Crazy Mashed Potatoes and Mango Cranberry Pepper Roast Turkey

Yesterday, I went to the grocery store looking for something to cook. I knew I wanted to use up the potatoes and onions I had on hand. I also felt like roasting some red peppers and making some lean meat. This is the randomness that ensued.




Ingredients:

• Crazy Mashed Potatoes:
• potatoes
• quinoa
• onion
• celery
• roasted red pepper
  
• frozen vegetables
• honey
• thyme
• rosemary
• black pepper
• red pepper
• white pepper
• paprika
• milk
• butter
• garlic
• olive oil
  
• Mango Cranberry Pepper Roast Turkey
• Turkey tenderloins
• mango
• cranberry juice
• roasted red peppers
• garlic
• salt
• black pepper
• honey
• olive oil

Procedure:

• Crazy Mashed Potatoes:

I basically took all the side dish type ingredients I had and mixed them in a bowl. I took potatoes, cut them, and cooked them with a bunch of seasonings. At the same time, I cooked quinoa with frozen vegetables. That was alot like the pilaf I made in the last few posts. This time, I cooked it in tea instead of water. Onions and celery were sauted with some seasoning and olive oil. I also roasted a red pepper on the stove. Once all that was ready, I combined it all in one big bowl, added milk and butter, and mashed everything together.

This turned out pretty good. It is a very filling, flavorful side dish. If you added some meat, it would be a good one-part meal. Unfortunately, I burnt the quinoa, and the proportions could use some tweaking. This has some decent potential. It also took forever and was a lot of work because of the large number of ingredients that had to be cut and cooked separately.

• Mango Cranberry Pepper Roast Turkey
  

This main dish was much simpler than the mashed potato side dish. I started by roasting two more red peppers. While those cooked and steamed, I lined a normal pyrex baking pan with sliced squash. Then, I cut the tendon out of the turkey tenderloin and placed the meat on the squash. Onto that went sliced mango and roasted red pepper. I added some olive oil, salt, and pepper, then filled the bottom 1/2 inch or so of the pan with cranberry juice. That went into the oven at 325 for 30 minutes. Then, since I was tired and hungry, I bumped it up to 350 for 15 minutes.

The turkey came out so-so. It was a cooked well, but under seasoned. I overestimated how much I would get out of the mango and red pepper baking on top of the turkey. The spots that got flavor from the cranberry, red pepper, and mango were absolutely fantastic. I think I stumbled upon a great flavor combo in roasted red pepper and cranberry, but fell short on the dish overall. When combined with the Crazy Mashed Potatoes, the two flavor profiles do fit together quite well.

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This is a good example of what happens when I have a bunch of random crap around that I want to use. Things get over-complicated, but something good almost always comes out of it. I make things up as I go along when I cook more often than not, because it is one of my favorite things to do. I was really tired when I cooked this last night, so my execution was below average and this didn't turn out nearly as well as it could. On the bright side, both dishes have serious potential and I discovered that I really like the way cranberry and roasted red peppers go together. That's a new flavor combination for me and one I'm definitely going to play with more.