Baked Sweet Potatoes

As it turns out, I have a full time job now and not that much time to sit down and write my recipes. Don't get me wrong, I still cook a lot, I just don't have time to prepare the recipes… Anyways, I decided that I should at least be publishing one of these every week. But this weekend I was really lazy, luckily, I still have some backlog of recipes that have the photographic evidence ready and just need me to write down. Hence, this recipe. This weekend has been awfully cold over here, so cold  that it makes you want to crawl under a blanket and consume delicious carbohydrates like there is no tomorrow… The carbo-hangover is something future you will have to deal, you will just have to enjoy!

So, no more excuses, it's time to treat yourself to my Stuffed, baked sweet potatoes.

Look at that deliciousness!!!

You will need:

• Sweet Potatoes: Two big ones, you can use normal potatoes too, but let's face it, sweet potatoes are better.
• Onion: Half a medium sized onion, chopped.
• Garlic: One clove thinly sliced.
• Salt and Pepper: Duh!
• Mushrooms: Five or six
• Minced Meat: About half a kilo of half beef half pork.
• Greek Yoghurt: Or sour cream, I just find that Greek yoghurt tastes a little bit better.
• Butter: Because it's awesome.
• Olive oil: We don't want things to get sticky.
• Cream Cheese: Anything is better if you add a bit of this.
• Sun dried tomatoes & Pickled sweet red peppers: Completely optional but super delicious, so… just get them, trust me.
• Parmesan: Yum!

The Ingredients.

Let's get to it!

1. Grab those sweet potatoes and stab them a few times all around with a fork, this to relief stress and so steam can scape the potatoes while they bake and they don't explode.
2. Preheat your oven to 200 ˚C
3. Rub them with oil all around until they are sexy and shiny.  Put them in the center of the oven, you won't need a tray or anything. Bake for about 30-40 min.
4. In the mean time, chop your onions and mushrooms, heat up a bit of olive oil in a flat pan, sauté the onions until soft and fry the meat until it starts to get golden brown, lightly salt it and add some pepper too, because why not.  At this point add the mushrooms and keep everything on the fire until the mushrooms are nice and soft.
5. Put the meat in a bowl, reserve. Get you hands on those sun dried tomatoes and pickled peppers and chop them up. Add them to the meat and mix.
6. By this moment your sweet potatoes should be ready, already getting dark brown with some char happening on the skins. Take them out, carefully cut them in half length wise and scoop out all the delicious potatoness into the bowl, try to leave the skins intact, and by try I mean don't fuck it up, other wise you will end up with a very delicious potato puree, not a stuffed potato.
7. With a fork mix the meat, tomatoes, peppers and potato until smooth but still a bit chunky, the sweet spot. Be generous with the cream cheese and add a bit of butter and keep mixing.
8. Now stuff those skins that you obviously left intact, add some parmesan on top (or a lot) and pepper. Crank up the heat to a scolding 220 ˚C and place the potatoes a bit to the top of the oven to broil for 3-5 minutes, until the cream cheese is nice and warm and the parmesan has formed a delicious crust.
9. And there, ready, put them in plates and enjoy… You are welcome.

Stab those sweet potatoes!

Chop those onions!

Careful with the skins!

Ready to Bake

Awesome!