Spicy Quinoa and Sweet Potato Soup

I've got a bad cold and so I'm craving spicy food. When I can't smell much, the heat of chilli seems to cut through the fog a little. Plus spicy food makes my nose run and cleans it out! (Too much information?) Thankfully I made some of this soup a few weeks ago and had several portions in the freezer.

Before freezing (as pictured above) this was a thick, chunky soup. After thawing and reheating, it was more like a warm salad - all the liquid had been soaked up or evaporated. It was delicious both ways.

Sweet Potato Laksa

Singaporeans are food crazy. I would say that the two national pastimes here are shopping and eating. Locally born Singaporeans are called Peranakan; they are descendants of Chinese or Indian male immigrants who married Malay women in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Laksa is a traditional Peranakan curried soup, served over rice noodles.

Chinese Peranakan cooking blends Chinese ingredients with Malay sauces and spices. Peranakan food features shallots, chillies, preserved soybeans, prawn paste, and thick coconut milk. My favourite Paranakan dish is laksa. I like the tangy spice of the curry that is calmed (a little) by the coconut milk.

Sweet Potato Soup with Whipped Goat's Cheese Topping

Simple sweet potato soup: just four ingredients. This is my kind of meal. When my husband is away (and hence I'm allowed to eat vegetarian), I whip up a soup or salad or both for my dinner.

I made this soup just a tad more special by whipping a goat's cheese topping. I used 1/3 c (100 g) soft cheese, 1/4 c (60 ml) of sour cream, and 1 T of milk, with lots of pepper. A quick whizz and it's a little bit fluffy. The goat's cheese complements the soup by adding a bit of complexity. Also, the topping is cool while the soup is steaming so it's a great contrast. I like to incorporate a tiny bit of topping with each spoon of soup to enjoy the colours and flavours together.

Weekend Links #31

Weekend Links is a way of sharing all the engrossing things I see around the internet. I publish Weekend Links approximately every two weeks. As usual, I welcome your ideas and feedback.

food reading links:
--How poetry can help you become a better food writer. Fascinating (from Monica Bhide).

recipe links:
--Burger buns made from spiralized sweet potatoes and eggs, formed in ramekins (a guest post on Paleo OMG from Inspiralized).
--How to use up a half cup or so of pumpkin puree (from Kitchen Stewardship). What a great problem to have!
--These espresso martinis sound killer - in a good way, of course (from A Beautiful Mess).
--Easy preserving if you have too many radishes (from Adventures in Local Food). Huh, has this ever happened to you?
--How to make a simple steamed bok choy salad (from A Veggie Venture). A simple entry to Asian greens if you are new to them.
--Simple and delicious pumpkin roasted with rosemary and onions (from BakingNCooking). This is just the kind of simple dish that makes cooking worthwhile.

Sweet Potato and Chicken Thai Green Curry

This week's recipe pick for Wednesdays with Donna Hay is from a book that I don't own, Off the Shelf. But I found a blogger who had written about it and so I adapted the recipe I found.

The Daring Cooks - Recipes with Tea

I have been a proud Daring Cook for several years and it is my absolute pleasure to host the group this month! This month I challenged the Daring Cooks to make a savoury recipe with tea.

I have always enjoyed learning new skills and trying new recipes with the Daring Cooks. They are always so inventive, so I gave them free rein to make one of my three recipes (below) or cook any other recipe with tea. They were able to choose to use black, green, or herbal tea. And there were so many great ideas! I am very grateful for the chance to host the Cooks and thrilled to enjoy what they came up with.

Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin - and Sweet Potato Pancakes with Preserved Black Beans

Dear Laurie Colwin,

You are everything I want to be in a writer. Thank you for your book, Home Cooking. As I was reading it I couldn't help circling inventive words and jotting exclamation points in the margins at your turns of phrase. I wish I could craft opening lines like this one:

As a child, while my sister busied herself mooshing the chocolate candies to see which had the best centres, I was happily licking the salt off the pretzels and leaving their sticky bodies on the rug.

And I wish I had the guts to use your words to tell some people that I think your stuffing tastes like sawdust flavoured with sage and it has the consistency of lumpy library paste. I think they might take notice!

Salt by Mark Kurlansky--and roasted vegetables with pink Himalayan sea salt

Fortunes have been made and lost over salt; did you know? History is full of the intrigue and economics of salt. Except for in the last hundred years, salt has been one of the most important commodities made and traded around the world. Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky chronicles the thread of salt making, buying, and selling through the ages. I read it this month as our May Kitchen Reader selction, chosen by Stacy of Little Blue Hen. Over the course of nearly 500 pages, he covers most of the world for all of recorded history. Read this book and you will have at your fingertips salt trivia for every occasion--including some fascinating tidbits. As a starter, do you know how the word salary is related to that for salt?

weekend links #13

food reading links:
--Useful things to freeze in ice cube trays (from The Kitchn). The great ideas just keep coming as you read down into the comments.
--The periodic table of desserts (from E-blong). I think there are several geeky bakers in my life who might like this poster as a present.
--A helpful article about food photography--tips that are simple to understand and actually very useful (from Food Blog Forum).

recipe links:
--An oatmeal brownie, expect is's not a brownie, it's a hot quadrilateral (from 5 Second Rule).
--Stunning and easy Hasselback sweet potatoes (from Roti n Rice). They are almost pretty enough to be a party centrepiece!

off-topic links:
--Which house plants will clean the air in my Hong Kong apartment? Here's a list (from re-nest). That assumes that I won't kill them, of course. Which might be hard for me.
--Can a fluorescent lightbulb be beautiful? Maybe so (from Remodelista).
--We like boundaries and deadlines: enforced freedom (from Sarah Wilson).

sweet potato stew: using meat wisely

After my recent reading of Mark Bittman's Food Matters, I have realised that one huge way for me to impact climate change is to eat less meat. I was amazed to learn that more greenhouse gasses are produced by livestock than by transportation or anything else except energy production. So Bittman gave some advice about eating meat: eat less, and "rely on meat for its flavor, not heft". Meat is no longer the star of a meal, but a supporting ingredient that adds flavour or texture.

Food Matters by Mark Bittman & Sweet Potato Spread

This month the Kitchen Reader book club has been reading Mark Bittman's treatise on "sane eating". I have used Bittman's recipes and ideas in the past because I love his simple style. In recent years he has become more interested in health and the environment and it has really impacted what and how he cooks. I've been inspired, so I was thrilled to read his book, Food Matters. Thanks to Elizabeth of Spike Bakes for choosing it.

He writes compellingly about the kinds of food that we can enjoy that also minimise environmental damage, expense to our health, and reduce costs for us. The first half of the book contains the evidence he provides for each of these three areas; it's hard hitting.

sweet potato coleslaw

Fuel for athletes or fans: fresh, healthy food that tastes great. Such as this unique coleslaw, made with raw sweet potatoes, toasted almonds, and juicy raisins. And if it's made with homemade mayonnaise, this easy slaw becomes a firm favourite for those on and off the pitch.


With England's World Cup bid progressing via a few stumbles, Ant and I needed a pick-me-up to get us through the late nights and long days. This coleslaw caught my eye because it uses raw sweet potato--something I have not tried before. I imagine it would be just as tasty with carrots, of course, through a bit softer in the mouth. This coleslaw has a firm bite, and the fresh mayo gives it a zesty edge.

mezze (for the Daring Cooks)

The 2010 February Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Michele of Veggie Num Nums. Michele chose to challenge everyone to make mezze based on various recipes from Claudia Roden, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Dugid.


The two required recipes were pita bread and hummus. Both of them were easy to make and very tasty. The flatbreads were warm, soft, pillowy. The hummus had a lemony zing. The recipes are available from Michele.


I also wanted to make Leon's Sweet Potato Falafel. They would be easier to make if I had planned ahead. The night before when the oven was on for something else I could have roasted the sweet potato and let it cool. Then the same-day prep would be simple.

Sweet Potato Falafel
adapted from Leon: Ingredients and Recipes by Allegra McEvedy

2 medium sweet potatos (about 700 g)
1 1/2 t ground cumin
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 1/2 t garam masala
2 big handfuls (about 30 g) fresh coriander (cilantro), chopped
juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 c (120 g) gram (chickpea) flour
olive oil
salt and pepper

Heat the oven to 220 C/425 F. Roast the whole sweet potatos until tender, about 45 minutes. Turn off the oven, let cool, then peel.
Put the sweet potatoes, cumin, garlic, garam masala, fresh coriander, lemon juice, and gram flour in a bowl. Mash together well.
Put into the freezer for 20 to 30 minutes. The mixture should now be somewhat sticky rather than wet. Add more gram flour if necessary to make a slightly sticky mixture. Use spoons or your hands to make balls. Place on a greased baking tray.
Heat the oven to 200 C/400 F. Bake the falafel for 15 minutes until the bases are golden brown.

Finally, to my mezze feast I added Spring Greens, another Leon recipe that adds a great colour to the spread.

Spring Greens
adapted from Leon: Ingredients and Recipes by Allegra McEvedy

1/2 head of cabbage
1 leek, sliced into diagonals and washed
1/2 t caraway seeds
1 c (130 g) fresh or frozen peas
1 1/2 T cider or white wine vinegar
2 T olive oil
a big handful of mint, chopped
salt and pepper

In a large saucepan, heat 1 c (250 mL) water to boiling. Add the cabbage, leek, and caraway seeds. Cover and simmer for four minutes.
Remove the lid and add the peas. Stir and simmer until the veg are all cooked and the water has mostly evaporated, about five minutes.
Remove from the heat, and finish with the vinegar, oil, mint, salt, and pepper.

Gingered Sweet Potatoes

Christmas lunch this year was a fifteen person affair, hosted by my Mother. Mum is an excellent cook who regularly caters for big groups (earlier this year she put on a soup and sandwich dinner for seventy carollers at the church). She doesn't really need much help from me, except that the Christmas dinner vegetables are often quite traditional and need a bit of excitement. It's a mixed family group so the aim is to keep the dinner quite palatable for the older folks while not boring the younger generation either.

This gingered sweet potato puree was one of the vegetable dishes I was overseeing this year. I also looked after the Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower, green beans, and carrots, all of which were very traditionally prepared. We used two slow cookers for the beans and carrots (cooked side-by-side in one slow cooker) and the sweet potatoes. Mother actually picked the recipe as well and then assigned it to me for cooking, so I can't really take that much credit for the finished dish! Since it's made in the slow cooker it's very easy to do.

Caribbean macaroni cheese

Here's a nice weeknight comfort food--a lovely twist on Mac'n'Cheese. I used another "Two for One" recipe from The Kitchen Revolution--it's designed for eating half now and freezing half for later. The Two for One recipe is for two meals for four people, so I halved it and made two meals for two people--except there were three of us. So we ended up eating almost all of it and saved one lunch box for Ant the next day.


I like the addition of sweet potato--low GI and very tasty. I boiled the pasta and sweet potato together, which was my only adaption of this easy recipe.


The sauce has some tomatoes and spring onions to give a nice combination of orange, red and green in the finished dish. It feels like autumn to me, with the colours of leaves and the warm hearty texture.


This was the amount of two meals for two--so I don't think I even have oven space to bake two meals for four at the same time.

Caribbean Macaroni Cheese
serves 2x 4 people

500 g macaroni
250 g sweet potatoes, cut into 1-2 cm chunks
3 free range eggs
2 c milk
3 T HP Sauce
2 to 3 t sweet chilli sauce
5-10 drops chillis sauce (for example, Tasbasco)
2 x 400 g cans of chopped tomatoes
2 bunches spring onions, sliced
300 g mature cheddar, grated
40 g (approx.) butter
2 slices of bread for breadcrumbs (optional)
handful of fresh parsley, chopped
salt and pepper

Peheat the oven to 200 C/400 F.
Cook the pasta according to packet directions, drain and set aside.
Bring the sweet potatoes to the boil, then simmer for 5 minutes. Be careful not to overcookt hem of they will turn to mush. Drain and set aside.
Meanwhile, make the sauce. Break the eggs into a bowl, add the milk, HP Sauce, sweet chilli sauce, chilli sauce, tomatoes, spring onion, and half of the cheddar cheese. Season with salt and pepper.
Add the pasta and sweet potatoes and mix well. Pour into two ovenproof dishes.
If using, add the breadcrumbs on top and sprinkle with the rest of the cheddar cheese. Dot with butter and the parsley.
Bake for 20 minutes, or until the tops are brown and the pasta mixture has set.
Put one dish aside to cool and freeze.

On the day of reheating, defrost the macaroni cheese thoroughly. Cover with foil and bake at 180 C/350 F for 30 t0 45 minutes. Uncover for the last 10 minutes of cooking.