Sweet Potato Gratin

This recipe comes from the ABC's The Chew


The recipe with the modifications that I made is as follows:

Ingredients:

• 2 Sweet Potatoes
• 1/3 Cup Parmesan Cheese (plus some extra to sprinkle on top)
• 1 Cup Heavy Cream
• 1 Jalapeno - Minced
• Pepper - To Taste
• 1 Garlic Cloves - Minced
• 1/3 Cup Scallions -  Chopped

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375F.
2. Cut sweet potatoes into 1/4 inch slices.
3. Bring heavy cream to a simmer.  Add scallions, garlic, jalapeno, and 1/3 cup parmesan.
4. Add a layer of potatoes to a pan.  Pour some of the cream mixture over the potatoes.  Continue layering until all the potatoes and cream have been used.
5. Top potatoes with a bit of extra parmesan.
6. Cover pan and bake for 40 minutes.  Uncover for the last 10 minutes.

Thoughts About The Dish:

We liked this dish, but not enough to make it an all-the-time feature of our menu. We will be making it again, but it will probably be a little while. When we do make it again, we will probably keep most or all of the jalapeno seeds in the mixture, and/or add another jalapeno. As it was, the cream and sweetness of the sweet potato over shadowed any taste of spiciness in the dish.

The other thing  worth noting here is that if you, like us, are big fans of au gratin potatoes, it will pay to keep in mind that this is a dish from sweet potatoes (that's why it's paleo!), and sweet potatoes have a very different flavor than normal potatoes - they are MUCH sweeter, so this dish will have a lot of different flavors than your typical gratin. It is still tasty, but it's different than you may initially expect when you think of a gratin.

Baked Jalapeno Poppers

Ingredients:

• 1 Chicken Breast - Shredded
• 4 oz Cream Cheese
• 1/2 Cup Cheddar Cheese - Shredded
• 4 Pieces Bacon
• ~13 Jalapenos or Mini Sweet Peppers - Halved

Directions:

1. Bake chicken breast until done.  Transfer to stand mixer.  Shred chicken breast with paddle attachment on low for about 15 seconds.  Turn up speed to medium for about 15 seconds or until chicken is shredded.
2. Preheat oven to 375F.
3. Mix together cream cheese, cheddar cheese, bacon and shredded chicken.
4. Spoon chicken mixture into each pepper.
5. Bake for 20 minutes.

Thoughts About The Dish:

This was tasty! The one thing that everyone commented on is that there was a lot of variation in the spiciness of the jalapenos. This led to some peppers that were right on the line of being too spicy, and others that were almost as mild as a bell pepper. In the mini sweet peppers, the sweetness was evident, and made for a good change of pace when mixed in between jalapenos.

Some changes that might lead to improvement include:

1. Chopping up the jalapenos and mixing them into the chicken mixture. This would provide a more uniform spiciness, but would also mean that more sweet peppers were required to house the mixture that the jalapenos would have handled.
2. Sauteing onions and mixing them into the mixture. If also following change #1, the jalapenos could be sauteed with the onions.