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The BEST (for real) Sweet Potato and Black Bean Tacos

February 17, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

 

As a toddler mama, I spend roughly 2/3 of my time in the kitchen trying to figure out how to make something that Dubs will eat that has at least SOME nutritional value. Low-sugar Peanut butter on whole wheat waffles, oatmeal with raisins, avocado toast, and colby-jack cheese cubes are my standby snacks (obviously kale pesto and sweet potato mac ‘n cheese are also on this list.) Thankfully,  ALL of us love tacos, and sweet potatoes, and black beans, so this recipe has risen to the top of our dinner menu pretty quickly.

Also, it’s like the easiest thing ever.

I’ve seen some really gorgeous recipes lately with cubed sweet potatoes. Y’all, that makes for a LOVELY photo and also probably a little less messy eating, but you can’t beat the flavor of roasted sweet potatoes mixed with smoked paprika and cumin. You just can’t. So, that means these photos maybe aren’t as lovely as a few others out there on the interweb,  but the recipe is WORTH IT. Also, you can make this recipe into burritos, tacos, OR quesadillas. It’s so versatile and awesome. Enjoy!


What you Need for the Potatoes:

2 medium sweet potatoes, roasted then peeled

1/2 tablespoon cumin

1 teaspoon smoked paprika (if you like spicy food)

Salt to taste

For the Beans:

1 can of black beans, drained

1/2 Tablespoon chili powder

1/2 onion diced

Cilantro

2 tablespoons of lime juice

To Serve:

Flour tortillas

1 ripe avocado

cherry tomatoes, cut into fourths

sour cream or greek yogurt

shredded cheese

Salsa (if desired)

What to Do:

Prick your sweet potatoes all over with a fork and wash them. Place them on a cookie sheet and bake them for about 30-45 minutes on 400 WITH their skin. You’ll know they’re cooked because their skin will puff out a bit and they will be squishy to the touch. They’re SO much easier to peel once they’ve been baked.

While they are baking, drain your black beans. In a medium saucepan, sautee the onions, and sprinkle the chili powder over the onions. Sauteeing the seasonings brings out a better, richer flavor. Dump your beans in and cook briefly, just enough to warm them. Mix the cilantro and lime juice in. Voila!

Once your potatoes are cooked and have cooled enough so that you don’t burn your fingers off when you touch them, mash the potatoes with the cumin, salt, chili, and paprika. Stir it in very well.

Serve by putting the potatoes, black beans, and toppings in a flour tortilla. Eat until your belly is full and your heart is content. 😉

The BEST (for real) Sweet Potato and Black Bean Tacos
 
Save Print
Prep time
10 mins
Cook time
35 mins
Total time
45 mins
 
Author: Biz Harris
Serves: 4-6 tacos
What You Need
  • What you Need for the Potatoes:
  • 2 medium sweet potatoes, roasted then peeled
  • ½ tablespoon cumin
  • 1 teaspoon smoked paprika (if you like spicy food)
  • Salt to taste
  • For the Beans:
  • 1 can of black beans, drained
  • ½ Tablespoon chili powder
  • ½ onion diced
  • Cilantro
  • 2 tablespoons of lime juice
  • To Serve:
  • Flour tortillas
  • 1 ripe avocado
  • cherry tomatoes, cut into fourths
  • sour cream or greek yogurt
  • shredded cheese
  • Salsa (if desired)
What to Do
  1. Prick your sweet potatoes all over with a fork and wash them.
  2. Place them on a cookie sheet and bake them for about 30-45 minutes on 400 WITH their skin.
  3. You'll know they're cooked because their skin will puff out a bit and they will be squishy to the touch.
  4. While they are baking, drain your black beans.
  5. In a medium saucepan, sautee the onions, and sprinkle the chili powder over the onions.
  6. Dump your beans in and cook briefly, just enough to warm them.
  7. Mix the cilantro and lime juice in.
  8. Once your potatoes are cooked and have cooled enough so that you don't burn your fingers off when you touch them, mash the potatoes with the cumin, salt, chili, and paprika. Mix it in very well.
  9. Serve by putting the potatoes, black beans, and toppings in a flour tortilla
3.5.3208

Filed Under: Sandwiches and Salads, spring, summer, toddler-friendly, Vegetarian Main Dishes Tagged With: Avocado, beans, sweet potato, tacos, Toddler

Riffing on Robert St. John: White Bean & Ham Stufato

February 12, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

 

Have you ever eaten at a Robert St. John restaraunt? He’s got what amounts to a restaurant owners compound in Hattiesburg,  right down the street from the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi.

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A rustic Italian spot, a new orleans pub and a southern fine-dining experience,  a super swank cocktail bar, and now, a much anticipated hamburger joint are all within the confines of basically one parking lot. ALL the food at all the places (well, I don’t know about the burger spot yet since the lines have been too long for me to try it out) is really delicious, and the ambiance is always perfectly suited to the cuisine. Anyway, I’m a huge fan, especially since his food is great, AND uses his platform to support hunger initiatives in Mississippi.

He also has some pretty lovely cookbooks, and we were leafing through the Italian one, and ran across a recipe for white beans. My dad has basically been talking about wanting a bean dish for DAYS, since it’s what he wants to eat in cold weather, AND we had a huge bone-in honebaked ham (and what do you do with a ham bone if you’re from the south? You season something.) I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, and I didn’t have all the things to make his unique seasoning blends and herb blends, so I just kinda went with my gut. What resulted was my take on his already warm, creamy, Mississippified-Italian white bean dish that is PERFECT for a cold, cold night.

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Filed Under: pasta and grains and legumes, Soup and Stews, Uncategorized, winter Tagged With: beans, Fusion, ham

Buttermilk Chocolate Chip Cake with Espresso-chocolate Frosting

February 11, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

 

So, this was my 33rd birthday cake.

I know. It kinda makes me want to turn 33 forever, right?

As we hosted a thank-you dinner party for some neighbors and friends on my actual birthday, my mama decided that I should have my very own birthday cake a week later (but really, now that I have a baby of my own, I know the real truth: birthdays are for mamas. Mamas are born the same moment their babies are, and will forever remember the entire day, or many, many hours that it took to get that little person–now a 33 year old woman who’s got a baby of her own– into the world. Celebrating a birthday is as special to the birthday girl or boy, if not more special, to her or his mama. At least that’s how my wonderful, selfless, perfect mama is.) This is my mama.Also, she’s an INCREDIBLE french bread baker, and artist, and the most precise person I know, but cake baking and cake-decorating isn’t so much her thing. She’s also still recovering from chemo, and surgery, and radiation several months ago, but she STILL made me this incredible chocolatey layer cake in the style of Momofuko milk bar (and based on her chocolate chip-passionfruit cake.) I don’t deserve my mama, y’all. If you want to show someone the love you have for them, and if food is your love language, then this cake is one sure-fire way to do it.

But about the cake……

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Filed Under: dessert Tagged With: Buttermilk, cake, chocolate, coffee

Sweet Potato, Kale, and Sausage stew

February 11, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com

Ok, it’s freezing all over America, right? Like everywhere? Except here. Our former town is probably covered in frost and ice (Can someone in Leland, MS confirm, please?) but here in Laurel, it’s just overcast and muggy. Although there’s SO MUCH to love about the deepest and farthest south, the winter weather isn’t one of them if you happen to like cold. However, I’m not going to let our mosquito-ridden warm front stop me from making the most delicious, easy, healthy soup on the planet, snuggling up with a bowl of it, cup of hot coffee, and pretend it’s a glorious 21 degrees. I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you do this, also, even if you aren’t pretending.

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Filed Under: Beef and Pork and Game, Soup and Stews, winter Tagged With: greens, sausage, sweet potato

A Toast to Laurel, MS with Mock Champagne!

February 10, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

What are the odds that the year you move back to the town where you grew up that at nearly the SAME TIME an HGTV show pilot is filmed there based around the concept of returning to your hometown?
I know, right? Nope, we’re not on the show in any way, shapem or form, but the show’s host, Erin has designed my gorgeous wedding invitations AND Wagner’s baby announcement (the two pieces of paper I treasure the most in the world), so I do know her a teeny tiny little bit.
Sunday, January 24th at 11am (THIS WEEKEND!) is the air date for Ben and Erin Napier’s HGTV show pilot, Hometown, and is also Laurel, Mississippi’s BIG DEBUT onto the national stage (Followed not long after by Jones County’s big deut with The Free State of Jones movie). The whole town is so excited about this, that there’s a city-wide chili lunch right after the airing at our lovely little train depot. My whole family came back from the beach completely down for the count with some awful flu-ish type virus right now, so it’s not looking like we’ll be able to go, BUT we’re going to drink ALL the orange juice in town between now and then to try to get ourselves well again.
IN THE MEANTIME I’m making sure I don’t miss a chance to celebrate such a big event, so we’re going to be raising a very chaste, very Sunday-morning-Appropriate toast to Laurel, to the Napiers, and to coming home with my Grandmother’s Mock Champagne/Wedding Punch that comes from the classic Laurel Entertains YWCO cookbook (I know. is it Coincidence or fate? Plus my mama did all the gorgeous house illustrations in the book. Whhhaatt?)

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Filed Under: Beverages and Cocktails Tagged With: Cocktail, ginger ale, nonalcoholic, Party Food

The Mississippi Bahn mi

February 10, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

 
For our anniversary, Boone and I took a jaunt to New Orleans in May for a two night get-away. My parents’ next-door neighbor and long-time friend has an apartment RIGHT IN the French Quarter, so we had a pretty lovely spot to drink, eat, and wander. This is, of course, exactly what we did. Our first stop was Dong Phuong Bakery, a place my dad had heard about from friends. This tiny spot had a sit-down noodle shop on one side, and a pick-up bakery and banh mi shop on the other. Oh, y’all. I’d never had a Banh mi sandwich before, so we ordered THREE different ones (before you judge, you take look at the menu and see how you’d choose just one.) There’s nothing nothing nothing good to say about colonialism. However, I guess Banh mi is one example of a food fusion that was created in French-controlled Vietnam, AND is also an example of a sandwich that was basically MADE for life in New Orleans, home of one of the strongest (if not the strongest) Franco-fusion culture in our country. It turns out that there’s a pretty large Vietnamese-American community in south Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and they are shaping and molding local flavors to their own tastes, and in return, influencing the local cuisine to reflect their presence (SO AWESOME). I fell in love with the sandwich, but unfortunately, my sweet little town doesn’t have our own Vietnamese Bakery. (Here’s hoping.) In the meantime, I started trying to figure out how to make my own at home.

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Filed Under: Beef and Pork and Game, Sandwiches and Salads Tagged With: Fusion, Louisiana, Venison

The Kentucky Sidecar

February 10, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

It’s Friday, folks. As Mr. Gross, my former Madison Shannon Palmer High School Colleague used to say, it’s FRI-day, so it’s MY-day. 😉 Do yourself a favor and have this delicious cocktail after work. The Kentucky Sidecar is a riff on the classic sidecar but made with Bourbon (sigh..) instead of brandy. Y’all, it’s a no brainer.

This is one of those cocktails that you could drink and drink and drink and drink and drink. It’s smooth, and not super sweet, and light and also, because it’s bourbon and citrus, kind of perfect for warm OR cool weather.

You’re welcome. 😉
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Filed Under: Beverages and Cocktails Tagged With: Bourbon, Cocktail, Kentucky

Comeback Sauce & Pan Seared Snapper

February 10, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

My wonderful in-laws came down to the Gulf Coast of Alabama from the North Carolina mountains a couple of weeks ago to get away from the snow and invited us to pop down for a visit. They grew up in the midwest and now live pretty far inland, so fresh seafood isn’t something they eat very often (though they DO like it a lot). We went on a little adventure to Pensacola, Florida to go to the amazing Joe Patti’s  Seafood Market, and picked up two meals worth of my favorite fish, Red Snapper. The fish is so light, lovely, and flakey that you really don’t have a do a ton to it to make it delicious… just a little salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a sear in a skillet. Although we didn’t NEED it, I’d had a hankering for Mississippi’s most famous condiment, Comeback Sauce for a couple of weeks, so I made a batch to drizzle on top, too. The spicier cousin of remoulade and thousand island dressing, Comeback Sauce was created by Greek immigrants in Jackson, Mississippi and is still served at the Mayflower Cafe today. What resulted was something just right… fresh, fresh, gorgeous fish with a spicy, light dressing. It was divine.
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Filed Under: Condiments and Dressings, seafood Tagged With: Mississippi, sauce, seafood

Buttermilk Dutch Baby

February 10, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com 6 Comments

My mama has a foolproof dutch baby recipe from an old friend of hers…it’s probably 30 years old and is in her recipe folder titled “Marmalade Pancake.” I’ve made it several times and it just works like a charm if you want a lovely, puffy, golden brown dutch baby on a Sunday morning (or a Tuesday morning…the morning just doesn’t matter one bit.) I’d recently watched this fun little Southern Foodways Alliance short documentary about a buttermilk maker in Eastern Tennessee, which got me thinking… could I make a dutch baby with it? I worried a bit that the buttermilk would be too thick and would weigh the batter down, although it’s known for reacting beautifully with baking soda in biscuits to create fluffy masterpieces. I decided to give it a go for our weekend family brunch, but added a taste of water to thin the batter out just slightly, PLUS I blended all the ingredients using an emulsion blender, which I think helped ensure things turned out just right. I was so excited that the thing puffed up that I forgot to dust it with powdered sugar…. the pictures may have suffered, but the taste didn’t. I’m not sure that I’ll go back to regular old milk in my baked goods ever again.

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Filed Under: Breakfast and Brunch, toddler-friendly, winter Tagged With: Buttermilk

What to drink before the parade: Le Roi Cafe’

February 10, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

I LOVE Mardi Gras. I just love it. It turns out that I went a bit overboard this Mardi Gras season…buying King Cake Flavored vodka, and King Cake Flavored coffee… I drew the line at King Cake Flavored soda, but it’s a pretty thin line. But then I realized that most of the drinks people are making with King Cake vodka are just plain terrible and honestly I’m not sure that anyone but 21 year old tourists in New Orleans for the first time ever would drink them. King Cake coffee is pretty delicious, but maybe just a bit too much for everyday consumption.

So what do I do? I make a pre-parade slash post dinner party coffee cocktail (AND a virgin version for festive non-drinkers.) As a nod to KING Cake, I named it Le Roi Cafe.` You’ve had Irish Coffee, right? Well, this just might be better.

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Filed Under: Beverages and Cocktails, winter Tagged With: Cocktail, coffee, Louisiana, Mardi Gras

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