This recipe is one that the Barrios-Treviño family looks forward to ever year at Thanksgiving. A touch of almond extract in the recipe is the “secret” ingredient that helps make this dish a standout. To watch a video of Diana Barrios Treviño making this dish, click here.

Sweet Potato Soufflé

2 cups mashed, cooked sweet potatoes
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/4 cups sugar
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) butter, melted and divided equally between 2 small bowls
1 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 cup crushed cornflakes
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Combine sweet potatoes, eggs, sugar, half the butter, milk, nutmeg, cinnamon and almond extract in large bowl, mixing well. Pour into a buttered baking dish or pie plate and bake 20-25 minutes until set.

Combine cornflakes, brown sugar, nuts and remaining butter, mixing well.  Spread over the sweet potatoes and return to oven to bake for another 10 minutes.

Makes 10-12 servings.

From “Los Barrios Family Cookbook” by Diana Barrios Treviño

Roasted vegetables are delicious any time of year, but especially when it feels comfortable enough to turn on the oven — and leave it on for more than an hour.

To those who make a face at the word “rutabagas,”  I invite you to give this vegetable another chance. It has an earthy but mellow, slightly sweet flavor when baked or boiled.  Add melted butter and crumbled bacon to mashed rutabagas and you have a dish my family always welcomed at the Christmas dinner table.

Fennel bulb adds a gentle flavor of anise to the blend, with garlic and onion offering more substantial tastes to counter the blander flavors of the potatoes.

With some good whole-grain bread and butter, and maybe a wedge of cheddar to slice, this could be the centerpiece of a meat-free meal.

Roasted Winter Vegetables

4 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound rutabagas, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 pound onions, cut into 1-inch wedges or slices about ½-inch thick
1 pound carrots, peeled and cut into 2-inch pieces
1 pound fennel bulb, trimmed and cut into slices about ½-inch thick or narrower
1 pound sweet potato, peeled and cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
1 pound potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes, OR use cleaned fingerling potatoes, cut into the same size
8 cloves peeled garlic
1/2 tablespoon crumbled, dried sage
1/2 tablespoon crumbled, dried rosemary
1/2 tablespoon crumbled, dried oregano
Salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon freshly chopped parsley

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place very large roasting pan in oven and heat for 15 minutes (or 2 large roasting pans – vegetables should be in single layer).

Remove from oven. Add olive oil to pan. Add vegetables and garlic and gently stir them around in the oil. Put in the oven. After about 45 minutes, add herbs, salt and pepper, to taste, and stir gently around in pan. Take from the oven when the vegetables are tender, after about 1 ¼ hours. Drizzle over lemon juice, sprinkle with fresh parsley, stir vegetables gently and serve.

Makes 8-10 servings.

Adapted from recipeczar.com

I’m a dedicated meat-eater. I think pork is one of the four basic food groups (butter and heavy cream make up a second).

So it may seem odd that when I finally broke down and got a gas grill, the first thing I cooked on it was a batch of fresh pattypan squash from the farmers market.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have any meat on hand, mind you. I had just gotten the vegetables that day from the market, though, and they were so fresh and firm that they were practically crying out to be quartered, marinated and grilled.

You don’t need a fancy dressing with sugar and/or a host of spices. All I did was coated them well with some olive oil, salt and pepper for a few minutes before putting them on the grill.

I didn’t need anything else that meal, except a glass of rosé, as good a drink with grilled foods as a cold beer.

Those squashes remain among of the best dishes to come off my grill, and not just because they were first. I continue to grill them exactly the same way, which is quite frequent now that squashes are in season.

But don’t limit yourself to squashes or peppers. You can grill most any vegetable, including eggplant, if you approach it right.

Tom Perini, owner of Perini Ranch Steakhouse in Buffalo Gap, near Abilene, offers a great chart for grilled vegetables in his book, “Texas Cowboy Cooking,” which came out in 2000 and is still in print.

He doesn’t add anything to his Fire-Roasted Vegetables until they are finished cooking. All he does is cut some up and remove the seeds if needs be.

“This is a technique you can use with just about any vegetable,” he writes. “Grilling vegetables over a live fire awakens the sugars and brings the flavor of the vegetables to the surface, a flavor you don’t get in an oven. The color you get by grilling vegetables is spectacular: They look great with a little bit of char around the edges and there’s nothing prettier than grilled vegetables with your steak. Be careful not to cook them to much, they need to have a little firmness.”

That last sentence cannot be emphasized enough: Don’t let your attention stray from the vegetables. They cook quickly. Too much heat and you’ve got burnt mush.

Here are Tom’s suggestions for handling the vegetables and his time-table for cooking them to just the right doneness. He prefers coal, which does offer great added flavor, but I have found that gas works almost as well if you’re in a hurry or cooking for one:

Fire-Roasted Vegetables

Wash the vegetables. Use the chart below to determine proportions and cooking times. See that coals are red-hot and about 6 inches below the grill before starting to cook.

Peppers: bell, Anaheim, poblano, 8-10 minutes. Cut in half lengthwise and seed.
Peppers: jalapeños, 10 minutes. Leave whole.
Mushrooms, 8-10 minutes. Use whole caps with stems removed or trimmed.
Onions, sweet Texas, green and purple, 10-15 minutes. Slice crosswise into 1/2-inch slices.
Sweet potatoes, 8-10 minutes. Slice crosswise or diagonally into 1/2-inch slices.
Eggplant, 10 minutes. Slice crosswise or diagonally into 1/2-inch slices.

Dressing:
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Combine the dressing ingredients thoroughly. Toss the grilled vegetables in the dressing. This can be served at room temperature or chilled. Sliced beef may also be added.

From “Texas Cowboy Cooking” by Tom Perini