Category: Sweet Potato

Sweet Potato and Bean Hash

1/15/2017

I love cooking a big breakfast on the weekend because there are so many ways to mix and match ingredients to come up with a different twist and flavor each time. This recipe is so colorful and nutritious, full of veggies, carbs, and protein it's sure to be a satisfying breakfast!

This is a fully satisfying dish if you eat it on its own or makes a great side as part of a larger brunch menu.

Ingredients:
1/2 Tablespoon Olive Oil
2 Cloves Garlic
3 Small Leeks
2 Medium Sweet Potatoes
1 Green Pepper
1 15 oz can of Beans
1 teaspoon Turmeric
1 teaspoon Paprika

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Servings: 4

Instructions:
Mince the garlic. Finely chop the white and light green parts of the leeks - once you have sliced the leeks go back over the leek rings with your knife to chop them up even smaller. Rinse the leeks underwater as they can get dirt within the rings of the leeks. Heat the garlic and leeks in a skillet over medium heat with the olive oil.

Chop the sweet potatoes and green pepper to about the size of the beans, so that everything is a uniform size. Add the sweet potatoes to the skillet and stir them around to let them get a bit of a crisp on the end. Add the green peppers and cook until the sweet potatoes are soft, about 10 minutes.

Add the beans, turmeric, and paprika. Stir to combine. Once the beans are warm enough to your liking, serve and eat. You can top with your favorite sauce - ketchup, sriracha, vegan ranch dressing - or avocado if you have some.

Enjoy!

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Sweet Potato and Black Bean Tacos

6/27/2015

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Get ready to see a lot of taco recipes! I've been eating them a lot recently. They're so versatile - almost a mix between a stir fry and a sandwich. You can cook up almost whatever combo you'd like - just throw together whatever you have in your fridge, stick it between some tortillas, and voila - you have dinner! Depending on how much chopping you have to do and what kind of vegetables you're cooking the whole thing takes 10-20 minutes!

Also, you can really play around and have fun with the flavors, combining different cuisines so that it doesn't feel like you're eating the same thing all the time. This recipe has pretty standard Mexican and South American flavors, but in later recipes I post you'll see that you can put pretty much anything in a taco. I like the combination of potatoes and beans for a couple reasons. They both substantial enough to give you something to bite into and leave you feeling full and satisfied. The sweet potato adds a lot of flavor on its own, so you really don't need to add many additional spices. And of course, they're both full of nutrition - protein, potassium, fiber, iron, vitamin A, vitamin C - they're a winning combo!

Ingredients:
1 Cup Chopped Sweet Potato (roughly the same size as the beans)
1/2 Cup Cooked Black Beans
3 Taco Shells
1/4 Cube of Tofu
1 Tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar (or Lemon Juice)
1 teaspoon Cumin
1 teaspoon Paprika
1/4 teaspoon Chili Powder (optional)
Salsa
Salad Greens

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Servings: 1

Instructions:
Add a small amount of water to a medium-sized skillet on medium heat, just enough to coat the bottom of the pan. Add the chopped sweet potatoes and stir them around a bit to make sure they don't stick to the pan. Cook the potatoes for about 5 minutes. You'll need to add more water, a little bit at a time, to make sure they don't stick. Only add enough to keep the potatoes off the bottom of the pan, you don't want the potatoes to be swimming in the water otherwise you'll be boiling them and they won't get any sort of a crisp to them. When the potatoes are almost to the desired amount of softness, add the beans, cumin, paprika, and chili powder. Continue to add water and stir until the potatoes reach your desired softness and the beans are warm.

If you feel like you can take your eyes of the potatoes (you should be able to), then you can make the sour cream while they're cooking. Or, you can turn the potato and bean mixture to low once they're done and make the sour cream then. Break up the tofu a bit and put it in a food processor. You don't need to break it up that much, it just helps mix together better to spread it around the food processor since you aren't adding that many ingredients. Add the apple cider vinegar or lemon juice and blend together. If you would like the sour cream to be more liquidy you can add more vinegar/juice or just water.

I keep my tortillas in the freezer. Right before I'm ready to eat my tacos I place the tortilla on a small pan on high heat - about a 7 or 8 out of 10 - for a couple seconds. Since they still have some moisture from being frozen they don't burn. Watch it until it starts to look dry on the bottom and then flip it over and quickly warm it on the other side. The whole process shouldn't take more than a few seconds.

Top your tacos with the potato and bean mixture, the sour cream, some salsa and greens and anything else you would like to add. Enjoy!

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Spicy Mexican Breakfast Sandwich

3/14/2015

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Another breakfast sandwich! This is a protein-packed breakfast sandwich with both beans and tofu, plus a ton of greens and whole wheat bread. Look at all those different colors too! If you're trying to add some variety into you diet this sandwich is for you - there's a wide variety of nutrients in this sandwich! In my typical fashion there's a ton of stuff loaded on this sandwich, which makes it a little messy to eat. The thinner you slice your potatoes the better they'll fit on the sandwich.

I was trying to find some oil alternatives to use when cooking my veggies, plus a seasoning for the tofu, so I went with the Alex's Ugly Sauce hot sauce I had in my fridge. It did a great job on both ends but unsurprisingly I ended up with a pretty spicy sandwich! I like combining spicy flavors with tofu because the tofu adds a cool and refreshing texture that helps to temper the spiciness. The Vegg powder adds complexity to the flavor of the tofu, helping to counter-balance the spice and add an egg-like feel.

Ingredients:
1/2 Block of Firm Tofu
1 Small Onion
1/2 Cup Cooked Black Beans
2 Slices of Bread
An inch of Sweet Potato
Handful of Salad Greens
1 teaspoon Tumeric
2 teaspoons Cumin (divided)
1 Tablespoon Vegg Vegan Egg Yolk
2 teaspoons Hot Sauce (divided)
Sriracha (optional)

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Servings: 1

Instructions:
Slice the tofu in half longways and press. Slice onion and sweet potato into thin slices. Heat onion and sweet potato on medium heat with a little bit of water, 1 teaspoon cumin, and 1 teaspoon of hot sauce for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, place the black beans on one of your slices of bread and mush/spread into the bread using a fork. It's best to add a little bit at a time so that you have room on the bread. Top with some sriracha if you would like (it's a pretty spicy sandwich).

Add the tofu to you pan with the onion and sweet potato. Add the second teaspoon of hot sauce and half of the tumeric, cumin, and Vegg powder. Once the tofu gets a nice crispiness on the bottom, flip the slices over. Sprinkle the second half of the cumin, tumeric, and Vegg powder. Let the other side get crispy and then flip once more.

This is where you have to use all of your coordination skills. Make some room on your pan to add your slice of bread with the black beans on it (make sure there's a little bit of liquid under the bread so it doesn't burn - you can add some cooking spray or a bit of oil if you would like. Add the salad greens. Add the two slices of tofu next to each other. Add the potato slices and onion. Try to spread the potato slices out to make them flat on the sandwich. Top with the other slice of bread.

Once the bottom slice is toasted flip the sandwich over. You may have to use two hands so be careful not to burn yourself.

Slice in half and enjoy!

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Spiral Veggie Tart with Sweet Potato Crust

1/4/2015

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I made this dish as a side for our feast on Christmas Eve. I combined two recipes that I found on Pinterest. I saw this vegetable tart on Pinterest and thought it was so cool (check out the video on how they made it). My mom thought the same and decided it would look great on a buffet line! That recipe used pie crust and creme fraiche, so I needed to make it gluten free and vegan so that my brother and I could eat it. I had pinned this quiche with sweet potato crust recipe to try the crust sometime and thought it would work great for this. I decided to replace the creme fraiche with a white bean mixture. I'd used white beans as a tart base years ago. Their neutral nature lends them perfectly to this. You can add in whatever seasonings you'd like so the dish doesn't taste like beans and their moisture keeps the dish from drying out and binds the vegetables to the crust.

Make sure your potato isn't sliced too thin and there's a lot of overlap in your crust. It will look like your crust is too think, but the potato slices will shrink during cooking.

My mom was right. This is a great dish to put on a buffet. It's very impressive and looks much more difficult to make than it actually is. I had to be the first one to cut into it because no one wanted to disrupt how great it looked. While it may not have been difficult, it definitely was time consuming, especially because my mom and I did not have the same expectation of how much we were making. I was already to go with two 9 inch pie sheets and she came in and switched them out for 2 13 inch quiche pans.

I made the recipe for one 9 inch pan, since that is a more typical serving size, and much more manageable. It's also helpful if you have someone slicing the vegetables while you arrange them in the pie pan. Thanks Mom!

Ingredients:

3 Medium Sweet Potatoes

3 Zuchinni
3 Squash
5 Large Carrots
1 Large-Medium Eggplant

1 15oz Can White Beans
2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice
2 Tablespoons Non-Dairy Milk (I used Almond)
2 Tablespoons Nutritional Yeast (optional)

2 Cloves Garlic
2 Tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 55 minutes

Servings: 6 as a side

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Slice sweet potatoes and arrange in a crust-like fashion in a 9 inch pie pan. You don't want your slices to be paper thin and a make sure that there is significant overlap among the slices. It will look like the crust is too thick, but the potatoes will cook down significantly. Spray the potatoes with cooking spray and put in the oven for 15 minutes.

If you end up with gaps in your crust you can cook some more potatoes on a cookie sheet and add them in. They will not need to cook for the full 15 minutes.

While your crust is cooking, prepare the base of the filling. Drain and rinse the white beans. Place them in a bowl and mash them with a fork. Add the lemon juice, milk, and nutritional yeast and mix until well combined.

Slice your vegetables using either a vegetable peeler or a mandolin. You can use a knife you you want, but that would take some great skills. You want the vegetable slices to be paper thin so that you roll them up. If you have some slices that are thicker you can use them on the outer edges that don't need to bend as much. Make sure that you get the skin on at least one edge of the slice.

Once the crust has cooled to the touch, fill in any cracks as necessary. Spread the white bean mixture over the crust. It will be thick, so place dollops of it throughout the crust and spread lightly with a fork. You may need to hold down some of the potato slices so they don't move.

Take a vegetable slice and roll it up in a spiral. Place it in the middle of your pie pan. Continue to wrap vegetable slices around the center in an alternating fashion until you finish the pan. You'll have to do a couple rows of the same thing in order to build up the color. Alternate the dark zucchini and eggplant with the lighter carrot and squash. Try to end with something other than the carrot so that there is separation from the orange crust.

Mince the garlic and sprinkle it over the top of the pan. Lightly pour the balsamic vinegar over the top.

Lower the oven temperature to 375 and put the tart in for 40 minutes. The tart is down when the skins of the vegetable slices have soften enough that you can cut through them.

Serve and Enjoy!

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Cashew Chik'n and Vegetable Stir Fry

12/14/2014

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Jay had been saying how he wanted something with peanut sauce after I made the spaghetti squash with peanut sauce the other day. I thought that I would mix it up a bit and use tahini to make a sesame sauce. I wanted a recipe that would use my winter vegetables and all the cooking greens that I had and I thought a stir fry would be great.

I used bean starch noodles, also referred to as cellophane or glass noodles. There are other varieties made with potatoes or starches. You can find them in the Asian food aisle at the grocery store. They are normally packaged in three bundles of dried noodles. I normally use one bundle at a time. The package says it has three servings, but once you add in vegetables that one serving goes a long way. Jay has always been creeped out by them and this time was no different. If you don't like glass noodles you can use any other type of Asian noodle.

I used the rest of the seitan from the stew I made last week, about a half a cup. Jay thought it did a good job of filling in for chicken and was pleasantly surprised by the texture.

Ingredients:
1 bundle bean starch (or other Asian) noodles
1 carrot
1 medium sweet potato
4 oz mushrooms
1 small onion
1 clove garlic
1 apple

1 bunch cooking greens (kale, chard, mustard greens, collards, etc.)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

Sauce:
2 tablespoons tahini
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon lime juice
2 teaspoons ginger
1/2 teaspoon sambaal oleek or sriracha or red pepper flakes (optional)

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Servings: 4

Instructions:

Cook the noodles to package directions.

While the noodles are cooking, chop up all your vegetables in the order you'll cook them - garlic, onion, carrot, sweet potato, apple, mushrooms, greens. I like to start cooking the heavier vegetables while I chop the rest. Heat the garlic and onion over medium heat until the onions begin to turn translucent. Add the carrots and sweet potato and cook for about 5 minutes, then add the apples, mushrooms, and seitan. Finally, add the greens and let them wilt.

To make the sauce combine all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk them together. This makes enough sauce for a light coating, so if you want more you can increase the portion size of each ingredient. Pour the sauce over the vegetables and stir to evenly coat the dish.

I generally find that cellophane noodles tend to be very long, so after I drain them I like to put the whole pile on my cutting board and slice them once or twice. Combine the vegetables with the noddles. Serve and top with cashews. Enjoy!

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Veggie Burger over Sweet Potato

12/11/2014

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I needed something quick to eat for dinner the other night so I threw this together. I used a veggie burger that I had in my freezer. This isn't one I made myself, although I've tried man times I have yet to perfect the art of the homemade veggie burger, they're always too mushy and fall apart. I used the best grocery-store bought veggies burgers I've ever had - Blue Mango Burgers. They're hand made in Maine with only 7 ingredients. For the longest time I could only find them at my local New England Whole Foods', but now they're sold by Something GUD so I can add them to my weekly vegetable orders whenever I need to, which is great because Jay loves them also so I like to always have some on hand.

I didn't have any bread on hand and have amassed quite a lot of root vegetables so I thought I would saute up sweet potatoes and use that as a setting for the burger. I figured this was a good time to use some more of my purple carrots and not have to worry about them turning everything purple! I still had some of the great baba ganoush that I had gotten with my previous Something GUD delivery.

Ingredients:
1 Veggie Burger
Sweet Potato
A Hand full of Salad Greens
1 Slice of Vegan Cheese (optional)
Half of a Carrot (shredded)
Dollop of Baba Ganoush

Prep Time: 2 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Servings: 1

Instructions:
Slice the potato so that there is enough for the veggie burger to sit on. I had a rather wide sweet potato so I went with 4 large slices, but it depends on the width of your potatoes.

Heat the potato slices and veggie burger on the stove over medium heat, using either oil or water to keep it from sticking. About 5 minutes on each side should be good. If you have vegan cheese you can put that on about a minute before your burger is ready.

Plate the sweet potatoes and lay the veggie burger on it. Top with buba ganoush, some salad greens and shredded carrot. Enjoy!

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Purple Carrot Stew

12/3/2014

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Purple carrots? yep! Purple is actually carrots original color - orange didn't become the standard color until the late 1600s when the Dutch bred them to be orange in honor of William of Orange. While there are slight difference in flavor based on the color of a carrot, they all generally taste like carrots, so don't be cautious about trying different colors - it'll just add more nutrient variety into your diet, which is something we should all strive for. Since I was using sweet potatoes I thought I would use purple carrots instead of the typical orange to balance out the color in the dish - instead I just turned the whole thing purple.

So you can thank purple carrots for the lovely color of this stew, which turned my sweet potato stew into purple carrot stew. There is something about purple vegetables (I'm looking at you beets) that dyes everything they come in contact with more so than the pigment in any other vegetable. Next time I prepare purple carrots I'll have to cook them on their own, like grilling or roasting.

I added seitan into this dish as a protein source. If you don't have any, fear not, you can easily use beans, tempeh, tofu, or a grain instead - I actually got them all out and deliberated over which I wanted to use. For those who haven't had it before, seitan is an ancient Chinese protein source made with wheat gluten, water, and spices, in it's most basic sense.

Ingredients:
1/2 Onion
1 Cup Almond Milk (or other non-dairy milk)
1 1/2 Cup Water
2 Large Carrots, chopped
2 Medium Sweet Potatoes, chopped
1 Sprig of fresh Thyme
1 Cup Seitan (sub beans, tempeh, or tofu to make it gluten free), chopped to the same size as the carrots and potatoes
1/2 Cup Lentils
2 Cups Kale, chopped
2 teaspoons Ginger
1 teaspoon Garlic

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 2 hours

Servings: 4

Instructions:

Dice the onion and heat it in a large sauce pan on medium heat with a little bit of water or oil until it becomes translucent. Add the milk, water, carrots, potatoes, and thyme. Cover and cook on low heat for about an hour.

Add the seitan and lentils and cook for another 45 or until the lentils have absorbed enough water to your desired consistency. I prefer stews over soups, which is why I added in the lentils (to absorb the water), so you can add more water or cook for less time if you water it to be soupier.

Add the kale, garlic, and ginger and stir until the kale is wilted. Serve and enjoy! Store any leftovers for lunch!

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Sweet Potato and Bean Hash

Sweet Potato and Black Bean Tacos

Spicy Mexican Breakfast Sandwich

Spiral Veggie Tart with Sweet Potato Crust

Cashew Chik'n and Vegetable Stir Fry

Veggie Burger over Sweet Potato

Purple Carrot Stew

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