Some new recipes

Tonight, Richard and I decided to try completely new recipes for dinner. There were some pros, some cons, and some delicious food! I've written out the recipes the way that we did them at the bottom (keep in mind cooking times vary if you're not 7,000 feet in the air). If you want to make the sweet potatoes a little healthier (there's not much you can do), then I would use splenda brown sugar, or something along those lines.

• Cumin-Rub Grilled Chicken
• Mashed Sweet Potatoes with bananas and oranges

First up, the chicken. A mixture of cumin, salt and pepper, and then placed on Richard's inside grill. It took about half an hour to fully cook, but it was really moist.

After the cumin rub.

Grilling.

He added Honey BBQ sauce to his (on the right), but I'm not a fan of BBQ sauces/flavors. We both really liked ours though.

The potatoes. Delicious. The original recipe called for chicken stock, salt and pepper. We decided to substitute a few things in for these, it just seemed like the flavors would clash too much. So here's what it was: Sweet potatoes, brown sugar, 1 banana, 1 orange (juice and zest), milk, butter and sour cream. They turned out a little bit too sweet, but some more sour cream helped cancel that out. It was trial and error with the measurements. They complimented the cumin chicken really well though, it was a nice contrast of sweet and savory. 

Boiling

Bananas and butter

Mixing/mashing the final product.

The final product. Looks like baby food, but its so good.

Be sure that you mix the sweet potatoes really well. Richard's tasted a lot like banana and mine tasted a lot like oranges. (We used a large banana and a large orange, you can probably use smaller ones for less prominence of those flavors). 

We enjoyed dinner. I think I did a little bit more, but that's ok. It was fun trying out some new recipes. I found some new favorites. And these sweet potatoes would be great for a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. I hope you decide to try these out! Here's the recipes. (If you want the originals, they're on foodnetwork.com).

Recipes:

Cumin-Rub Chicken

Ingredients:

• 2 chicken breasts (Less or more, based on how many you're feeding)
• 1 tsp cumin powder

Cooking:

• Rinse chicken
• For 2 chicken breasts, use 1 tsp of cumin powder and rub on both sides.
• Cook on a grill until done. Add BBQ sauce, if wanted.

Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients:

• 3 Sweet potatoes
• 1/4 cup of brown sugar
• 1/4 cup of milk
• 1/4 cup of sour cream
• 1 sliced banana
• 1 orange, juiced and zested
• Nutmeg

Cooking:

• Peel potatoes and boil until tender. (About 30 minutes in Flagstaff).
• Strain potatoes.
• Add 1/4 stick of butter and 1 sliced banana to the pot, and cook for 5 minutes.
• Add the juice of 1 orange (saving the zest), and cook for 1 minute.
• Add the potatoes, 1/4 cup of brown sugar, 1/4 cup of milk and 1/4 cup of sour cream, and mash.
• Remember, this made them really sweet. You can cut down the brown sugar, add more sour cream, etc.
• Once mashed, add as much orange zest and nutmeg until your taste buds are satisfied.
• Mix well.

CM