Sweet potato salad...ish

I am not the most enthusiastic to cook for one. Especially when the one I need to cook for is myself. I try to make do with any frozen meals or a mix of left-overs or such, basically not the most nutritious or tasty I would admit. A few months ago, I was making soups regularly on Monday nights because I wanted to nail the recipe of Indian style Tomato soup. Ah, another story.

But this Monday, I decided to cook a healthy meal for myself. I do not live alone :) It is just that Mr T fasts on Monday evenings, so I eat alone on Monday evenings. Over the weekend, I bought a sweet potato from Wegmans. Now it has been a long while since I ate a sweet potato, wonder why! 

I looked up on the internet for dishes to be made with sweet potatoes - salads or sweet potato chat, any tasty dish that can be put together quickly and is nutritious. In the end, I decided to try something myself and the end result looks like this:

This is boiled sweet potato, cubed and sauteed with onions, mirchi, cilantro, toasted peanuts and boiled kala chana (Hindi name) with salt to taste.

Not the most flattering capture, I agree. But this was not shot with a blog post in mind. I shot this only to tease Mr T. And boy did he want to eat this!

OK, onto the recipe now:

You would need:

1 medium sized sweet potato

1 small red onion

1 mirchi

1 tbsp olive oil or any cooking oil

1 tbsp toasted peanuts

1-2 tbsp boiled kala chana

Some cilantro

Oil to taste

Amchur or chaat masala, optional

1. Boil the sweet potato, it should be cooked yet firm enough to be cubed. Peel it and cut it into cubes

2. Cut a small red onion and saute this first in the cooking oil.

3. Slice the mirchi and saute this along with the onion

4. Add in the cubed sweet potato, toasted peanuts and boiled kala chana.

5. Sprinkle salt to taste and toss the mix. Leave on heat for 20 seconds.

6. Now sprinkle on amchur or chaat masala, if desired.

7. Cut the cilantro and add into the mix as you turn off the heat.

Enjoy the preparation!

The sweetness of sweet potato is retained while onions give the dish a sharper taste. Mirchi adds the spice, peanuts render crunchiness to the dish and boiled kala chana add bite. Cilantro gives it a wonderful flavor and if any masala powder was added, that would be to add tanginess to the mix. Not just to taste, it is nutritious too. Vitamin A, protein, good fats, potassium, selenium - certainly nutritious :)

If you were to try it out, do let me know how it turned out. Also if you adopted it to your tastes, do let me know the variation. I would love to experiment!

First Post

First things first - I have always been an introvert. But I always maintained a set of friends I connected with all the time. Over time, I seem to have turned into somewhat of a recluse. I cannot exactly pinpoint to the moment when this happened. It was a gradual change I would like to think. 

Anyways, here I am. I found my interest in reading books once again. As usual, I am still watching a lot of TV :) And I would like to share my thoughts about these.