Back at the wheel.
I’m back!
Although you probably hadn’t noticed, I’ve been away for a little while. Not away ‘away’, but away from the blog.
And what’s the event that has caused me to temporarily desert (mmmm, dessert) my beloved blog? Surely it must be something awful, heartrendingly terrible or existentially disastrous to pry my frantic fingertips from the surface of my keyboard?
The good news is that nothing bad has happened. It was the arrival of a little creature, an 8 week old miniature poodle puppy who we called Bernard, that managed to get the better of me psychologically for a few weeks. That left little space up there to consider food, blogs or for that matter, anything else at all (apologies to my girlfriend).
Just in case you’re interested, here’s the little bundle of joy in all his mischievous glory:
I’d like to add a little footnote, just in case you’re ever thinking of getting a puppy. They’re REALLY, REALLY HARD WORK for the first few weeks, albeit interspersed with blue skies of love and fluffiness, and that great feeling that you’ve got a new best mate hanging around.
Anyway, back to food, so let’s go over to Gavin, in the kitchen…
A tale of two dishes
I’m not sure if this is one or two recipes. I know the photos show it as one, but the two elements also work well individually.
On one side, you have the sweet potatoes, coated with delectable smoked paprika, a dash of chilli and lemon, plus garlic and oil. We could stop there and it would make a decent blog post. I mean stop there in culinary terms, if I stopped writing there it would be an unspecific recipe, a silly introduction and have a distinctly abrupt ending.
HOWEVER. What I mean to say is that if you simply coated the sweet potato wedges and baked them, that would be a tasty dish regardless. Especially if you made them more chip-like in size and dipped them in some mayo (depending on your stance on mayo, obviously). Then you can take the minted feta yoghurt and use it like a tzatziki style dip with some crudités. So, you’ve got the two sides of the story. A side and the B side of the record. Either way, it’s got two parts to it and you don’t have to play them at the same time.
So either I’ve done myself out of some blog-post material by putting these two together, or it’s just how it is. I actually made this recipe four times before photographing it (well, I photographed it on the fourth time) and only made minor tweaks each time, for some reason I just felt they went together.
Either way, it’s all done now and presented below for your prandial perusal.
Paprika sweet potato wedges with minted feta yoghurt
By Gavin Wren
Serves 2
Uses a baking sheet
PDF recipe card to download or print
Ingredients
2 sweet potatoes about 250g each
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 clove garlic
1/2 lemon, juice only
1/4 teaspoon chilli flakes (adjust up or down to suit your favoured level)
1 tablespoon olive oil
150g cucumber (about 1 mini cucumber), diced
1 green chilli, sliced
100g feta, crumbled or diced
7g mint leaves, chopped
200g plain yoghurt
Directions
Quarter the sweet potatoes lengthways, so you have four large wedges per potato. Mix the smoked paprika, garlic, lemon juice, chilli flakes and olive oil together and then brush the mixture all over the potatoes. Place on a baking sheet and put in the oven for 35 minutes.
Meanwhile, mix the cucumber, chilli, feta, mint and yoghurt together in a bowl. When the potatoes are done, remove them from the oven, place on plates and then spoon the yoghurt mix over the top.