I conducted a very scientific poll on Facebook as to what dinner dish I should make with the heavy cream. The general consensus was something chowderish or soup-like. (But Ida - The lone suggestion for White Russians didn't fall on deaf ears - just pregnant ears...next time though!!!)
So I peeked around my favorite cooking blogs and found an interesting recipe that would use both my fresh sweet potatoes and this heavy cream. Kelly the Kitchen Kop posted a recipe she concocted called Garlic Sweet Potato Chowder - Recreating Restaurant Food. How can one go wrong with garlic, heavy cream and sweet potatoes?!?!
This is going to sound braggish...because it is :)... but I just so happened to have all the ingredients including fresh chicken broth since I had just tossed some chicken bones in the crockpot that morning to make a fresh batch!! I only recently learned how chicken broth is made and I am still bedazzled by how easy it is!! However, I wouldn't recommend simmering chicken broth overnight in a small house. The smell is entirely too pungent and made me nauseous during my quarter-hourly trips to the potty.
I'm going to post the dish here (with my modifications) but please check out Kelly's blog as well. There is a lot of great information and plenty of awesome recipes there!
- Peel and chop 3 medium sweet potatoes
- Dice 4 cloves of garlic
- Spread the garlic and potatoes in a single layer on buttered cookie sheets
- Brush potatoes with 1/2 cup olive oil (or you can use melted butter or ghee)
- Sprinkle with sea salt
- Bake at 450 degrees until golden brown - between 5-15 minutes (just be careful they don't burn)
When these came out of the oven I just started popping them in my mouth. I absolutely love sweet potatoes and fall squash. These tasted like candy to me!!
For the other half of the recipe, I'm going to alter what Kelly suggested. Last night, I made it just as she did, and I found that the ratio of cream/sweet potato was too much. There was also too much butter. However! If you like to dip bread in garlic butter, make it just like Kelly did. The chowder was phenomenal. Jason devoured the whole dinner and went for seconds. For me, it was just a bit too heavy.
- Melt 2-3 tablespoons of butter
- Sauté 1/2 cup chopped onion and an additional 4 cloves of chopped garlic
- Whisk in 1/4 cup of arrowroot powder (or cornstarch)
- Add 1 cup raw heavy cream and stir as it thickens
- Add 1-1/2 cups of chicken stock, slowly, and keep stirring as it thickens. This will take a few minutes
- Add sea salt and pepper to taste
- Stir in 1/4 cup of shredded Parmesan cheese
Ours was a very thick garlic chowder with delicious bits of sweet potato throughout. Our chowder was super thick because the raw heavy cream was more like a thick pudding than a liquid. In the future, I might just put a tablespoon or two of cornstarch in there if our cream is that thick. Also - I am a big fan of butter. We go through a LOT of the stuff around here. But there was just too much in our dish and it began to separate. It was perfect for dipping bread into though :)
All in all, we absolutely loved this dish and will enjoy the leftovers tonight! But as far as plating goes, next time, I will put a dollop of cream on the plate and pour the sweet potatoes on the top.
Sometimes I wonder if I run the risk of boring everyone out there with my food posts. The truth is, I have the worst memory ever. If I didn't snap photos of my kids all day every day, I would probably need someone to remind me that I even have children. I have a good memory of pictures though so these posts about recipes are now solidified in my brain for future reference...and maybe someone else will benefit from them.
Aaaaaaaaaaand - Just in case you're only here to see my children being ridiculous, here are a few photos I found from right around this time last year :)
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