Caramelized Sweet Potato in Tomato, Lemon & Cardamom Sauce

Course: Recipes, MainDifficulty: Easy

Servingsservings

Total time

hour

minutes

This was a recipe I was a little reluctant to try. Sweet potatoes, for some reason, have never been a favourite in this house – even when the now-children were little babies. My aunt always said ‘well if it’s something you don’t like or know, why on earth do you think your babies would like it?’. Fair point. But curiosity got the better of me with this recipe by Ottolenghi, in his book Flavour – although I did reach for a few things to change the recipe up depending on what I had to hand in my fridge.

The result was splendid. And I can say that hand on heart because my husband, who is prone to believing that unless there is meat in a meal, it was simply an aberration from the kitchen that should be fixed for next time, thought this was delicious and had seconds… followed by thirds! Greedy piglet. As with a lot of our lunches, we had our one year old next to us and she does not react well to being left out. So spoonful after spoonful of the tomato sauce was swallowed; the little people’s stamp of approval!

If you don’t have the soy sauce and miso, you can always just add in another tblsp of maple syrup as Ottolenghi does.

INGREDIENTS

2 medium sweet potatoes – skin left on, cut widthways into 2cm rounds
2 tbsp olive oil
½ tsp soy sauce
½ tsp maple syrup
½ tsp miso
½ tsp ground cardamom
½ tsp ground cumin
Sauce
73 ml olive oil
6 garlic cloves – finely cut, not crushed
½ white onion, finely chopped
1 400g crushed plum tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp sugar
1 ½ tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp ground cumin
2 lemons – grate the zest of one, get 1 tbsp of juice, and then serve the rest in wedges alongside the dish
1 tsp coriander, chopped
1 tsp chives, chopped

Directions

Preheat the oven to 240C on fan.
In a bowl, mix together the sweet potato with the olive oil, soy sauce, maple syrup, miso, and spices. Lay out in a single layer on a lined baking sheet, and then cover tightly with foil. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes, then remove the foil and put back in for another 10 minutes to get nice and gnarly.
Whilst this is going on, make the sauce. Pour the olive oil into a nice big saucepan for which you have a good fitting lid. Add the garlic, and cook very gently until it is translucent and smells delicious. Don’t brown it! This should take about 10 minutes. Then remove half the garlic and oil, and put aside. Put the rest back on the heat and add in the onion. Again, cook slowly without burning, stirring often. Then add in the tin of tomatoes, tomato paste, sugar, spices, lemon zest and 250ml water. Bring to a simmer and allow to gently simmer for 10 minutes to reduce.
At this point, you can also make the garnish. Take the herbs and mix with the garlicky oil that you set aside earlier, the lemon juice and a grind of salt and pepper.
Meanwhile, the sweet potatoes should now be ready! Remove from the oven, and place the rounds into the tomato sauce gently with the gnarly browned sides facing up. Allow to simmer for another ten minutes and then dot the herby sauce over the potatoes, and serve from the pan with some hunks of bread to soak up the delicious tomato sauce.

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