Scotch Eggs and warm sweetpotato and avocado salad

Last Christmas, Irina came with a delicious sweet potato and avocado salad. As I had sweet potato and saw (frozen) avocadoes at Iceland, I wanted to try it out. The end result was delicious. Besides topping the salad with just coriander we also did our 3rd pea shoot harvest before planting the peas in the garden.  It they turn out to give us peas all the better if not, at least the roots will slow release nitrogen into our raised beds.


Although on this picture it looks like a lovely spring day, it has been windy, (well stormy Chiara and storm Dennis) wet with the occasional frost.

The early warmth however has made the apricot tree come out in blossom too early. No sign of bees yet so Kanako is giving nature a little hand by using a swan feather to pollinate the tree.

Warm festive sweet potato salad:

Ingredients: 

4 large sweet potatoes

2 ripe avocados

1/2 pound cherry tomatoes

1-2 lemons

1 lime (optional)

5-6 cloves of garlic

pack of fresh cilantro (coriander)

cumin spice powder

any hot pepper spice powder ( either pimiento or cayenne,or chili, etc)

1. Clean and peel sweet potatoes, cut into 1 inch cubes, place on a baking sheet  and put into 225 degrees C oven for approximately 30 minutes or until tender.  Take care not to overcook them, the sweet potato cubes should NOT become brown! Gently turn them over half way through if needed.

2. While sweet potato cubes are baking prepare the rest of the vegetables and the dressing. Peel avocados and cut them into 1/2 inch pieces. Wash the cherry tomatoes and cut them either in halves or in quarters depending on their size.

3. For the dressing squeeze the juice from 1 or 2 lemons plus 1 or 2 limes (optional). Use it all! Add two tablespoons of cumin powder (or more!, it is not hot, it just adds very nice hearty taste) and 1/4 of teaspoon of hot pepper (use less pepper if you do not like spicy foods) Press 5-6 (or more !) peeled garlic cloves through the garlic press, add to the lemon juice. Wash a large bunch of cilantro, chop into small pieces, mix well with the lemon juice, garlic and spices.

4. In a large serving dish assemble the salad: put all sweet potatoes at the bottom, then add 1/2 of tomatoes and avocados, generously cover with the dressing, add the rest of the tomatoes and avocados on top. Enjoy!

We also made some (gluten free) scotch eggs. We found a novel idea on how to take the shell of the eggs easily.  Boil water first, then add the eggs and boil for 10 minutes. Have a bowl ready with ice cold water and put the eggs in this to quickly cool down.
 in a container we added the egg, shook it vigorously and the egg shell came off almost by itself.

For the 'meat' we used green lentil paste, onion, grated carrots and beetroot, garlic and smoked paprika.  We made the scotch egg as normal. 

 Dip the hardboiled egg in (rice) flour, then shape the 'meat' around it, then dip in egg followed by dipping into breadcrumbs.

As the oven was on, we put them on a tray in the oven, but you could also have deep fried them.

They were lovely we some bread & butter pickle.