Day 11 - Sweet Potato Black Bean Chili

Pinterest Day 11

The Pinterest recipe I looked at today was Sweet Potato Black Bean Chili at Alida's Kitchen. 

Citrus Mashed Sweet Potato

I do not like sweet potato.

There, I said it. I don't like the earthier taste, and the sweetness of it is always a little off, to me. So you can guess how excited I was to come up with a way to make it palatable. And it's super, super easy, and not too expensive, either.

Citrus Mashed Sweet Potato

Mashed sweet potato used in a Shepherd's pie 

Sweet potato chip nachos

I came across this recipe on pinterest, for 'Loaded sweet potato nachos.' I had never thought of nachos using sweet potato chips before, so I figured I'd give it a try!

Sweet Potato Nachos.

There's those tiny chips, waaaay underneath the toppings

Sweet Potato Cakes

I finally got these suckers to work!  I saw that the gluten free girl used yogurt to make an egg-free sweet potato latke, and that finally pinged a connection with the cashew cream I've been using, and this is the result. Inspired by her recipe.

Yummy!

Homemade, grain-free starches and flours

In the last few years, I've reacted to all processed starch that I've purchased. I know of other sulfite-sensitive folks who have said the same, as well as some super-sensitive celiacs, and some folks who have to be corn or grain free.

If you need a starch, however, and you can have either sweet potato or potato, there's a really easy way to make your own sweet potato or potato starch. This method leaves you with remainders from the process that you can turn into sweet potato flour or potato flour, too!

Green Chile Sweet Potatoes

There are some new sweet potatoes at the Whole Foods this last week. I'm really not sure what they are, as the store just called them 'japanese sweet potato.' However, they have dark pink skins and white insides, which is unlike any japanese sweet potato I've seen - I usually see ones listed that way with red insides. I did a bit of digging (okay, I went to this one site) and it turns out these were Murasaki sweet potatoes.

These are awesome. Mild sweetness, lacks some of that dark, earthy kind of sweet flavor that you find in redder sweet potatoes, and which I rather dislike. So these were good.

But the kids hate 'em. So I started looking around my fridge and thought: I've got green chile and sweet potato - would that go together, maybe?

Faux Mexican Baked Beans

Time: 1-2 hours (plus overnight soaking time)
(5 min prep/1-2 hours hands-free cooking) (Add 8 hours for soaking, if needed)

Ingredients
1/2-1 pound dried beans - I tried Sangre de Toro beans (yeah, woo hoo, pretentious me), but black beans, kidney beans, or pinto beans would probably do great, too.
1-3 sweet potato
a fat of some kind - lard, oil, whatever you got. Optional, if you really can't have any.
sea salt to taste
seasonings to taste (I used crushed chile peppers, just a bit)

Learning about my food: Sweet Potatoes

Today, Sweet Potatoes.
First, let's take care of all that naming mix-up.
The Yam vs. the Sweet Potato.

In most of the world outside the USA, 'yam' and 'sweet potato' are used in reference to two completely different plants. The yam, or 'true yam,' is an African/Asian native from the monocot family Dioscoreaceae. The sweet potato is a dicotyledon from the family Convolvulaceae. Both are root veggies, though. Both are edible. The true yam is typically bigger and sweeter, and may be found in African specialty grocery stores, sometimes, in the USA.

Attempted Sweet Potater Tots - FAIL

My attempt to make sweet potater tots based on the potater tot recipe. Uh, yeah, that didn't do so great.

So let's review the failure, shall I?

For ingredients, I used a japanese sweet potato (I like these better for frying than regular garnet jewell yams or pink sweet potatoes.). Then I grated about a 1 inch peeled piece of fresh ginger and added that, along with a teeny bit of salt. The flavor of this was FREAKING AWESOME. Very sweet with a little flowery smell to it from the ginger. No real heat added. I loved it...in the small pieces that weren't burnt beyond recognition.

To make it, I grated the sweet potato, squeezed out the water, mixed it with the other ingredients and then cooked it at the same temp and for the same times as the Potater Tots recipe.


And here's how that FAILED.
1. Squeezing the water out - Without the extra moisture and no added starch or binders, these did not in any way stay together like the potatoes. With the potatoes, once a tot has been cooked on one side, they stay together. Sweet potato shreds stayed in shreds completely separated so that turning them over was like flipping hashbrowns. On a second attempt, I didn't squeeze the water out, and that worked better.


2. The temperature -  Hooo baby, not a good idea. Pan on high? Burned the sweet potatoes. Oven at 425F for 8-10 minutes? Holy crud did that burn the sweet potatoes. I had little blacked pucks with a little sweet potato in the middle. Ouch. One thing that helped - turned stove down a little and put the tots on with a lid for 1 minute, to help steam the middle a little. That did have them cooked by the end. Turned down the oven heat to 400 for the second batch, and that worked better, but still burned. We'll have to see the next time I get these. Or I'll try it with regular sweet potatoes and see if it's different.



My Conclusion:
I think this recipe could become something really tasty and great, but it still needs some playing with (or rather, I need to learn how to treat the ingredients so I don't destroy them like Godzilla stomping on a Sweet Potato city). I think I'll have to research how to fry sweet potatoes and see if there are any suggestions from other cooks for temperatures and types of cooking that work best with these root veggies.