Roast Salted Sweet Potatoes with Sage

I'm always looking for new ways to cook sweet potatoes. Larry would be happy if I just cooked regular potatoes, but sweet potatoes are so much healthier - not to mention more colorful on the plate.

Sweet potatoes are high in antioxidants, and contain compounds that help our digestive systems be less sensitive to heavy metals and other toxins. We've done so well at polluting our soil and groundwater that our bodies need all the help they can get.

One of the challenges with sweet potatoes can be their texture. I buy from a farmer who has three or four varieties of sweet potato, some the soft juicy orange kind, others are dryer and more chestnut-y, and yet others are purple-ish. I tend to buy the orange ones because I like the color. And then I have to find a way to dry them out a little.

Slicing thin, sprinkling with salt, and roasting made the sweet potatoes delicious. I added garlic and sage, and a drizzle of lemon at the end, and Larry said these were the best sweet potatoes ever. (He thinks it was because of the salt.) If you don't like sage, leave it out. Or use thyme or rosemary instead.

The oil is essential, because we need to eat sweet potatoes with a little fat in order to get the health benefits. (That's true of so many vegetables, isn't it?)

In the picture on the right, the sweet potatoes are below, and a casserole of roasted shallots is on top. I keep experimenting with baking members of the onion family because I feel I should like them, but I don't. They get slimy and are hard to cut. We ate a couple of the shallots as a side dish, but I chopped the rest and added them to Green Rice the next day.

Roast Salted Sweet Potatoes with Sage
1 lb sweet potatoes
2 tsp olive oil
coarse salt
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp chopped fresh sage
juice of 1/2 lemon (or so)

Preheat oven to 375°F. (400°F works fine too if you're cooking something else at the same time, just keep an eye on the sweet potatoes so they don't burn.)

Peel sweet potatoes and cut into 1/4 inch slices across. Place on an oiled cookie sheet and lightly brush with more oil. Sprinkle with coarse salt and garlic.

Bake until the potatoes are tender when you poke them with a fork. Sprinkle with sage and lemon juice and serve.

Serves 2-3