Sprout & Pea

Sweet pota­toes seem to be tak­ing over my apart­ment lately thanks to the abun­dance of them that appear in my CSA each week. So, when I finally had a night in and a chance to get cre­ative with my din­ner, I turned to the ol’ orange potato. I stared at the bowl of them on my kitchen table and pon­dered what I could do with them aside from roast­ing, bak­ing, or mash­ing. Then, a stroke of lazi­ness came over me and I thought seri­ously about just mak­ing some pasta. But through this lazi­ness came a stroke of inspiration.

I decided to make these pota­toes into pasta. So I got out my juli­enne peeler and while I was cre­at­ing ele­gant lit­tle strands of potato, I thought about what I was going to top it off with. I set­tled on a goat cheese sauce (because I am a goat cheese fiend), which I mixed with some Greek yogurt and I topped the whole thing off with chives. Cook­ing the pota­toes with a lit­tle bit of cin­na­mon brought this dish together per­fectly. When it was done, I sat on my couch, poured myself a glass of wine - one of my new favorite finds, I might add -  and caught up on some Break­ing Bad. It was a per­fect Tues­day evening.

1 sweet potato (the longer the bet­ter)
1/​2 cup goat cheese
1/​2 cup Greek yogurt
1 tsp cin­na­mon
1 tbs extra vir­gin olive oil
2 tbs chives chopped
1 cup water
Pinch of salt
Sprin­kle of fresh ground pepper

Use a juli­enne peeler to peel sweet potato into long spaghetti-​​like strings. If you don’t have a juli­enne peeler, use a reg­u­lar veg­etable peeler to form rib­bon shaped strands more sim­i­lar to fet­tuc­cine. Heat olive oil and salt in a pan over medium-​​high heat and add the potato strands and sauté for a few min­utes. Add cin­na­mon and sauté for another minute or two. Add water and let cook for another 5 min­utes or so or until potato strands start to soften, then strain and run some cold water over the pota­toes to stop the cook­ing process. Return pan to the stove and add goat cheese and yogurt, mix­ing together over medium heat until cheese is fully melted. Mix desired amount of sauce into the potato spaghetti, plate, top with chives and fresh cracked pepper.