Roasted Sweet Potatoes & Spiced Vegan Medley

In my household we do a lot of cooking. A lot. Most days one of us gets in the kitchen to prepare dinner from scratch and since we made the move to Romania, that pretty much happens seven days a week thanks to the distinct lack of vegan offerings beyond side dishes at most restaurants. That’s a lot of cooking for any household but doubly so when we both have small businesses to maintain so some days we try to keep it simple.

Ish.

It’s not always easy to eat fresh and healthy when you’re not in the mood to spend time in the kitchen, but if it’s important you find ways to do it. Right?

My go to is potatoes. On this night, it was sweet potatoes. Specifically, roasted sweet potatoes.

I saw a recipe online for this really amazing Moroccan spiced dish but I couldn’t find some of the ingredients so I improvised.

This recipe was time consuming but the oven did most of the work, baking the sweet potatoes until they were fork tender. It took about an hour because I found some giant potatoes that I failed to boil or pan roast before popping in the oven, but otherwise it was pretty easy going despite all the ingredients.

Speaking of ingredients, all you need is: sweet potatoes, onion, cannellini beans, smoked tofu, red bell pepper, garlic, vegan yogurt, dill, lemon, parsley, turnip with the greens.

I did another oil-free experiment with the remaining ingredients, adding the onion, turnip and peppers to the pot with just a tablespoon of water. It worked well but keep in mind that if you want to reduce the amount of oil/fat in your diet then you’ll have to keep an eye on the pan because you’ll have to add more to avoid burning and starting over. I added the smoked tofu next because when you let it get crispy on the edges it has an amazing smoky, salty flavor that means you won’t have to add more salt to the dish.

Another win-win!

Add the beans and let this cook until you get the results you want, about 5 minutes. This is where I added cumin, paprika and 1/2 diced jalapeno but feel free to add whatever favors you want. Finally, the turnip greens went in last because they don’t take much time to cook.

But a tip I found out while researching this recipe is this: bitter greens have a way of neutralizing spice in any dish so if you want it spicy, add more after the greens have started to wilt. Just drape this mixture over the cooked sweet potatoes and you’ve got a delicious, healthy and totally satisfying meal in about an hour.

If you decide to make it extra spicy like I did, you might want to make a yogurt sauce if you have dinner companions who can’t handle the heat. It was a simple mix of vegan yogurt, fresh dill & parsley, cumin, lemon juice and a pinch of Sriracha.