Recipe of the Week: Oven Baked Spiced Sweet Potatoes with Creamy Cheese

What can I say: I love sweet potatoes (and they are so much healthier than the regular ones), I am a sucker for flavours, regardless if from spice or herbs (and here both of them have their place) and cheese....well, I live in Switzerland :-).

Super quick - and while it's cooking all nicely in the oven you can treat yourself to a glass of wine and prep the salad that goes with it.

Definitely one of my favourites on the vegetarian side.

What you need:

•  600 g sweet potatoes
• 1 tea spoon of ground coriander
• ½ tea spoon of chili flakes
• ½ tea spoon of coarse sea salt
• ½ tea spoon freshly ground pepper
• 3 table spoons of olive oil
• 100 g of gorgonzola cheese
• Some basil leaves

Salad

• 1 iceberg salad
• Dressing: 2 spoons of light vinegar, salt pepper, a dash of maple syrup, 5 spoons of olive oil, ½ bunch of chive

How it’s being prepared

1.      Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius (180 if you use an oven with fan)

2.      Peel the sweet potatoes and dice them (roughly  3 cm )

3.      Mix the salt, coriander, pepper, chilli and sea salt with 3 spoons of oil and mix with the   potato cubes

4.      Put a sheet of baking paper on an oven shelf, put the potatoes on top and spread them out

5.      Cook them for approximately 20 (max  25 minutes), check after 20 minutes to see if they are done (soft inside, best case crispy outside) :-)

6.      Now it’s time to prepare the salad (and for your glass of wine): Pick the leaves apart or simply cut the salad into rough stripes (half it and then cut it)

7.      Mix the ingredients for the dressing and put it aside

8.      Pick the basil leaves of the stems

9.      Spoon the cheese over the potatoes shortly before they are done – 3-5 minutes are plenty for the cheese to melt.  Gorgonzola is rather soft, hence a spoon is the best tool here

10.   When the cheese has molten take the shelf out, wait a minute or two while you mix the salad and then put the basil leaves on top (they might turn dark/black through the heat of the potatoes….hence wait a bit…does not really harm their taste…if you take a close look at the pic you can see the effect on some of the leaves - hey, here's your proof that this is REAL food :-)

11.   Serve together!

 Scrumptious!

Extra-Tip: Add some more cheese if you love Gorgonzola – I held back a bit here as the flavour is rather strong