Ol' Fashioned Cajun Pork and Sweet Potato Stew

  With Fall season trying hard to get going, down here in Sunny South Louisiana, Cajuns start thinking about cool weather comfort food. Hearty stews like gumbos are first on that list, and when you come from 'sweet potato country', around Opelousas, Louisisana,  sweet potatoes are often get involved in whatcha cookin'. So, with that in mind, I made this dish a couple of weeks ago and it was so very good, I decided to make it again and share it with you. Get out your spoons. 
    First, I started with a Boston butt pork that I cut into stew meat chunks...

   seasoned it up with our own Cajun spice blend and a splash of Worcestershire sauce, that I just call "woo"...easier to say and even easier to spell. (I hadda 'google' again how to spell it for yall this time.)

Here, I've got the burner on a li'l more than 'medium' and added a small splash of water while I whacked up a few onions,

then scraped them into the pot.

I hit the onions with a li'l bit more seasoning to help them break down (the salt in the spice does that).

 I put the lid on the pot and let it cook down on a medium setting for a half an hour or so, stirring when needed.

Once it cooked down a bit, we chopped up a couple sweet potatoes (washed and skin on), and added them to the party in the pot, and aint they pretty?

After another half an hour of occasional stirring, the sweet potatoes got tender and started 'melting down'.

Next, I added half a bell pepper, chopped.

After about another 20 minutes of cooking, you can see that the pork and sweet potato made a pretty good gravy.

But, since this is supposed to be a stew, I decided to thicken it with gluten-free gravy mix.

This Savoie's Gluten free mix. It's very good, and all you have to do is shake in into the pot, as you would any seasoning, and stir.

Even if you don't have a person with celiac disease in your family, this really is a wonderful gravy mix and the most realistic we have found yet.  It's available at Rouse's grocery stores here in the South, and I am pretty sure they sell it at other places, as well.

Most Southerners make pork and turnip stew, but you really need to try this St. Landry Parish version and trade your turnips in for sweet potatoes.  Pork and sweet potatoes: two good things that are better together.

Paired with a creamy coleslaw, it's the perfect Fall dish... 'til it gets cold enough to make gumbo. Brrrrr.  :-D

 

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Cajun Hot Legs

We  have given up on Buffalo hot wings.  They are expensive, messy and hard to eat and not at all meaty.  We decided to experiment and see what we could do to make something better in place of our favorite ballgame snack.  A few weeks ago we found Sanderson Farms big chicken legs on sale for 69 cents a lb. in family sized packs, so we bought three of the packs home to to see how close we could come to making them taste like Buffalo wings, but better: "Cajun Hot Legs!"

 We took a pack of the legs and seasoned them with a liberal dusting of our own Cajun spice mix and a few splashes of Worcestershire sauce.

We put them in a parchment paper lined pan in a 325 degree oven for 30 minutes, then turned them over and put them in the oven for another 30 minutes. After another 30 minutes or so, the meat thermometer read "165"=done!

 Out of the oven they came and dumped into Peg's stainless steel "salad bowl", then drizzled with Sweet Baby Ray's Buffalo Wing sauce,

and tossed to coat them.

They turned out to be amazing and cost a fraction of the price of wings. They're a lot easier to eat, too...not quite as messy, and one hot leg is way meatier than a wimpy wing. 

Give 'em a try! Ta heck with skimpy Buffalo wings... this whole bowl of Cajun Hot Legs cost about $3.50.  We enjoyed 'em while watching our beloved Saints win again--Priceless!! Who Dat!!