If you’ve been following our Simply Recipes updates on Twitter then you know that I recently spent a week in the Bahamas with several other food bloggers at the Club Med Food and Wine Festival (more on that soon). As we were being wined and dined, and treated to amazing 6 and 7 course meals every night I kept my eye out for ideas and recipes that might work well for us at home. The first night’s dinner was spectacular (you can see a list of menus here on Jaden’s site), and included fresh caught wahoo fish served on top of a boniato mint mash. As good as the fish was, I could have skipped it completely and just had a huge plate of the sweet potatoes, they were so good.

Boniato is a sweet potato popular in the Caribbean, light in color, and fluffy when cooked. The chef who prepared the mash was Chef Sean Bernal of The Oceanaire Seafood Room Miami, who recalled to us how his grandmother in Puerto Rico would make him boniato sweet potato with onions and mint. Chef Sean generously shared with us how he prepared the mash, the trick he said was to roast the sweet potatoes so that you get the richness of flavor from the caramelization of the sugars in them. I prepared a couple batches, one boiled and one roasted, and I agree that the roasted approach produces more flavor, but it also takes longer to cook and uses more energy, so if you have time, yes, roast, but if not, boiling works fine too. The real surprise was the combination of the sweet potatoes, crunchy raw chopped onions, and mint. I never would have thought to put mint with sweet potatoes, but it’s a great combination.

Continue reading "Sweet Potato Mash with Mint" »