

Preheat over to 400. In a small bowl combine the mustards, butter, lemon zest and juice and the pressed garlic until well mixed. Set aside Season the pork with lots of salt and pepper. Set a large skillet over high heat. Once it’s screaming hot add in the veg oil and sear all sides of the pork loin until nicely browned. Remove the pork to a roasting pan and cover with the mustard paste. Bake in the oven 15 per pound. Cook to an internal temp of 125 degrees. This leaves the pork just slightly pink and very juicy. Make sure to let the pork rest, tented with foil, for 10 minutes before serving. This allows the juices to stay in the pork and lets it finish cooking.

Jessica (College Student on a Budget):

What I Liked:I love, love, love, love, love, LOVE me some pork loin!  I'm a picky girl when it comes to the type of meat I will eat.  Don't get me wrong, I love meat, but you'll usually find me picking around the "fatty parts".  With pork loin, you don't have to do this at all.  It's such a lean cut of meat and that makes me a happy girl!  On the down side, it often turns out very dry.  With this recipe, however, I wrapped the strips of loin in foil and then in a deep pan to make sure those juices didn't go running off anywhere.  When we served it, we all ladled a spoon into the drippings and covered up the meat.  It made it PERFECT!  Plus, I'm totally a mustard girl and I loved the tangy-ness!  Side note: Dearest does NOT favor mustard and he went back for THIRDS! 
What I Didn't Like:I really didn't have too many complaints about this dish at all...not that I like to complain.  IF I had to pick something, I would ask for just a little bit more of a punch of flavor.  Maybe stuffing the pork loin with something or injecting it could help spread out the flavor and make it a bit stronger.  Then again, I'm no chef!  Great, great dish, Erica!


Loni (working mom and wife):


Erica sent me a recipe for a mustard pork.  Let me tell you right now.  I am not a mustard girl.  I used pork tenderloin and this was so good.  Even my picky husband who does not also love mustard thought it was good!  We both ate it more than once.  That says something because my husband, Aaron, is not a leftover guy. (I swear we are not that picky of a family!)  The flavors were rich and they went so well with the pork, I was pleasantly surprised.

Roasted Cauliflower

I know I've said it before, but I'm going to say it again. I LOVE veggies! All kinds of veggies! My favorite way to make them is roasting them in the oven. The flavor concentrates when you roast veggies. Carrots and tomatoes get sweeter  while cauliflower and broccoli get more intense. The great thing about roasting veggies is that all the nutrients, the good stuff, the reason why we eat our veggies, stays put in the veggie where it belongs. If you look closer in the picture you'll notice that I used a mixture of regular cauliflower and purple cauliflower. The purple taste just the same but the florets tend to be thiner and will roast quicker.

What You Need:

A small head of cauliflower, broken down into florets

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

What To Do:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spread the florets out in a single layer on a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook for 20 minutes, give them a stir and cook for 20 minutes more or until they’re nice and golden. You can toss in some crushed red pepper before baking or some minced garlic and/or parmesean cheese during the last 10 minutes for even more flavor but it’s really not needed.

Here's what our tasters had to say:

Jessica (college student on a budget):

I used broccoli instead of cauliflower because (your probably guessed it!) we're not big cauliflower fans!  And, we loved the recipe!  I chose to add both the Parmesan cheese and the red pepper flakes, which gave it a lot of yummy flavor.  We had this with as a side with an Italian dish and the flavor of the roasted vegetables and cheese worked together so well with the meal.  I asked my boyfriend to rate this recipe on a 1 to 10 scale (10 being the best) and he said, "Oh!  It's a 10.  Hands down!"  He loved it!


Christi (wife and mom of 3):


This recipe is easy and tasty.  This gives you a cooked cauliflower yet crunchy instead of smooshy like a lot of other methods of cooking.  I added some garlic while roasting and some freshly grated parmesan cheese after it came out of the oven.  This makes an excellent side dish for any meal!  

Pumpkin/Butternut Squash Pasta Sauce

Fall is in full bloom (or lack thereof) here in Pennsylvania. The markets are being flooded with all the fall harvest has to offer. Apples, Pears, and all sorts of winter squash are every where you turn. Fall is my favorite time of year. I love the all the colors of the leaves and especially all the food. It's the time of year for comfort foods. Hearty soups, stews and pot pies are what this season is all about, they warm you from the inside out. This dish is no different. Tasty, sweet pumpkin and butternut squash turn savory with very little effort. Even better is that I can get my daughter to eat her veggies with this without even realizing it!

What You Need:

Approx 1 1/2lb butternut squash or pumpkin (or both)

2 carrots

Veg oil or melted butter

Salt and pepper

1 tsp dried sage

1 onion sautéed in a little butter or oil

1 c cream or milk

½ c parmesan cheese

1 tbs lemon juice

Fresh minced parsley for garnish (optional)

What To Do:


Preheat oven to 400. Quarter and seed squash. Brush cut sides with oil or melted butter and season with salt and pepper, placing them onto a sheet pan. Use two sheet pans if needed so that the squash have plenty of space for heat to get to all sides. Peel the carrots, brush with oil or melted butter, season with salt and pepper and place on the baking sheet with the squash. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until the squash and carrots and soft. Let cool for a bit, the scoop flesh into a blender along with the carrots and sage and blend the milk or cream. Add the mixture to the sautéed onions and stir in the parm cheese and lemon juice. Serve over pasta. It goes really really well with cheese filled pastas.




Here's what Loni (working mom and wife) had to say:

We are not pumpkin people.  When Erica sent us a recipe for a pumpkin pasta sauce I was worried.  But then when I saw I could make the same recipe out of butternut squash I knew I could do this.  To be honest I had never cooked a butternet squash before.  Parker had had plenty of it for baby food but I bought Gerber.  At least I knew he liked the flavor so I thought I'd be safe giving it to him.  I wasn't sure if I liked butternet squash or not.  Now I know, I do, at least as a pasta sauce!  And it really feels like fall when you're eating it!

I loved that the recipe had carrots in it.  First of all I have had a love affair with them lately and I don't know why, but also they added color to the recipe.  I think with the orangey-ness of the sauce Parker thought it was macaroni and cheese, and he ate it as if it was too, good sign!! He loved it, ate two servings of it over plain pasta.  Erica said it would be good with a filled pasta which I would have loved to have tried, but we didn't have any.  I served the sauce over plain penne and sprinkled some more parmesan cheese on top.  It was delightful, perfect for a quick meal yet hearty enough to be full!  I like that the hint of lemon juice gave it such a nice fresh flavor.  And even better is that I have extra sauce, (it makes plenty!) so hopefully I can get to the store and buy some filled pastas. 

Sautéed Green Beans with Mushrooms

I love me some green beans, but often times they're just so plain and boring. This recipe however, is neither of those things! It's so easy, and with just a few ingredients, you can make this side any night of the week. Jessica brought up a good point. In her review she said she used canned green beans. I never recommend using canned veggies. They are normally cooked to death which means they loose a lot of their nutrients, and then they're preserved with lots of salt. They don't hold up well when cooking them any other way but in the microwave or in a pot of water. If you can find fresh, use frozen! Frozen veggies are flash froze during their season, retaining their vivid colors and nutrients and are much better suited for a dish like this.

1 lb fresh green beans, stems trimmed (can use frozen)

½ lb button mushrooms, sliced

¼ lb pancetta or bacon

1 tbs veg oil if using pancetta

4 cloves garlic, chopped

Salt and pepper

Bring a pot of water to a boil and salt generously. Blanche the green beans for about 4-5 minutes. You want them to keep their nice green color but soften up just a bit. Remove them and immediately dunk them into ice water to stop the cooking.

Meanwhile, dice the pancetta and sauté in the tbs of oil until crisp. Remove to paper toweling. Add the mushrooms to the pan and sauté with the garlic until the mushrooms are soft and browned. Add in the green beans and cook for a few minutes so that they’re heated through and pick up the flavor of the garlic. Sprinkle with the pancetta and serve.  

Jessica (college student on a budget):

What I Liked:
This recipe is very simple and I have most of the ingredients on hand on any given day of the week.  When I first made this dish, I was making two other time consuming dishes at the same time. It was nice to be able to leave this one till the last minute (quite literally!) and not worry about whether or not it would be complete.  To make it all that much better, the recipe was PERFECT!  I love all of these salty flavors with any vegetable, but I particularly favor green beans, so it was perfect for my taste buds.  I also have this memorized and I'm excited that I won't have to "follow" the recipe each time, just whip it together!
What I Didn't Like:
I always prefer to use fresh vegetables.  After all, who wouldn't prefer fresh veggies over canned?  However, I typically use canned vegetables any way.  I usually never plan ahead enough to have fresh veggies on hand for any meal.  So, in lieu of fresh green beans, I used canned French-Style Green Beans and kept the rest the same.


Loni (working mom and wife):


Oh my gosh, the green beans were so good.  I loved the idea of boiling them for a quick second and then blanching them because that way they get cooked all the way through but are not soggy.  I could not find pancetta in my store but I used bacon and it was great, it really added a lot of flavor to the green beans.  

Chicken and Veggie Stir Fry

Stir Fry is a wonderful combination of flavors when it's done right. The sauce should add to the veggies and meat, not over power them. It shouldn't be too sweet or too spicy. Another great thing about stir fry is that you can really use just about anything in them. This one uses chicken for the protein but shrimp would work really well too. This stir fry uses just some peppers, snow peas and mushrooms but the veggie combo's are endless! Christi took the sauce and used it with just some chicken and broccoli. Jessica left out the mushroom and added in some carrots. Stir fry is a dish that's pretty hard to mess up too. The only big mistake you can really make is to not have the pan hot enough. If it's not super hot, the veggies can get mushy and the chicken won't brown evenly before becoming over cooked. A wok and the right oil helps with this, but I've make plenty of stir fry's in a regular sauté pan and plain veg or canola oil. 


*Note* The recipe for the sauce makes a lot. Use as much or as little as you'd like in your stir fry. I used about half and my stir fry was nicely sauced. You can always freeze the rest and use it at a later date.

What You Need:

Sauce:

3tbs oil

1 ½ tbs minced ginger or 1 tsp dried

4 cloves garlic, minced

½ c water

½ c ketchup

¼ c soy sauce

¼ c rice wine vinegar

2 tbs agave or honey

1 tsp Sriracha (more if you like it spicy, red pepper flakes work as substitute)

1 tbs cornstarch dissolved in 2 tbs water

Stir Fry:

1lb chicken, cut into bite size pieces

1 tbs cornstarch

3tbs high temp oil such as peanut or almond

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 bell peppers cut into bite size pieces

2 c snow peas

8oz mushrooms, cut into quarters

A bunch of scallions, chopped, for garnish

Rice

What To Do:

In a small sauce pan, heat the oil over medium heat and sauté the garlic and ginger for just a few seconds. You want them to get fragrant, but not browned. Add in the water, ketchup, soy, vinegar, agave or honey and the Sriracha. Turn heat up and bring to a boil. Once boiling, stir in the cornstarch mixture and stir until thickened. Turn off heat and set aside.

Toss the chicken with the tablespoon of cornstarch, set aside while you cut up all the veggies. Heat the oil in a wok over high heat. Once the oil is super hot, toss in the chicken and cook until nicely browned. You want to make sure the wok is super hot so that the cornstarch creates a crispy crust on the outside of the chicken, while the inside stays moist. Remove to a plate. Toss the veggies into the wok and stir them constantly until they start to soften. You don’t want to cook them until they’re completely soft unless you like it that way. Turn the heat to low and add the chicken back in. Add in as much or as little of the sauce as you’d like. I added in about half of the sauce and put the rest in the freezer for next time. Serve over rice and sprinkle the scallions over the top.

Christi (wife and mom to 3) said: 

I was in a bind and didn't have a lot of veggies on hand so I adapted this to what we had.  I'm glad stir fry is so flexible!  I made the sauce straight from the recipe.  I poured it over rice, chicken and broccoli and served it up.  This stir fry sauce had a great flavor to it.  It didn't have too much ginger in it and it wasn't too sweet.  It had a perfect blend of sweet and spicy.  Very delicious!

Jessica (college student on a budget) said:

Recipe Changes:
No scallions or mushrooms.
Used carrots and red pepper flakes (in sauce).
My take:

If I had to change one thing about the way I prepared this dish, I would have pre-measured my ingredients.  There are a lot of them, but each one of them adds something special to this dish and makes the flavor so rich and savory.  I prepared this recipe for my boyfriend and I and both of us love Chinese food, so we were tough critics.  We honestly had no complaints!  It was so nice to sit in the comfort of my own home dining on a delicious Chinese dish!  Thank you, Erica, for making ME seem like a Goddess of Cooking!

Roasted Tomato Soup Base

During the summer, there tends to be an over abundance of red, juicy, sweet, vine ripened tomatoes. Tomatoes are another veggie (or is a fruit?), that I can't seem to get enough of. The recipe is for the amount of tomatoes I had on hand today but you can use as much or as little as you want. I’m calling it a base because after you make the basic soup you can do whatever you want to it. You can add in all sorts or herbs or pasta and tiny meatballs or all sorts of veggies or even use it to make minestrone!
This is also a tested recipe so you can find the girls reviews at the end along with any additions or changes they made.


What You Need:


5lbs of tomatoes
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper
2 cups chicken or veggie stock


What To Do:


Core the tomatoes and cut them in half. Place on a large baking sheet that has been drizzled with olive oil, cut side up. Slice the top off the head of garlic to expose the cloves and place on the baking sheet with the tomatoes. Drizzle olive oil over the tomatoes and garlic and sprinkle it all generously with salt and pepper. Roast in a preheated 400 degree oven for 30-40 minutes or until very soft and caramelized in spots. Remove from oven and let cool for a bit. Squeeze the soft garlic out of the skins and into a blender along with the tomatoes and any liquid that has accumulated onto the baking sheet. Puree until nice and smooth. Pour into a large pot and add in the stock. Simmer over low heat for at least 20 minutes, longer if you want a thicker soup with richer flavor. 

Jessica (the college student on a budget):

Her changes:

1 large tomato
1 Tbsp. minced garlic
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper
1/2 c. Chicken Stock

Jessica sliced the tomatoes and followed the recipe from there. She added in mini meat balls and put it back into the oven for 20-30 minutes instead of simmering it on the stove top.

Here is what she had to say:

I loooooooooooooooooooooooooove this recipe!  If I would have known that homemade tomato base was so easy to make before, I would have made it much, much sooner.  I simply have nothing more to say.  It was just PERFECT and delicious.  I can't wait to make it again!!!

Christi (mom of 3 girls) says:

I'll admit.  I've never had tomato soup before.  Ever.  It has never sounded very appealing so I've always avoided it.  So when Erica sent me the recipe for her Roasted Tomato Soup I was really hesitant about trying it.  Well you know how the saying goes.  Try it!  You'll like it!  Or maybe that is Yo Gabba Gabba.  I digress.  So I bought the tomatoes (which were $1 a pound today whoo!) and took the plunge.  Wow!  Can I say that I was EXTREMELY surprised?  It is amazing!  Not only was it simple to make but it is actually VERY tasty!  In fact, my husband had two bowls.  I fully expected him to turn his nose up at it since he is male and it didn't contain steak or potatoes.  When I asked him if he liked it he didn't bother stopping to eat.  He just nodded his head as he spooned the soup in.  What a fantastic recipe!  This soup would go well in a bread bowl or with some tortilla chips.  I can say that we will definitely make this again!

A New Direction

Hi everyone!

I want to announce a new direction fore the Goddess of Cooking website. Don't worry, you're still going to get all the yummy recipes I have to offer but some of them are going to have a little twist. I'd like to introduce you all to my three new taste testers! These three wonderful girls are giving up their time to create the recipes I post for you all. This means that not only will you have my point of view but three others as well. I pride myself on creating easy to follow recipes for great food that anyone can do with success, however sometimes I wonder what seems easy to me, might not be so easy for some one else. With these new testers, I can be assured that anyone really can have success. They won't test every recipe, at least not in the beginning, but at least one a week will have their comments and maybe even some of their pictures. So lets meet these three wonderful women!

First is Jessica. She is a college student who, right now, runs a very successful blog design website. Some of you may even know her as she is the creative mastermind behind The Frilly Coconut Design Shoppe. In fact Jessica is the one that created the designs for both the Goddess of Cooking and my personal blog. She is one of the sweetest person you will ever know and is very dedicated not only to her design services but to her friends and family as well.

The next is Loni, a wife and working mother of the cutest little boy you will ever know. Seriously I love all his curly hair! She is another great person in my life who is always willing to help out a friend in need. She's sweet and caring and will always take the time to lend her shoulder if you should need it.





The last is Jenn B. Watch out if you ever cross this momma! She is so out spoken that she needs a disclaimer on her website! I love her tell it like it is attitude and know that if I ever create a sucky dish, she'll be the one to let me know!!



So those are my testers. Because of this new direction, and because I'm going on vacation for a bit, there will not be any new recipes until after my blogiversary. I'm sorry if this upsets anyone. I know some of you really look forward to the new recipes I post, but this will be an exciting change to the website that I hope you all enjoy!