Hope you are having a lovely weekend so far! Unless you are in the UAE,  your week has just began… hope you have a lovely week ahead 🙂

Here is a recipe I’ve been so excited to write about, it’s just one of those that I could not wait to sit down and put it all into a post to share with you!

Sweet potatoes bring back so many memories for me as a child, Ma used to steam them in a pressure cooker or roast them sometimes and I have always been fascinated by the color of the skin on it…

I remember biting into these soft & steamy potatoes mostly on rainy days during the Monsoon months back in India…

This weekend, I wanted to make some spicy, Indian-inspired wedges, to recreate that magic in this land of clouds…

Ingredients:

• 2 medium-sized sweet potatoes
• 2 teaspoons of cooking/ roasting oil – (any oil except olive oil, pls read note below! I’ve used sesame seed oil here, it adds to flavor)
• half a teaspoon of cumin powder
• half a teaspoon of coriander seed powder/ Dhaniya
• quarter a teaspoon of turmeric powder
• half a teaspoon of red chili powder
• salt to taste
• juice of 1 whole lime
• 1 strand of fresh curry leaves
• 1 teaspoon of grated fresh ginger
• 2 large cloves of garlic (grated or passed through a garlic crusher)

Turn on the oven at 200C (Fan)

Rinse the sweet potato and wipe dry using a kitchen towel. Then chop into wedges and add into a baking/ roasting tray and keep aside

Now, for the marinade – in a small bowl, add the oil, cumin, red chili, turmeric & coriander powders, juice of the lime, salt, ginger & garlic and mix using a spoon

Then add this marinade to the potato wedges and mix using fingers to coat every one of them uniformly, now sprinkle the curry leaves on top

Bake in a hot oven for up to 40mins and you’re done! Leave it for longer (another 10mins) if you would like the skin to crisp up

Enjoy while its warm!

Tip: If you would like the skin to roast well and crisp up add 2 more teaspoons of oil and place each wedge skin-side-down on the baking tray, this will give you the desired effect!

Note: I find that mostly olive oil in Indian cooking does not always work! The flavor combination goes completely wrong – so you are better off sticking to other non-flavored oils – sunflower/ canola or flavored oils such as: sesame seed, groundnut, coconut oils work best in Indian recipes. Remember olives are native to the Mediterranean, Asia & Africa so most of the South Asian recipes were developed around other native oils specific to that region – I’ll do a post specially dedicated to this in the future 🙂