Thursday 23 January 2014

Experiments with Sweet Potatoes

I’ve never been a big fan of vegetables. Some have always disagreed with me (cauliflower is devil spawn!), others I just don’t like (peas are disgusting, green wiggly things!). But I know that veg is good for me, so I force myself to eat them.

I had a limited, but varied enough repertoire of veg that I would eat before this whole Crohn’s thing. The problem is, I prefer veg raw and half the veg that would be my fall backs (mushrooms and peppers, for example) are on the “no go” list for a low-residue, low-fibre diet. So, I’m trying to see this as an opportunity to make myself learn to like veg that I don’t normally eat. As sweet potatoes are on the “go” list, I thought I would give them a go.

Continuing with my experiments with turkey mince, I adapted this recipe http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/turkeyballswithtomat_80567

This is what I did

For the meatballs -
½ lb of turkey breast mince
100 g of breadcrumbs
1 tsp of dried thyme
1 egg, beaten
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

I combined everything in a bowl and rolled the turkey into balls, then popped them in the fridge while I made the sauce.

For the sauce,
300ml of tomato passata
1 tsp of thyme
1 tbsp of tomato puree
1 tbsp of onion granules
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

I put everything in a big pot and heated it to the boiling point, then I covered it and simmered for 5 minutes. I then added the meatballs, covered it, and let it simmer for 15 minutes, giving it a stir every few minutes.

For the sweet potatoes,
1 tsp of dried thyme
1 tbsp of olive oil
1 tsp of garlic infused olive oil
100 ml chicken stock
1 sweet potato, cut into rounds

I put all of the ingredients into a frying pan over medium heat and left it to cook, stirring and turning the sweet potatoes occasionally.




I served it up with a big serving of rice. Overall, it turned out pretty well, and was a nice change from bolognese sauce. I think there are a few things I would do differently next time though.

As turkey breast mince is so very lean, the meatballs didn’t have much flavour to them, and needed a huge amount of breadcrumbs to stick together. Thigh mince really does make better meatballs. The passata cooked down pretty quickly, and I really could have done with using more or adding water to the pot, as the resulting sauce was a bit too thick.

The sweet potatoes turned out surprisingly well. However, having never made potato “fondant”, I didn’t realise that the direction that said “sliced into thin rounds” was actually meant to look like this, rather than what I did.
 

Oh well. I thought it turned out pretty good anyway. The chicken stock gave it a good flavour and kept them quite moist.

The recipe says that this serves one. It made 15 meatballs! Okay, I know I’m not a big eater, but really? It served both me and my boyfriend, I had leftovers for lunch (we ate all the rice, so I did a jacket potato in the microwave to go with it), and I put another meal's worth of meatballs in the freezer. I think it serves more than one!

After having the leftovers for lunch today, I didn’t really fancy a big supper, so I made soup.

I adapted this recipe http://talesofakitchen.com/soups/carrot-and-sweet-potato-soup-with-ginger-and-coriander/

Here’s how I did it -

1 tbsp of olive oilhttps://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2897700776388279193#editor/target=post;postID=4304336999748978823
2 tsp of garlic powder
1 tbsp of onion granules
1 tsp of ground ginger
2 big carrots, peeled and chopped
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and chopped
3 cups of homemade chicken stock, plus a bit more water if needed
1 ½ tsp of ground coriander (I’m not a big fan of coriander, so I reduced the amount)
Salt and pepper to taste
Dash of chili powder

Using a big pot, I heated the olive oil, then added onion granules, garlic powder, ginger, carrots and sweet potatoes, and let them soften for 5 minutes.

Then I added the chicken stock and the coriander, salt, pepper and chili powder and brought it to the boil, then turned the heat down and simmered, covered, for 20 minutes.

Then I blended it with the hand blender.

As it was quite thick, I added a bit more water, and it came out with a really nice consistency. I served it up with some big slices of homemade bread (the bread machine has re-emerged from the cupboard recently). It made a rather lovely supper.


Maybe I do like sweet potatoes after all!

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