The past week has been mostly quiet on the culinary innovations front. Mike had oral surgery to remove his wisdom teeth and spent the subsequent days recovering on a soft food diet of Muscle Milk protein shakes and Kraft Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese. Meanwhile, I focused on singlehandedly eating up our CSA produce, making batches of kale chips and honey glazed Brussels sprouts, baking lots of squash, and eating apple after apple. I also developed a newfound fondness for sweet potatoes.
Over the past year, I've made a few tasty recipes that incorporate sweet potatoes (African Peanut Soup and Quinoa with Sweet Potato and Spinach), but I still wasn't a big fan of them on their own. Until this past week, when I decided to try a recipe from The Farmer's Kitchen cookbook and discovered that the problem with the sweet potatoes I'd eaten before was that they weren't roasted with olive oil, garlic, and fresh herbs (note to self: almost everything tastes better when combined with olive oil, garlic, and fresh herbs). Besides being delicious, roasted sweet potatoes are also soft enough for Mike to eat as he transitions back into real food. As far as herbs, I prefer to use rosemary and Mike likes sage best, but we agree that either option is delicious.
Adapted from The Farmer's Kitchen, by Julia Shanks and Brett Grohsgal
Ingredients:
- 4 cups sweet potatoes, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
- 2 teaspoons olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 2 tablespoons fresh sage or rosemary, finely chopped
Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Place sweet potatoes in a 9 x 13 baking dish. Add oil, salt, and pepper and toss until sweet potatoes are evenly coated. Bake for 30 minutes, or until sweet potatoes are mostly tender when pierced with a fork.
Stir in the garlic and fresh herbs. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees and bake for an additional 5 minutes, or until garlic is golden and sweet potatoes are tender.
*In case you're curious, the sweet potatoes in the picture are being served with Honey Roasted Pumpkin Ravioli from Trader Joe's.