Sweet Potato Wedges With Tangy Lime Mayo

I made these on a whim to go with spiced lamb burgers last weekend. We were having some new friends over for dinner and the kitchen was in a typical state of chaos.

Younger child was enthusiastically yanking drawers and cabinets open and pulling things out as fast as he could and older child was running back and forth from the front door to the living room making farting noises.

I was trying to avoid stepping on either of them while simultaneously scraping hardened smears of avocado mixed with dried yogurt and a fine dust of crushed cereal off the table and attempting to get the dinner together. Husband was trying to find a new (undisclosed) location in which to dump the jumble of crayons, pacifiers, Lego space shuttle parts and crumpled drawings (of space shuttles) that usually covers our table before our guests arrived.

I had clipped the recipe from an issue of Bon Appetit at some point before I let my subscription lapse (all those magazines piling up makes me feel guilty and wasteful) and decided very last minute that tonight was the night.

The fact that I was able to follow the recipe speaks to how simple it is as I was pretty distracted between the kids, trying to make an herb-yogurt sauce, getting the burger fixings together and shaping the lamb burger patties.

They almost seemed to make themselves (why can't more things be like that?) And the combination of the sweet, crispy, salty potatoes with the tangy, rich mayonnaise is pretty incredible. I felt a little like the messiah.

In fact, they were so tasty that we made them again a few days later with a couple of purple skinned, yellow fleshed Japanese sweet potatoes. They were harder to manipulate than the Garnet yams had been - stuck to the tray more and were a challenge to flip - but so delicious! I have a feeling we will be making these again very soon.

Sweet Potato Wedges with Tangy Lime Mayo adapted from Bon Appetit

Serves 4 as a side

Ingredients

* 3 sweet potatoes (about 1 1/2 lbs)
* 2 Tbsps vegetable oil (peanut is a good choice and so is rice bran as they both have a high smoke point)
* Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
* 1/3 cup mayonnaise
* teeny squirt of sriracha (totally optional)
* 1/4 tsp lime zest
* 2 tsps fresh lime juice

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Peel the sweet potatoes.

2. Slice them into wedges - do your best to split them into similarly sized pieces so they'll cook evenly. Toss the wedges in a metal bowl with the oil, kosher salt, black pepper, and a little bit of ground cumin.

3. Place the oiled wedges on a heavy baking tray, making sure to place them in a single layer and laying the larger, thicker pieces around the outside edge as they're better able to withstand the higher heat than the smaller, thinner pieces. Pop them into the oven and roast, turning once, for 25-30 minutes, until golden brown and crisped on the outsides.

4. While they're baking, whisk the mayonnaise, lime zest, lime juice and optional sriracha together and add sea salt to taste. Move the fries to a platter and serve with the mayo.

You might also like:

• Perfect Oven Fries With Lemon Aioli
• Sweet Potato Biscuits
• Sweet Potatoes & Winter Greens

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A Lovely Lentil Salad

Like a fine wine, this salad improves with time. Although it's delicious right away, it tastes even better the next day when all the good flavors have had a chance to get to know one another a little better (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) and soak into the lentils in a truly delightful way.

The recipe comes by way of my beloved aunt Maggie. Technically, she's actually my husband's aunt but I decided early on in our relationship that there would be nothing "in-law" about it. She's one of those wonderful individuals who likes to get her hands dirty - raising her own lambs and chickens (and killing 'em, too), growing her own food, tapping her own maple trees, canning her own tomatoes - you get the picture. Maggie is a rare soul - she's full of life, full of fun, down to earth, creative, loyal,  a ready listener, and a great cook, of course.

Here she is in very early spring, planting peas along the fence of her garden in Vermont.

Unfortunately, our dear Maggie is in the battle for her life right now as she tries her darndest to beat a recurrence of the blood cancer she kicked to the curb about six years ago. Please do me a big favor and send her some good vibes to help her get back to health so she can get back to planting seeds, digging in the dirt, and making art ASAP.

Maggie made this lentil salad as part of a feast-style dinner she laid out last time we visited - a month or so before our second son was born. The amazing meal included grilled lamb that had grown fat on the grass in the very field we looked out on from the dinner table, baked taters that had only recently parted with the dirt they were grown in, green salad from her garden and culminating in homemade strawberry shortcake made with berries from the farm up the road.

It was all so delicious and the baby-to-be was leaving so little space for my stomach by that point in the pregnancy that I spent the rest of the evening in extreme discomfort - stuffed to the bursting point. But it was worth it!

As with many of the salads I like, this one is open to interpretation - there are lots of potential additions or you can keep it simple. I had some sweet peppers, celery and carrots on hand so I went with those bright and crunchy additions along with a generous helping of chopped Italian parsley and cilantro.

You could also add some fresh arugula or baby spinach, a handful of toasted nuts, some goat cheese and any other veggies you have on hand that you think would make a good addition.

Make plenty of this to ensure that you get to enjoy the even more delicious leftovers. It should keep for a few days in the fridge. And please raise a fork to my aunt Maggie when you make it.

-- print recipe --Spiced Lentil Salad with Currants & Capers adapted slightly from the lovely blog, My New Roots

Serves 4-6 as a side

Ingredients
* 2 ¼ cups (1 lb.) Du Puy lentils
* 1/4 medium red onion, finely diced
* 1 cup dried currants (you could also use raisins or other dried fruit and chop them up finely)
* 1/3 cup capers
* Fresh herbs, chopped (parsley, cilantro, basil or mint) to taste
* 1 large carrot, peeled and diced
* 1 medium bell pepper, seeds and stem removed and diced
* 1 clove of garlic, peeled
* 1 bay leaf

For the dressing:

* 1/3 cup cold pressed, extra virgin organic olive oil
* 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
* 1 Tbsp maple syrup
* 1 Tbsp strong mustard
* 2 tsps sea salt
* 2 tsps freshly ground black pepper
* 1 tsp ground cumin
* 1/2 tsp turmeric
* 1/2 tsp ground coriander
* ½ tsp ground cardamom
* 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
* ¼ tsp ground cloves
* 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
* ¼ tsp ground cinnamon

Directions

1. Rinse the lentils well and pick through them to remove any dirt or bits of rock. Drain them, then put them in a pot with the garlic clove and the bay leaf and cover with 3-4 inches of water. Cover and bring to a boil then turn the heat down and let it simmer for 20-25 minutes. You should start testing the lentils for doneness at around 15 minutes in, just in case, since you don't want to overcook them - mushy lentils are just not as appealing as toothsome ones.

2. While the lentils are simmering, make the dressing by placing all ingredients in a jar with a tight fitting lid and shake vigorously to combine. If you don't have all the spices, don't despair, it will probably still taste good with just some of them - for my money, the cumin and coriander are the most important ones to include.

3. Dice up the onion (very fine) and chop up your veggies and herbs, trying to get the vegetables cut to roughly the same size. If you're using raisins instead of currants, I'd chop them up a bit and you can do the same with the capers if you have large ones.

4. When the lentils are finished, take the pot off the heat, drain it and fill with cold water to stop the lentils from continuing to cook (and getting mushy.) After a few minutes, drain the water out and pour the lentils into a serving bowl and toss with the dressing. Add the onions, herbs, veggies, currants and capers (and any other ingredients you've chosen to add) and serve.

As I mentioned, this tastes even better the next day so you can definitely make it ahead of time and just keep it covered in the fridge.

You might also like:

• Mujadara - Lentil, Rice & Onion Stew from Syria
• Warm, Spiced Chickpea & Arugula Salad
• Hummous with Caramelized Onions, Topped with Golden Beets, Greek Yogurt & Pinenuts

Want even more recipes, photos, giveaways, and food-related inspiration? "Like" the Garden of Eating on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter or Pinterest.

Wood Stove Roasted Eggplant with Garlic Scape Pesto & Tomatoes

The wood stove was a fixture of my childhood. "Hot" was my first word, accompanied by an emphatic "hands-off" motion. Until modesty eventually overcame us, my brother and I would get dressed near the stove on frigid winter mornings - its heat helped to make those painfully early, cold mornings more bearable.

I remember daring each other to touch the hot black cast iron for just a second before pulling our fingertips away and the joy of watching water spit and dance any time a drop of ice or snow landed on it. There was also a brief, thrilling chapter of spitting on the stove's top to enjoy this effect before my mother made us stop.

The wood stove in my parents' kitchen with Dutch-inspired tile mural by my mom, Rosemary Fox, copyright 2011.

When we got a little older, the care and feeding of the wood stove was added to our chores - stacking wood in the fall, carrying endless loads of wood inside to feed our stoves and fireplace, scooping the ashes out, dumping the bucket of ashes on the compost pile, and sweeping the ever-present mixture of bark, sawdust, dirt and ash from the hearth tiles.

But I never realized you could cook in the wood stove until I watched a friend's mom wrap some sweet potatoes in tin foil and toss them into the coals when I was over for dinner. Why hadn't we ever thought of that?!

It's been at least 20 years since that aha moment but the idea came back to me the other night when we were casting about for something easy to make for dinner. I sliced up two eggplants, rubbed each slice with olive oil, sea salt and pepper, then layered on some homemade garlic scape pesto that we'd frozen and smeared on some tomato paste.

Then I wrapped them each in several layers of tinfoil (unless it's ripped or covered with something really yucky like fish skin, we wash this and reuse it.)

We popped open the stove door, raked the coals into a nice cozy bed and placed the little eggplant zeppelins on them. We got out the big tongs we use for the barbecue and flipped the eggplants a few times to ensure even cooking.

After about 20 minutes, they were done. We took them out of the stove, all covered in ashes, and opened the steaming packages up.

The eggplant was perfect - tender and flavorful. I topped the slices with crumbled feta cheese and drizzled them with a little olive oil.

Tasted divine and the clean up was minimal, too.

If you have a wood stove or fireplace, give this a whirl. Happy new year, all!

You might also like:

• Roasted Eggplant & Tomato Gratin
• Grilled Eggplant Stacks with Tomato, Feta & Basil
• Provençal Vegetable Tian

Want even more recipes, photos, giveaways, and food-related inspiration? "Like" the Garden of Eating on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter or Pinterest.