Experimenting with Recipies

I am always working on a new plan to make life better or easier so I decided to rethink my thoughts about cooking.  I do this with many things, like my cleaning/decluttering as of late.  My latest thing is to clean out "a spot" daily be it a drawer, a cupboard, a shelve, what ever and it is working.  Don't know for how long but for now it's a good motivator.  So back to cooking....I decided to think about cooking more as experimenting with recipes.  I am always trying new recipes but it is usually for something to eat that week but sometimes I just want to try a recipe during the day to see how it goes and not think about it being for a meal.  So yesterday I tried 3 new recipes, just because!

Roasted Creamed Onions were excellent, as good as it looked but better than I thought it would be.  I eat onions, raw if small and in a salad but I would not have a raw slice of onion on a sandwich so I thought a thick slice even if it was cooked may be too much for me.  Not true.  This is a good holiday dish.  Original recipe came from bellyfull.net

ROASTED CREAMED ONIONS
2 lg. sweet onions, peeled, 1/4” slices
Drizzle EVOO
1/4 t. Kosher
1/4 t. coarse black pepper
1 C. heavy cream
1/4 C. white wine
1/4 C. grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 375F.  Peal and slice onions about 1/4" thick, place on a parchment lined cookie sheet.  Drizzle with EVOO and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Roast for 15 minutes.  In a small saucepan add cream and wine.  Heat till it just starts to bubble around the edge.  Remove from heat and set aside.  When onions are done, increase the oven to 450F.  Transfer onions to shallow baking dish, keeping them in rings.  Pour cream over onions and sprinkle each onion with a 1/2 T. Parmesan.  Cover with foil and bake another 20 minutes.  Remove foil and cook another 5 minutes so the onions can brown.

Note:  Original recipe had 4 lg. onions but my oval dish was too small so I just used 2.  The two onions gave me 8 slices.

Then I made a Roasted Purple Sweet Potato.  This recipe said to cut them thin and place on their ends resembling a curled snake.  I thought mandolin, it makes thin slices but way to thin for this method but as thin as they were they still needed more than 20 minutes so a bit of a recipe fail.  I stirred them cause they were a bit dry on top and lowered the temp and left them in for 15 more minutes to finish cooking.  When I stirred them some broke into smaller pieces and I broke the large slices in half.  In the end they did not look pretty, they were too much effort for the amount of flavor which is why I would cube them if I make again and boring/not enough flavor, MEH.  It was just a sweet potato. The original recipe was from Eating Well 101. 

PURPLE SWEET POTATO
1 lg. purple sweet potato, mandolin
2 cloves garlic, grated
1 T. EVOO
2 T. butter, melted
1/2 t. garlic salt
1/2 t. parsley, oregano, basil mixed
Kosher salt
coarse black pepper
4 T. Parmesan, grated

Butter a 9x13” oval dish.  Peal and cube potatoes.  Melt butter and mix with spices, pour over potatoes.  Sprinkle with Parmesan and toss.  Bake 400F for 30 minutes. 

Note:  This is just a roasted sweet potato.  Best when layered with the creamed onions.

Finally I combined the two with rotisserie chicken and WOW, excellent accident.  Took one great recipe (Creamed Onions), one boring recipe (Roasted Sweet Potato) and made an excellent dinner.  I topped the potatoes with 1 1/2 C. rotisserie chicken, the whole creamed onion dish, 1/2 C. more heavy cream and more Parmesan and baked it 350F for 30 minutes, R5, sweet, creamy, very tasty.

POTATO CHICKEN ONION GRATIN
Roasted Purple Sweet Potatoes
1 1/2 C. rotisserie chicken
Roasted Parmesan Creamed Onions
1/2 C. heavy cream
1/4 C. Parmesan cheese

Layer in order given.  Rebake 350F for 30 minutes.

Variation:  Omit the chicken and serve it as a holiday side dish.