So, I'm making chicken and cauliflower balti again, and I had three
ginormous sweet potatoes (seriously, the largest could be considered a deadly weapon -- 8 inches long and over a foot in circumference) sitting around that needed to get used. Took the smallest one and chunked it to go in the balti, and took the other two and made steak fries out of them. Gonna toss them with olive oil and curry powder (I was out of garam masala) and bake them.
I'll post photos when all is said and done.
Also, I haven't forgotten my promise to do an experimental satay peanut sauce, it's just that I have forgotten the face of my father and allowed the pantry to run out of coconut milk. And I'm pretty sure I'm gonna want coconut milk for consistency and to bind the flavors together.
EDIT: Changed plans, because the sweet potato fries were so damn thick I was worried about them not cooking properly. So I chopped them up into cubes and tossed them olive oil, sea salt, pepper, and five spice powder (and a small amount of curry powder).
EDIT #2: Forgot the chicken was neither thawed nor cut to bite-size pieces. Plus the pan was running out of space. So I did a vegetarian balti, which is rare for me.
I wound up using half of one potato for the balti, just because holy shit so much potato.
My significant other took one look at the photo, and said "Wow, that doesn't look phallic
at all".
The other two larger sweet potatoes got cubed and tossed with about 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil, 1-1/2 tablespoons of five-spice powder, and some fresh ground sea salt and pepper.
These were laid out in a baking dish and roasted in the oven at 425F for about 30 minutes.
Just before that, I had roasted the cauliflower at 375F for about 10 minutes -- not enough to cook it all the way through, but enough to bring out the nuttiness in the flavor and firm it up a bit so they wouldn't get mushy in liquid.
After the potatoes had been roasting in the oven for about 10 minutes, I fixed up a balti curry (from packaged spice mix and water -- I'm not hardcore enough to make my own from scratch).
Then I tossed in the sweet potatoes and the cauliflower and simmered for about 10 minutes. Fixed up a big batch of medium-grain rice in my rice cooker, and then served the balti over top of a bed of rice.
I don't have a separate photo of the finished roast sweet potatoes, because they didn't really change appearance. However, I think five-spice sweet potatoes may be one of the best culinary whims I've ever tried. I may never use plain cinnamon again. Sooooooo goood......