Sweet Potato Quesadillas With Radish Salsa

Shortly after receiving the disheartening letter from our pal Sweet Potato, I received an enlightening email from my aunt’s long-time vegetarian friend, Meg, who passed along one of her favorite recipes: sweet potato quesadillas. The timing, just a day before I picked up my first winter CSA share , which included many pounds of sweet potatoes, couldn’t have been better.

Friends, these quesadillas have become one of my favorite things to eat. The filling, a mix of sautéed onions, grated sweet potatoes and spices (cumin, oregano, cayenne, and chili powder), comes together quickly with the help of a food processor’s shredder attachment and keeps well in the fridge, making for quick preparation at the dinner hour.

Most often I make quesadillas with the filling, though I have discovered it makes a fantastic breakfast taco: scramble some eggs, fry up the filling, tuck it all inside a warm tortilla with cheese and hot sauce. Heaven. Thank you, Meg!

You can peel the sweet potatoes if you wish, or just give them a good scrub:

Extra grated sweet potatoes can be stored in the fridge in a bag for about a week without any discoloration:

I’ve mentioned these soft corn tortillas before. I love them:

watermelon radish salsa:

Description

My aunt’s friend, Meg, passed along this recipe to me. The sautéed sweet potato filling can be made ahead and stored in the fridge for days. If you have extra grated uncooked sweet potatoes, store them in a bag in the fridge.

Notes:

• If I have cilantro, I like to add a chopped handful to the sweet potatoes when they finish cooking.

• You do not have to serve these with salsa. Fresh lime and sour cream are more than enough, though salsa is always nice. If you have any watermelon radishes in your vegetable bin, you can turn them into a salsa by finely dicing them and mixing them with finely diced onion, jalapeno, lime, cilantro, salt, and a splash of olive oil and vinegar.

• Finally, I think the key here is “less is more” — a thin layer of the sweet potato filling is best.

• 1½ cups finely chopped onion

• 2 garlic cloves, minced

• 3 to 4 tablespoons neutral oil such as olive, grapeseed or canola

• 4 cups grated peeled sweet potato

• 1 tsp chili powder

• 1 to 2 teaspoons ground cumin

• generous pinch of cayenne

• salt and ground black pepper to taste

• a cup or more of finely minced cilantro, optional

• fresh lime juice to taste

• 1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese or Monterey Jack

• 8 tortillas (8 to 10 inch — I like soft corn tortillas, which I find at Whole Foods)

• sour cream for serving

1. In a large pan set over medium heat, sauté the onions and garlic in 3 tablespoons of the oil until the onions are translucent. Add the grated sweet potatoes, chili powder, cumin and cayenne and cook, covered — covering is important to prevent sticking — for about 8-10 minutes, stirring every few minutes. When the sweet potato is tender, add salt and pepper to taste and remove the filling from the heat. Add the cilantro, if using. Squeeze 1/2 a lime over the sweet potatoes, mix, taste, and adjust with more lime and salt to taste.
2. To bake the quesadillas, do as follows: Spread one-eighth of the filling and 2 tablespoons of the cheese on each tortilla. Bake in a 350ºF oven until the cheese is fully melted and quesadillas are hot, approximately 15 minutes.
3. To cook the quesadillas stovetop, heat 2 teaspoons oil over medium heat. Fill tortillas lightly — less is more — with sweet potato filling and some cheese. Fold them in half. Cook two at a time until golden, 2 to 3 minutes. Flip. Cook until golden, about 2 more minutes. Repeat with remaining tortillas, cheese, filling, adding more oil as needed.
4. Serve with more fresh lime, sour cream, and salsa if you have it.

• Prep Time: 15 minutes
• Cook Time: 20 minutes

Description

My aunt’s friend, Meg, passed along this recipe to me. The sautéed sweet potato filling can be made ahead and stored in the fridge for days. If you have extra grated uncooked sweet potatoes, store them in a bag in the fridge.

Notes:

• If I have cilantro, I like to add a chopped handful to the sweet potatoes when they finish cooking.

• You do not have to serve these with salsa. Fresh lime and sour cream are more than enough, though salsa is always nice. If you have any watermelon radishes in your vegetable bin, you can turn them into a salsa by finely dicing them and mixing them with finely diced onion, jalapeno, lime, cilantro, salt, and a splash of olive oil and vinegar.

• Finally, I think the key here is “less is more” — a thin layer of the sweet potato filling is best.

• 1½ cups finely chopped onion

• 2 garlic cloves, minced

• 3 to 4 tablespoons neutral oil such as olive, grapeseed or canola

• 4 cups grated peeled sweet potato

• 1 tsp chili powder

• 1 to 2 teaspoons ground cumin

• generous pinch of cayenne

• salt and ground black pepper to taste

• a cup or more of finely minced cilantro, optional

• fresh lime juice to taste

• 1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese or Monterey Jack

• 8 tortillas (8 to 10 inch — I like soft corn tortillas, which I find at Whole Foods)

• sour cream for serving

1. In a large pan set over medium heat, sauté the onions and garlic in 3 tablespoons of the oil until the onions are translucent. Add the grated sweet potatoes, chili powder, cumin and cayenne and cook, covered — covering is important to prevent sticking — for about 8-10 minutes, stirring every few minutes. When the sweet potato is tender, add salt and pepper to taste and remove the filling from the heat. Add the cilantro, if using. Squeeze 1/2 a lime over the sweet potatoes, mix, taste, and adjust with more lime and salt to taste.
2. To bake the quesadillas, do as follows: Spread one-eighth of the filling and 2 tablespoons of the cheese on each tortilla. Bake in a 350ºF oven until the cheese is fully melted and quesadillas are hot, approximately 15 minutes.
3. To cook the quesadillas stovetop, heat 2 teaspoons oil over medium heat. Fill tortillas lightly — less is more — with sweet potato filling and some cheese. Fold them in half. Cook two at a time until golden, 2 to 3 minutes. Flip. Cook until golden, about 2 more minutes. Repeat with remaining tortillas, cheese, filling, adding more oil as needed.
4. Serve with more fresh lime, sour cream, and salsa if you have it.

• Prep Time: 15 minutes
• Cook Time: 20 minutes

Find it online : https://alexandracooks.com/2015/12/30/sweet-potato-quesadillas/

My mother gave me MFK Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf for Christmas, and I have been thumbing through it ever since, dog-earing recipes I hope to revisit soon. In the meantime I’ve been living on Fisher’s creamy potato soup. This is partly because I still have many pounds of potatoes on my counter, partly because I sense a friend, whom I encouraged to take on a winter CSA, is a little overwhelmed by said potatoes (sorry, Martha!), but mostly because the soup is simply delicious: sauté two onions, add four peeled potatoes and water, simmer till tender, add milk (thickened with a roux), and purée.

Before making this soup, I had never read any of MFK Fisher’s recipes, which, I am learning, give the reader a lot of credit. Just as Alice Waters may assume you have a pig’s foot in your refrigerator, MFK Fisher assumes you know how to make a roux. There is no hand-holding in the direction, though her notes are detailed.

For example, in the potato soup recipe, she insists you pass the vegetables through a strainer, and not just any strainer, “a fine strainer,” and continues to observe “increasingly that most average cooks … grow careless about sieves and strainers. They usually compromise after a few years in the kitchen with one general-utility implement that will cope more or less with their normal duties. Tut tut tut!”

MFK Fisher likely would be horrified by my use of a general-utility immersion blender but, what can I say, it works.

I haven’t finished How to Cook a Wolf yet, but I am liking it very much. Fisher wrote the book during World War II as a way to encourage good cooking and living in a time of shortages and ration cards. She believed “that one of the most dignified ways we are capable of, to assert and then reassert our dignity in the face of poverty and war’s fears and pains, is to nourish ourselves with all possible skill, delicacy, and ever-increasing enjoyment. And with our gastronomical growth will come, inevitably, knowledge and perception of a hundred other things, but mainly ourselves.”

She gives recipes for mouth wash and soap and tomato soup cake. She gives lots of advice; she tells funny stories. Half the time I have no idea what she is talking about, and half the time I relish every sentence: “Probably the most satisfying soup in the world for people who are hungry, as well as for those who are tired or worried or cross or in debt or in a moderate amount of pain or in love or in robust health or in any kind of business huggermuggery, is minestrone.”

Anyway, Friends, it was 1 degree this morning. Winter has arrived. If you haven’t prepared for soup season, here’s a quick review of the essentials : homemade stock, vegetable or chicken , plastic quart containers for freezing that stock or soup, a good peeler , a sharp knife , etc.

PS: Soup !

I served the soup with some herby croutons, but mini loaves of bread would also have been fun. I split the peasant bread dough into four and baked the loaves in empty McCann steel cut oat tins.

Description

Adapted from MFK Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf

• 2 onions, sliced thin
• 4 medium potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced (1.33 lbs | 600 g , roughly)
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 4 tablespoons butter
• salt and pepper to taste
• 3 cups milk, 2% or whole
• chopped herbs such as parsley or chives, optional

1. Sauté the onions in 2 tablespoons of the butter over medium to medium-low heat for 15 minutes, or until tender and just beginning to turn color. Add the potatoes and water to cover, about 2½ cups. Simmer until tender, about 20 minutes.
2. In a separate pot, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the flour and stir with a wooden spoon until a light brown paste forms, a minute or so. Roux should be gently bubbling. Slowly add the milk, whisking constantly. Bring milk mixture to a gentle simmer, stir, then keep warm.
3. When potatoes are tender, add milk mixture to the pot. Use an immersion blender to purée until smooth or transfer mixture to food processor or blender (be careful with blender — I don’t like using my blender for hot soups because I’ve had the top go shooting off and soup spraying everywhere). Season with salt (at least a teaspoon) and lots of fresh cracked pepper. Bring soup to a gentle simmer, stirring to ensure it isn’t sticking to bottom of pot. Taste and adjust as needed with more salt or pepper. Add herbs if using. Thin with more water or milk if necessary.
4. When reheating the soup, thin with water as needed and adjust seasoning to taste.