Baked Sweet Potatoes with Mesclun Greens Pesto

This baked sweet potato recipe is one of my new favorite variations on a theme. Recently, I’ve been topping my sweet potatoes with the usual suspects: butter, brown sugar or saffron honey, crumbled pecans, and warm spices. All of the above take this sweet vegetable and make it sweeter–almost candied. I love that.

But sometimes, I find myself wanting something different, and this is the perfect variation to add to the rotation. The sweetness of the potato is the perfect compliment to an easy, vegan pesto I made out of everyday ingredients from our Florida winter garden. Next to the bitterness of dill and mesclun greens, you can taste saltiness, richness from floral olive oil and walnuts, and bright sour notes from some lemon zest and juice. In the same way that pasta mellows out a spicy pesto, so does this sweet potato mellow out these flavors into a perfectly balanced bite.

Growing mesclun greens

This is year two of planting greens in the Florida wintertime, and I’m loving it. The first year, I planted arugula and ended up with a patch so big and overgrown that I struggled to eat it all! It also made me realize that the arugula we buy at the store is baby arugula–its fully grown counterpart is very bitter and tastes more like dandelion greens.

This year, I invested in a pack of mesclun greens. The term “mesclun” isn’t a specific type of green. The word is used to describe “mixed greens” and supposedly comes from Provençal, France. Here’s the mix that I used, from the back of the seed pack:

Mixture contains Mustard Mibuna and Tendergreen along with Baby Lettuces Danyelle, Oak Leaf Royal and red, Salad Bowl Green and Red, Tango and Lolla Rossa Darkness.

Ferry Morse Mesclun Seed Packet

I just sprinkled the mesclun seeds in a sunny patch of the garden and let the snappy winter weather nurture them into being. I’ve treated this patch as “cut-and-come-again” greens, breaking off the biggest leaves and adding them to the bottom of two salad bowls, one for me and one for my fiancée. There are few things in life more satisfying–or more nourishing–than freshly grown greens.

Sweet potatoes, two ways

Oven roasted sweet potatoes

An oven roasted sweet potato is sweet, fluffy, and easy–but time consuming–to make. The consensus for how to make them includes poking them all around with a fork and baking them at a high temperature and for a long time. For instance, you could bake them at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour or longer, depending on the size, or you could bake them at 425 degrees for 45 minutes plus.

And that’s where the consensus starts to vary. Some recipes rub the potato all around with oil. Other recipes wrap the potato in aluminum foil to steam them. And then there’s the salt baked sweet potato which, I admit, seems like a little much even for me.

Roasting sweet potatoes is great, but for this baked sweet potato recipe, I don’t bother, tempted as I might be by fluffy textures and crispy, salty potato skin. Instead I made…

Steamed sweet potatoes

Behind my spice blender and my blender-blender stands my third most valuable kitchen item: a $20 bamboo steamer. It’s a double decker, no-soap-necessary appliance that doesn’t risk vegetables tasting metallic. And, did I mention, it vastly reduces sweet potato cook-time?

Steamed sweet potatoes are my new go-to, mostly because they’re extra quick. You don’t have to use a bamboo steamer here; any steamer basket will do. Here’s the gist:

• Put 3 inches of boiling water in a big pot that will go below your bamboo steamer baskets. Bring to a boil. OR, if you’re using a metal steamer, fill your pot with water just until the steamer basket. Bring it to a boil.
• Cut your sweet potatoes in half, length-wise.
• When boiling, add the sweet potato halves to the steamer basket(s), skin-side down, and cover with the steamer lid or the pot’s lid.
• Cook for 20-35 minutes, or until a fork can easily pierce all the way to the bottom.

How to make mesclun greens and dill pesto

You could use a mortar and pestle, starting with the garlic and salt, moving to the walnuts, and then finally blending the greens before adding lemon juice and olive oil. Or, you could make this mixture in a powerful blender, adding everything at once and scraping the sides occasionally. Whatever you do, you’ll want to pre-chop all your ingredients for the best texture. Here’s what I added (to my blender):

• ½ cup olive oil 
• Juice of 2 lemons
• 2 cloves garlic, grated 
• A heaping ½ cup walnuts 
• 2 cups packed bitter greens (like arugula, watercress, etc.) 
• 2 cups dill fronds 
• 1 teaspoon salt 

Don’t they look pretty?!

When the sweet potatoes have cooked thoroughly, just pile the pesto on top of them. You could add grated Parmesan or Romano cheese or a pinch of chili flakes for color. I added both.

Enjoy this baked sweet potato recipe as part of a delicious and healthy meal. You might want to try it next to these turkey meatballs or this recipe for vegan falafel. Leave a comment to let me know what you think!

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