Awesome Recipe for Sweet Potatos, Greens, and Chickpeas in Anchovy Sauce

It seems only fair that I provide a more substantial recipe for the evening, to make up for the nothingness of tonight’s dinner. It’s related though, as it’s the first dish I ever made trying to be creative with sweet potatoes, and was the loose inspiration for tonight’s meal, in it's combination with anchovies. It’s much more exciting, and was a hit with my diners:

Roast Sweet Potatoes with Sauteed Broccoli Greens and Chickpeas in Anchovy Sauce, on Whole Wheat Pasta (serves 3-4, I think).

Part 1: Roasting the Sweet Potatoes in garlicky olive oil
2 medium sweet potatoes, washed and peeled and chopped into 1/2 inch dice
3-4 cloves of garlic, with peels left on
a couple of glugs of e.v. olive oil
several shakes or grinds of salt and pepper--it should be well-seasoned as these will bring a lot of flavor to the dish.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees while you prep the sweet potatoes, and then toss with the oil, garlic cloves, salt and pepper, so they are well coated. Roast them in the oil with the garlic cloves for 20-30 minutes in a good roasting pan or tin (or follow your own method for roast potatoes, to make them crispier).

Part 2: Start a big pot of water to boil, while you prepare the greens and chickpeas. Put a lid partially on, so water doesn't evaporate too much, but turn heat down if water starts to boil over sides of pot.

Part 3:
Big bunch broccoli greens, well-rinsed and coarsely chopped (any greens will do, experiment with different kinds of chard, kale, rapini/broccoli raab, wild spinach etc. the tougher greens will take longer to cook and become tender)
12 oz canned (or dried and pre-soaked and cooked, but cans are easier) chickpeas, though one of those big 14 inch cans couldn't hurt either, if you want plenty of leftovers
1-3 cloves garlic, crushed and finely minced (i.e. chopped tiny), quantity depends on taste
1 medium shallot or small onion, finely minced
Tin of whole anchovies in oil
a couple of shakes of chili flakes to taste
a couple of shakes of dried Italian herb mix (includes sage, rosemary, basil, oregano etc) to taste (the sage in this mix is what really works so well with the roasted sweet potatoes)
a couple of shakes and grinds of salt and pepper to taste
1/3 to 1/2 of a box of Whole wheat (or regular) pasta (Barilla makes pretty decent whole wheat pasta, as well as high protein Barilla Plus made from legumes), otherwise, use regular de Cecco pasta, in whatever shape you like... stubby pasta shapes like rotini, penne, or farfalle would work equally well.
1 oz Parmigiano or Pecorino cheese (optional), grated straight on the pasta after dishing up

To rinse your greens, submerge thoroughly in a bowl of water, once or twice, to get thoroughly clean, then let drain in a colander. Chop greens roughly: the smaller you chop the greens, the more evenly they will cook and distribute throughout the pasta, but perfection does not really matter here.

(Check on the sweet potatoes and garlic every 10 minutes or so, to make sure nothing is burning...if it is going too fast before the rest of the dinner is done, turn the heat down to 325 degrees, or even lower).

While greens drain in colander, mince shallot/onion very finely, followed by garlic, finely minced. Put a large skillet/frying pan on medium heat, with a couple of generous glugs of olive oil. Let oil warm up 2 minutes-ish, then put the shallot and garlic in the oil (adjust heat if the garlic is cooking too quickly, you don't want it to brown). Add the chili flakes, italian herb mix, salt and pepper, and give a good stir with a wooden spoon or spatula. Let the shallot and garlic soften for several minutes, while you open and roughly chop up the anchovies from the tin (I use the whole tin, which says is 5 servings worth, but I like the flavor). Don't worry about getting the anchovy oil in the mix...tastes good! Add the chopped anchovies to the onion/garlic mixture, and stir it up for about 2 minutes-ish. (Times don't need to be very precise). The anchovies will gradually dissolve into the hot oil and make a yummy "sauce"-- basically a bagna cauda like they make in the Piedmont in Italy).(Keep checking on the temperature/cooking rate of the sweet potatoes in the oven!)

Add the chopped greens to the pan. You may need to do this in stages if the amount is too much to fit. Put in some, let wilt, and add more as it shrinks. If there doesn't seem to be enough moisture in the pan to wilt the greens, add a splash or two of water, white wine, or chicken or vegetable stock--you can always boil it down if you get too much liquid in there.

As the greens are cooking in the pan, open the can of chickpeas and rinse with running water in a colander. Add the chickpeas to the pot.

Let the greens and chickpeas cook together, partially covered but stirring frequently, for about 10-15 minutes. Keep an eye on the potatoes, and test for doneness. When they are really soft and cooked through, you can pull the pan out of the oven and just let it sit till the other stuff is ready. As the greens and chickpeas cook together, make sure the heat is high enough again to get the pasta water to a roiling boil. Once its ready, add a shake of salt to the water, then put in 1/3 to a 1/2 box of whole wheat (or regular) pasta, and follow the cooking time instructions on the box, but taste the pasta a minute before the official cooking time is up, to check for your own standard of al dente. Have a colander ready in the sink to drain immediately when the pasta is ready.

Have bowls and silverware ready to dish up into as soon as the pasta is done!

Once the pasta is done cooking, turn off the heat on EVERYTHING (pot, pan, oven, if you haven't already) and drain the pasta in the colander, and mix with the chickpea and greens mixture, in whatever bowl or pan is big enough to hold it all. Toss thoroughly to evenly distribute greens through the pasta. Scoop the roasted sweet potatoes onto the pasta and mix through as desired. Serve!

If desired, grate a bit of Parmigiano Reggiano or Pecorino Romano onto individual servings, along with some extra ground pepper.

Drink with a crisp, assertive Italian style white (like Pinot Grigio or a Soave Classico), or a mellow, soft or medium bodied red....

The more you repeat the recipe, the more you will work out the timing of all the different elements...good luck!

What To Do When Tired, Mopey, and Out of Supplies: Bake a Sweet Potato!

Boy did I ever want to go get Thai food tonight. Sean’s away on a business trip, and my Wednesdays are pretty long and tiring, and I have been nursing a hankering for red curry for several days now. But I’m in money-saving mode, so I did my damnedest to resist. I felt a bit mopey on the long ride home from Santa Cruz, through thinking how bare my fridge is, and how much work I need to get done tonight, and how all signs were pointing to a lackluster dinner. When I got home, I rallied with some apples and peanut butter, and forced myself to work out, knowing my mood and energy levels are always better afterwards.

About ten minutes into my workout I had a sudden brain-wave, and remembered there was still a sweet potato down at the bottom of my vegetable drawer. The day immediately brightened! I paused the dvd and quickly preheated the oven to 375, while I cut the sweet potato into quarters, for quicker cooking. I’m not very experienced with sweet potatoes, having only recently gotten into them on the advice of Dr. Mao, slick L.A. acupuncturist to the stars (he has slightly cheesy but oh so procrastination-friendly video blogs on all the foods that are good for you according to Traditional Chinese Medicine). Sweet potatoes were never our thing growing up, and we never had them at Thanksgiving, so thankfully I didn’t develop an aversion to them, as many people seem to have. Sweet potatoes (or yams, I suppose) at Thanksgiving are traditionally made too sweet, in my view, because people add to their already significant sweetness, which takes them way out of balance. And balance, of course, is the key! It’s too bad, because sweet potatoes are an entirely different creature if you veer away from adding sweetness, and make it more savory. It’s worth trying out, even if you think you don’t like it. It is so good for you—really a powerhouse of nutrition for how little it costs.

Tonight, I slicked my sweet potato quarters with a healthy glug of olive oil, some grinds of pepper, and a generous couple of pinches of dried sage. I put them in a small roasting pan, along with a clove or three of garlic, covered with foil, stuck in the oven, and went back to my workout. This is fairly typical mid-week improvisation for me, unless I’ve gotten it together to make a truly epic amount of food for leftovers on Sunday afternoon. My approach to the oven horrifies my sister, a scientifically-minded baking enthusiast. In a single cooking session I turn the heat up, down, lengthen cooking times, change my mind about what should be in pan, and cause all sorts of havoc, but it seems to turn out all right in the end. Tonight, I took a couple of breaks during exercise to adjust the oven, and then just turned it to warm while I showered.

The only other significant produce in my vegetable drawer was an aging head of red leaf lettuce. When I’m alone, I seem to manage an odd balance of minimalist and self-indulgent in my cooking, so it struck me that the best possible thing to put on top of my lettuce was chopped anchovies. My abiding passion for all forms of preserved fish speaks to my familial roots along the North Sea…I love pickled herrings, anchovies, boquerones, all manner of smoked trout, salmon, mackerel, eel. It’s the puckering briny saltiness of it all…just, just …YUM! So, when I’m cooking for myself, I feel no need to fancy up a dish of chopped lettuce and anchovies.

Once my salad was put together, and sprinkled with olive oil and red wine vinegar, I grabbed my sweet potatoes, and was pleasantly surprised to discover the skins peeled right off, with out any fuss. If you’re not a huge garlic fiend like I am, you might be content to just redrizzle your sweet potato spears with the garlic infused olive oil. But if you ARE a garlic fiend, mush the roasted garlic into the potatoes and eat it all up. Yum. I took a photo, even though this was about at the bottom of the list of memorable meals I’ve made in my lifetime.

It wasn’t so heavy on protein, but I had just had peanut butter before exercising, so I wasn't too worked up about it. The salad and sweet potato didn’t go together well at all. So, I just took them in courses. I started with the salad, which was delightful in its sour, briny simplicity, and the sweet potato, on its own, was awesome, and just sweet enough to make me feel like I didn’t need dessert. I felt fully satiated afterwards, and pretty pleased with the unexpected success of my barely-there dinner. My students are lucky—I’m going to grade papers in a much better mood now! I will post the photo as soon as I’ve found my damn cable!

Eat well, everybody!