Grilled Sweet Potatoes with Roasted Corn

While recently on holiday in Hawaii, I was talking with guy from Seattle at the vacation condo's barbeque area. We talked about what food we were making. He opened the lid to his BBQ and revealed slices of Molokai (Hawaiian) sweet potatoes. Hmmm. I didn't have sweet potatoes but swore to myself I'd try grilling them when I got back to the mainland. In a previous post, I sung the prasies of my Mario Batali grilling pan. It's perfect for grilling most things, including sweet potatoes.
This is so easy to prepare and paired with roasted corn and vegetarian baked beans, the meal becomes very hearty with a good amount of protein.

Start with one medium sweet potato for each person. Wash and scrub your sweet potatoes really well before cooking. Potatoes can harbor bacteria since they come straight from the ground.

Place sweet potatoes in the microwave for about 5 minutes, turning two times during this process. This will soften the potatoes up a bit, but not cook them all the way through. After the 5 minutes, heat up your grill pan. Take the sweet potatoes out of the microwave, slice them into 1/2" round slices and place on the grill. You can drizzle a little bit of olive oil over the potatoes as they're in the pan. Cook them on med-high heat for about 6 minutes on the first side. Flip them and cook for another 3 minutes. Flip again if you want to get really distinct grill marks.

For corn:
Keep your corn in the husks and place the ears in a bowl of water for at least 30 mins before cooking. Switch on your oven's broiler and place the corn close to the flame. Turn the corn every 4 minutes so that the husks are brownish on all sides. The corn usually takes about 15 minutes, depending on how close you have the corn to the broiler flame.

Here's the finished product. Enjoy!

Ooh! Spice Market Sweet Potato & Lentil Packets

What a beautiful and colorful, completely vegetarian dinner this turned out to be. It's full of flavor and filling that you may never miss the fact this dish has no meat. With a good amount of protien, it is low in fat and low in calories. If you want to serve it with something more, try brown rice with just a splash of soy sauce.

This recipe comes from May/June 2010 issue of Vegetarian Times. Other than cutting up the vegetables and cooking the lentils, this only takes about 20-25 minutes cooking time. Each person gets his or her own packet and the nice part, the packets and the contents stay hot for a long time.

First, preheat the oven to 400-degrees F. Ok, here comes the recipe:
2 cups finely diced sweet potato (this is one large sweet potato. You can also use a yam for extra sweetness)
1 large red bell pepper, diced (1 & 1/2 cups)
1 cup fresh green beans, thinly sliced (we used zuchini instead of green beans and it was good)
1/4 cup golden raisins (used regular raisins and was still good sweetness)
2 Tbs. hot sesame oil
1 cup vegetable broth
2 Tbs. minced fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. curry powder (don't forget this. Adds a lot to the flavor of the whole dish!)
1 & 1/2 cups cooked lentils or 1 - 15oz. can lentils, rinsed and drained
4 Tbs. prepared mango chutney, optional (we didn't use this and it was fine. Could use fresh mango to add to sweetness)

Place 4 16-inch lengths of foil on work surface. Fold foil in half from short side. Unfold. Shape corners and edges of one half in to semicircle "bowl" with 1/2" sides. Coat insides of foil with cooking spray. You can also use a "Misto" sprayer to spritz olive oil instead of chemical cooking spray.
Combine sweet potato, bell pepper, green beans and raisins in medium bowl. Add oil and toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper if you'd like.

Whisk together broth, ginger, garlic and curry powder in small bowl.

Divide sweet potato mixture among the packets. Top with 1/3 cup lentils each. Pour 1/4 of the broth mixture over the lentils in each packet and season with salt and pepper. Fold the other half of the foil over the ingredients and crimp edges in overlapping folds until packets are sealed.

Transfer packets to baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes. 30 if you're at sea level and you don't want the sweet potatoes to be on the crunchy side.

Transfer the packets to plates and let each person open the packets...carefully. Escaping air will be hot and steamy. Here's where you can top with the mango chutney if you want. Enjoy!

Here's the finished product. It's tasty and very hearty.