Looking for a quick, delicious and healthy side dish? Grab some sweet potatoes.
There’s lots of cooking going on at this time of year. Passover, Easter, vacation time – guests coming over, family at home, and festive meals to prepare. A busy cook needs easy, reliable recipes to fill out her or his menus. Sweet potatoes fill the description, and luckily they’re still in season. If date honey (a familiar ingredient in the Middle East) isn’t available where you live, replace it with maple syrup or plain honey thinned with a little water and blended with a very little lemon juice.
This recipe is popular with everyone, especially kids. The sweet potatoes and date honey combine to make a lightly sweet side dish that has no artificial flavors, coloring, or white sugar.
Sweet Potatoes Roasted in Date Honey Recipe
serves 4
Ingredients:
2 medium sweet potatoes, scrubbed but not peeled
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon powdered cumin
1/2 teaspoon paprika
4 tablespoons date honey, maple syrup or diluted honey
Method for baking sweet potatoes:
1. Slice the sweet potatoes thickly and place the slices in a large bowl.
2. Drizzle the olive oil over the slices and roll them around in it.
3. Add the dry spices and roll the slices around again, making sure all surfaces are seasoned.
4. Let the sweet potatoes sit in the seasonings for 15 minutes.
Meantime, preheat the oven to 350° F – 180° C.
5. Place the sweet potatoes on a baking tray. Drizzle date honey over them.
6. Bake for 30 minutes or till tender.
There will be a small amount of cooking juices. Spoon them over the sweet potatoes and serve.
Enjoy!
More Green Prophet posts about spring holidays:
Author: Miriam Kresh
Miriam Kresh is an American ex-pat living in Israel. Her love of Middle Eastern food evolved from close friendships with enthusiastic Moroccan, Tunisian and Turkish home cooks. She owns too many cookbooks and is always planning the next meal. Miriam can be reached at miriam (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
I cook potatoes at a much higher temp –– at about 270 C. They cook faster and turn out crispy on the edges. Lots of olive oil helps the cooking process.
Tried this recipe – delish! But needs some serious adjusting… I used 4 large sweet potatoes and cooked them for an hour (some of the larger pieces still came out crunchy), but left the amount of dry spices the same. It's still spicy and sweet…yum…
Sweet potatoes were 10-12 shekel/kilogram in the shuk last week, as opposed to 3-4 a month or so earlier. Part of it is price-gouging but I have to disagree, the season is over.