This recipe is another indicator of my obsession with miso paste. As you may have noticed, I posted a Miso Tahini Cookie recently and I also used miso in my Shiso Leaf Pesto a while back. I love a salty sweet combo as well and the creamy salty miso on the delicately sweet Japanese Sweet Potato is simply divine. Now you may be asking, does this fit on my holiday table. Absolutely. I am personally always on the lookout for simple, healthy, unexpected and delicious. This dish fits all of the above. I find the traditional Thanksgiving dishes can sometimes have redundancy in flavors with the cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar often repeated in dishes. I do like mixing in some unanticipated surprise dishes which land well when they are mixed in with the usual suspects of stuffing, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes. I personally can’t eat any of those so, here’s one for me and anyone else out there needing dairy-free, gluten-free and low sugar options. They say Japanese sweet potatoes are high in hyaluronic acid which is great for keeping the joints lubricated and skin hydrated. I’ll take it. These make great leftovers, reheated for any meal of the day. For breakfast in a breakfast bowl or for lunch and dinner with a nice green salad and a side of soup. Get your veg on. I served mine last with freshly grated daikon and a few slices of crystalized ginger and black sesame seeds on top and copies amounts of scallions. By the way, if you want to make this with regular butter, be my guest but maybe use unsalted as the miso paste is quite salty. Serve hot out of the oven or room temperature. By the way, if you cannot find japanese sweet potatoes, don’t distress, this recipe tastes great using garnet yams.

Serves 5-6 / Prep time 15 minutes / Bake time 25 minutes / Total time 40 minutes

Gather

6-7 small washed and dried small Japanese Sweet Potatoes even in size, as to cook uniformly. Cut lengthwise in half and scored three times on the diagonal with a knife on the cut side. 

2 tablespoons/ 26.6 g olive oil

1 generous pinch of salt

1 tablespoon / 14.3 g mellow white miso

2 tablespoons / 28.3 g vegan butter, room temperature (I use meltorganic.com)

3 scallions, roughly chopped, green parts included

2 teaspoons / 11.8 g black or white sesame seeds

Make

Preheat the oven to 415 degrees F (212 degrees C) and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Place the potatoes onto the sheet, cut side down, brush with the olive over the skin with a basting brush. Sprinkle the pinch salt evenly over the potatoes. Place the sheet into the oven and bake for 25 minutes or until fork tender. While the potatoes are baking make the miso butter. In a small bowl mix together the miso and the butter and about 1/2 of the chopped scallions until well combined. When the potatoes are done, remove the baking sheet from the oven and then transfer the potatoes to a serving plate and allow them to cool for 5 minutes or so. Using a spoon or butter knife, smear enough of the miso butter to cover the potatoes onto the cut side which should be a nice brown. The miso butter should melt into the score lines you made with the knife. Sprinkle the remaining chopped scallions onto the potatoes and then garnish with the sesame seeds and edible flowers if like. Serve and enjoy.

*Note:

If the sweet potatoes are larger in size, you will have to account for this by adding 10-15 minutes to the cooking time. Check poking them with a fork periodically, if not your potatoes will be too hard.

Developed by Anna Getty of Amalgam Kitchen.

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