Curried Sweet Potato Bites

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If reading about or watching mischievious kids brings a smile to your lips then you may enjoy this tale I have to share with you. Recently my father was narrating stories about his boyhood and some of the incidents from that time that stayed with him. He had this story to tell me about one of his friends. His friend wanted to accompany his own grandparents on an outing. His grandparents refused and told him to stay home, so his friend felt very upset and thwarted. As soon as the grandparents left, my father's friend decided to play some mischief...... he sneaked into their kitchen and rearranged all the spice containers, most especially the ones containing salt and sugar. The next day when his grandmother went to make coffee in the morning, she, out of habit, grabbed the container she thought contained sugar, and without checking used it in her coffee, little did she know that she was using salt instead of sugar......you can probably guess how the rest of this story would have gone.....:-)

After having a hilarious laugh about this incident, and sympathizing with the plight of the poor grand mother, who I am sure, never expected such a retaliation from her grand son, the very next thought that crossed my mind was amazement how such ideas seem to occur to some people, such ideas have never occured to me so far, and I am sure they will not occur to me in the future either. I guess I am far more boring than a lot of other people....:-)

Talking about ideas, here is one idea that made me really happy. I was in the process of cutting sweet potatoes to make curry with it. The plan was to make the traditional south Indian style dry curry (poriyal ) with it, seasoning it with some mustard seeds and split black gram lentil, when suddenly the thought struck me to bake these potato cubes.

I followed through with the idea and was so happy with the results. R has extracted a promise from me that I make this style of curried sweet potatoes more often than the south Indian style one I had initially planned to make ......If you are into sweet potatoes the way I am these days, here is a different type of preparation with them that I think you may enjoy:-)




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Ingredients and method to make curried sweet potato bites
3 1/2 cups cubed and peeled sweet potatoes (5 medium sweet potatoes approx)
3 tsp oil
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp chilli powder (optional ) (or according to taste)

For the spice mix,grind together after roasting
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 red chilli
1 tsp mustard seeds
1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds ( methi seeds)

Pre heat oven to 400 deg F

Dry roast each of the ingredients mentioned in the spice mix and cool, then powder finely in a spice grinder or blender and keep aside.

Place the peeled and cubed sweet potatoes in a large bowl and add salt, chilli powder, ground spice mixture and oil to it. Mix well.

Place the spiced sweet potatoes in a large glass dish, where the potatoes can be spread out and are not piled one on top of the other.

Bake for about 15 mins.

Then increase the heat to 425 deg F and bake for another 15 minutes or until sweet potatoes are done and begin to crisp

Serve hot with soup, or as a dry curry or use as a filling in sandwich or eat as is, as a yum snack with some ketchup on the side.

Notes
I made mine soft with a hint of crispness (with a total baking time of 30 mins) You can bake them longer to get a more crisp and crunchy exterior. Do remember to keep checking on the potatoes when they are getting baked, since the thickness of the cubes will determine how long it takes to get done.

Since this one is my own recipe I send this dish off to Original recipes event being hosted by Lore