Sweet potatoes

I am a huge fan of potatoes but have never much liked sweet potatoes, especially in a curry form. The only way I have enjoyed them until recently is as chaat, served up with spicy chaat masala and nimbu and cut-up pieces of tart starfruit. However, in my quest to broaden my food horizons, I began experimenting with different was to cook this vegetable. It all started with baking the sweet potatoes wrapped in foil and then taking the foil off partway through the process to allow the natural sugars to ooze out and form a crisp, shiny, sweet crust. Then I started serving up baked sweet potatoes topped with a dip – either hummus, or Greek Tzatziki…

However, over the weekend, when I was left with a glut of baked potatoes and sweet potatoes, I decided to re-roast them in wedge form. I drizzled rosemary-flavoured olive oil onto a pan of wedge-cut sweet and plain potatoes and filled up the spaces in between with fat pieces of garlic, with the skin on. I sprinkled some salt and freshly ground black pepper on top and popped them into the oven at 100 degrees C for about 20 minutes – until they looked crisp and reddish.

What was amazing to me was that the sweet potatoes tasted better than the plain ones, what with the skin having turned crisply sweet yet juicy. We didn’t need any other accompaniments to this, and even the kids gobbled it up sans demands for ketchup. Definitely a do-it-again dish.