Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Sweet Potato Salad


Roasted, in my mind, is the way that sweet potatoes should be eaten. Roasting just so transforms them; the outside caramelizes and crisps them and really brings out a sweet, complex flavor. The idea for the dressing for this salad came from a cauliflower salad they have at Lacroix that's dressed with a sage mayo.

The key to this salad is roasting the sweet potatoes long enough so that they are slightly crispy on the outside but they give way easily when pierced. They shouldn't be mushy, but there should be very little resistence when pricked. Otherwise, this salad is pretty easy to do right.

I don't really give exact measure of ingredients, because I really just eyeballed everything. Cook to your taste.

Three large sweet potatoes (cleaned)
Handful of golden raisins
Parmesan cheese
Handful of pine nuts
Sliced chive/Brunoise shallot (optional)
Salt
Pepper
Roasting oil

For Roasted Garlic-rosemary aioli
1 head of garlic (top cut off then roasted at 350 for 40 minutes)
2 sprigs of rosemary
2 tsp lemon juice
1 egg yolk
1 pinch salt
1 cup evoo

Preheat oven to 450
Cut sweet potatoes in 4ths lengthwise, then slice horizontally into bite size pieces.
Toss the sweet potatoes with oil and salt and pepper, then roast on a baking sheet for about 30 minutes.

As they roast, make the dressing.
Squeeze out the garlic cloves from the head and place them in the blender with the lemon juice, rosemary, egg yolk, and salt.
Blend until thoroughly combined.
Slowly, with the blender running, drizzle in a few drops of oil.
Then drizzle in a few more, making sure that the liquid is emulsifying.
Drizzle in the rest in a thin stream.

Back to the potatoes
When the potatoes come out of the oven and are still hot, toss with grated parmesan cheese.
Let them cool for 10 minutes, then mix them in a bowl with the raisins, pine nuts, and cut some slivers of parmesan cheese to mix in too (if you're using chives and shallots you can toss them in now too).
Add a few healthy spoonfuls of dressing then mix around and taste for seasoning.

And you're done. ENJOY BEFORE SWEET POTATOES GO OUT OF SEASON!

4 comments:

Greg Lawrence said...

Thanks for listening to your fans! Gonna try it this weekend. And, btw, the blog is just fine as you've been doing so far. Always interesting and from an informed and intelligent viewpoint.

todd said...

I agree w/ Greg. I'm sure this isn't real fun to write, but I look forward to fixing this up this weekend, so it's a better read for me than just "ain't this cool".

Bu if you didn't make any changes at all I'd still be reading...

James said...

Cheesy chips!

Anonymous said...

The photo looks like an Impressionist painting. The recipe made the sweet potatoes sound tasty, something that hasn't been done in my presence before. I am always served the mini marshmallow garnished mush. Thanks, Nick!