One day I decided to try a recipe from Deliciously Ella (www.deliciouslyella.com) for a sweet potato bake. I like trying new things especially for Meat Free Mondays, as vegetarian meals can get pretty repetitive sometimes. What resulted was an immediate addiction to baked sweet potatoes, and I ended up having this meal four times that week, meat free day or no meat free day.

What’s great about this is that, a) it takes minimal effort, which makes it great for weekday dinners b) you can stuff the baked sweet potato any way you want. But this recipe is pretty much my preference when it comes to combo – creamy hummus, crunchy roasted cauliflower and delicious sautéed mushrooms. What a plate of goodness.

This serves 2.

Here’s what you need:
2 medium/large sweet potatoes
Hummus (at grocery stores in the ‘spreads’ section, or any nearby Middle Eastern restaurants)
½ floret of cauliflower
100 gm field mushrooms, or any mushrooms you fancy
1 clove garlic
Chili flakes
¼ lemon

Here’s what you do:

1. Preheat oven at 180 degrees celcius.
2. Place the sweet potatoes right on the rack (or on baking tray), and bake for 1 hour.
3. Cut the cauliflower into small bite sized florets, dress them in some salt, pepper, olive oil and cayenne pepper powder (cayenne is optional)
4. Roast the cauliflower for 30 mins in the same oven as the sweet potatoes.
5. To sautee the mushrooms, cut them however you like, and sautee with olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper and chili flakes for 4-5 minutes.
6. Assemble: Take the potatoes out, cut them in half. Spread with a lot of hummus on the insides, and stuff with cauliflower and mushrooms.
7. Best served warm on a rainy night.

I’ve probably made this more than 50 times. The first time I tried this recipe was when in college. I was never the instant noodles kinda girl – I liked proper good food, so as a student I was always looking for cheap, healthy delicious food that wouldn't burn a hole in my purse. So far, out of the roast chicken recipes I’ve tried (and believe me, I’ve tried many), this one still stands as the best, takes zero effort and is just completely gratifying. I still make this now and then, especially for cold, weekday dinners when work is giving me a hard time.
This recipe serves 2.

Here’s what you need:
2 chicken legs, cut ¼ from a whole chicken
½ a bulb of garlic
2 large potatoes, cut into golf ball sizes
2 handful tomatoes, whatever size, halved or quartered
1 tspn dried basil, or a good bunch of fresh chopped basil
1 red chilli, roughly chopped

Here’s what you do:

1. Heat the oven at 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Clean chicken, cutting off excessive fat.
3. Mix all the ingredients together in a deep baking tray/casserole dish. Don’t take the skin off the garlic, and you can choose to keep the potato skins on/off. Season generously with salt and pepper.
4. Dump in the oven for 1 hour and 20 minutes. At half time, turn the chicken over to get the skin side exposed and crispy.
5. To serve, plate the chicken, mash everything left in the baking tray roughly, and serve as side.
6. You can email me to say thank you.