Sunday Dinner: Warm Sweet Potato and Kale Salad (plus my take on Chex Mix!)

We've received quite a few sweet potatoes in our CSA box in the past couple of weeks. I was thrilled because I absolutely love sweet potatoes, but for some reason they have sat on our window sill ever since we got them, entirely unused.

I was determined to change that today, and I had intended to make some sweet potato and black bean enchiladas - turns out we had neither black beans nor enchilada sauce and I was not about to go out in the cold and face the pre-Thanksgiving crowds at the grocery stores. Instead I started browsing foodgawker for sweet potato recipes trying to find something that used ingredients I already had at home. I came across a recipe for a grilled sweet potato and zucchini salad that looked very pretty, but I only had some of the ingredients so I started improvising. Here is what I came up with:

Warm Sweet Potato and Kale Salad (adapted from here)
1 large or 2 small sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced thinly
1 small onion, sliced thinly (about 1/2 cup)
1 cup frozen corn
1 link Field Roast Apple-Sage Sausage, diced
5-6 leaves of kale, stems removed and cut into thin strips
1.5 T  balsamic vinegar
3 T extra-virgin olive oil (plus extra for sauteing and roasting)
1 T fresh chopped rosemary
1 T chopped fresh oregano
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup fresh Parmesan cheese (shavings or shredded)

1) Preheat oven to 425 - toss the thin slices of sweet potato with olive oil, salt and pepper and arrange on a baking sheet in a thin layer (my baking sheet was too small to do a single layer so I stacked them into two layers and it worked fine). Roast for ~10minutes, turning once or twice, or until sweet potatoes are soft and some are slightly crispy on the edges.
2) Saute the onions over medium-high heat until soft, add the diced sausage and cook for another few minutes. Add in the corn and cook until heated through.
3) Combine the oil, vinegar, herbs, salt and pepper in a large bowl - add in the warm sweet potatoes and the onion, sausage, corn mixture and toss to coat. Pour over the chopped kale and toss - let sit for a few minutes until the kale is slightly wilted. Top with the shaved parmesan.

I really enjoyed the end result - Jonathan said it was interesting, which is usually code for not something he is crazy about, but then he ate about three servings of it and continued to eat out of the severing bowl after he was done. I think that means it was pretty good.

Now on to Chex Mix. This is another food item that I have strong opinions about, it is not something that is to be bought pre-made from the store, or even made in the microwave (I don't even know how that is possible or why they would advertise that). Like pie crust, Chex Mix is something my Grandma has always made and she passed that love on to me. It's really super simple, but so so so much more delicious than the store bought kind.

Every time I make Chex Mix I think about the first time I helped my Grandma make it - I wasn't a young child, I was 15 and my boyfriend at the time had recently gone vegan. He had always really like my Grandma's Chex Mix though so I decided that I would make a vegan version of it for him and his sister who was also vegan. I got some Earth Balance to replace the butter and went to work. I was pretty proud of my vegan Chex Mix, until I brought it to their house and his mom - looking amazed - asked me where I found Worcestershire sauce without anchovies.  And that was one of many lessons in reading labels for ingredients, because it had absolutely never occurred to me that this sauce we were adding to the mixture might possibly have some component that wasn't vegan, let alone vegetarian!

Well good news for me - there really is a vegan version of Worcestershire sauce! I may not have used it that first time, but at least I learned. There aren't many ingredients involved in making Chex Mix, and I narrowed my own version down even more so it has just the things I like in it. You see, if you used mix nuts then I would spend the whole time searching for just the cashews, so that's all I use.

You'll need: wheat, corn, and rice Chex cereal, cashews, pretzels, butter, Worcestershire sauce (vegan!), garlic powder, and seasoning salt.

1) Preheat the oven to 250 - while the oven is heating I use this time to melt the butter, just throw the whole stick (yep - all 8 Tbs.) into a large pan - and I mean large - and place in the oven to melt.
2) Mix 2 Tbs. of Worcestershire sauce with 1.5 tsp of seasoning salt and 1 tsp of garlic powder. When the butter is melted, pour the seasoning mixture into the pan and whisk together until combined.
3) Pour in 1-1.5 cups of cashews, 1 cup pretzels, 2 cups wheat Chex, 3-4 cups each of corn and rice Chex. Mix well to combine with the butter/seasoning mixture.
4) Bake for 1hr 15 minutes, stirring well every 15 minutes. Pour onto paper towels to cool - and really wait for it to cool, for whatever reason warm Chex Mix does not taste very good.
5) Try not to eat the whole batch in one sitting. It's tough.

Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoy some time with family and friends! Next weekend we can look forward to Christmas trees and watching Christmas Vacation - yes!

-C