Malaga Sweet Potatoes

I had a couple of sweet potatoes that needed to be used, but I didn't want to just bake them like I normally do.  Growing up, I had only had plain baked sweet potatoes and always liked them.  Farm Boy had only been served the really sweet ones with marshmallows* on top and he hated them. I finally talked him into trying a sweet potato fry and he was all over it.  I'm pretty sure he heard bells ringing and romantic music playing, he liked it so much.


*Is that a thing outside of the southern U.S.?  My parents moved here from North Dakota (Nor-da-KO-ta), so most of my childhood food experiences were of the Midwestern variety.

Since I was already looking something up in my Idle Hour Cook Book, I checked for sweet potato recipes and found Malaga Sweet Potatoes.

I didn't have any grapes, but I did have raisins and raisins are just really sad grapes, right?  So I poured some boiling water over some raisins and proceeded like it was meant to be.

A recurring theme in my cooking life is that if a recipe calls for both raisins and nuts, I am going to leave one of them out.  I can't tell you how many times I've pulled cinnamon rolls, cookies, etc., out of the oven and then noticed the bowl of raisins or pecans waiting patiently on the counter. At that point, foul language is used.

Looks good!  Wait, where are the #$%& nuts?!?

I didn't peel the sweet potatoes because I thought the skin made them a little easier to work with.  Farm Boy always eats the skin, but I just scrape the the flesh away from the skin when I eat them.  (Hmmm... that sounds a little Silence of the Lambsish... perhaps I should have an old friend for dinner...)

Nut-less and especially raisined raisins.  Roasted broccoli and pork chops in the background.

Ta da!  The pecans magically appeared!  Too bad they didn't magically toast...

We liked these.  They were sweet without being overpoweringly sweet, although the raisins did dry out a little more than I would have liked.  I'm having a hard time imagining what it would be like cooked with grapes instead of raisins (does baking them just turn them into raisins?), so I might have to try it the way it was originally written.  And maybe I can overcome my mental raisin/nut hurdle if I trick myself by using grapes.  But after so many failed attempts, I have my doubts.


Malaga Sweet Potatoes (Printable Recipe)
from the 1950 edition of the Idle Hour Cook Book

Ingredients:
3 or 4 large sweet potatoes
salt and pepper
white grapes (or raisins, if you want to be like me)
brown sugar
butter
chopped nuts

Directions:
Scrub sweet potatoes and steam or bake until tender.  Peel (or not!) and cut in half lengthwise; scoop out a small amount of the flesh from each half to make a boat shape.  Place halves on baking pan and season with salt and pepper to taste.  Fill each section with grapes; sprinkle with 2 tablespoons brown sugar and dot with 1/2 tablespoon of butter; sprinkle with chopped nuts.

Bake at 375F for 20 to 25 minutes or until the sugar and nuts are browned.

Or if cooking with a Chambers, bake at 450F for 15 minutes and retained heat for 30 minutes or up to several hours, if needed.

Raisin Pie with Crumb Topping

On the first Sunday of every month my family has a potluck dinner.  I really wanted to make something for dessert, but because Betty's oven was hard at work cooking a turkey, I needed to find something I could cook in the well. 

The insulated lid of the Thermowell. Most Chambers stoves have a Thermowell instead of a fourth surface burner. 

The Thermowell works like a slow cooker but with the addition of the Thermobaker, it can also be used as a small oven. 

The Thermobaker or "Thermobaker".  The writers for the Chambers literature were very fond of quotation marks.

I whipped out my handy-dandy 1950 copy of the Idle Hour Cook Book - the recipe book and user manual for the Chambers ranges - and looked for potential pie recipes, finally settling on Raisin Pie.

To make a smaller pie for the well, I halved the recipe.  Instead of a double crust pie, I thought it would be good to top the filling with an oatmeal crumb topping from one of Farm Boy's mother's famous recipes, Raisin Mumbles.  Mostly I thought this because I only had enough pie crust made for a single crust pie, but I also thought it sounded tasty.

While assembling the ingredients, I discovered that the lemons that I was sure were in the crisper were, in fact, limes.  I considered using lime juice in place of the lemon, but in the end I used dark rum instead.  Rum is a good substitute for lemon, right? 

After cooking the raisins, I had some doubts about there being enough filling, so I went ahead and kept the full amount (1/2 cup) of walnuts. 

Hmmm...  I'm beginning to see a theme in my cooking: I don't know what I have on hand and I substitute willy-nilly...

Someone needs to clean the well...  oh wait, that someone would be me.

All baked up!

Cell phone cameras under fluorescent lighting do not take the best pics.

This was a hit at the potluck and only a tiny bit made it home with us.  I see breakfast pie in my future!


Raisin Pie (Printable Recipe)
adapted from the 1950 edition of the Idle Hour Cook Book

Filling Ingredients:
1 single layer pie crust for 8" pie dish
1 cup seedless raisins
3/4 cups boiling water
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 tablespoon grated orange rind
1 1/2 tablespoons orange juice
1 tablespoon dark rum
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Topping:
1/4 cup soft butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup flour
pinch of salt
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup rolled oats

Directions:
Cook raisins in boiling water for 5 minutes; mix sugar, cornstarch, salt and add to raisins; cook about 3 minutes or until thick.  Remove from heat and add juice, rum, rind and nuts.  Pour into pastry-lined pie pan. 

Stir together the topping ingredients and drop in small bits over the top of the pie filling. The topping will come together as it bakes.

To cook this in the Thermobaker*, I preheated the well with the lid on for five minutes, placed the pie (in the Thermobaker) into the well, and replaced the cover, cooked with the gas on for 15 minutes and the gas off for 30 minutes.

I haven't tried baking this in a regular oven, but based on other recipes, I would bake it for 20 minutes at 425F, then lower the heat to 350F and bake for 20 to 30 more minutes, checking it at 20 minutes.


* Both the well and the oven on a Chambers are heavily insulated, so after a prescribed amount of heating time, you turn the gas off and let the food finish cooking with retained heat.