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Baked Sweet Potato with Olives, Feta, and Chile

Two sweet potatoes one slit open and filled with the titular ingredients.
Photo by Floortje Van Essen-Ingen Housz

Baking intensifies the sweetness of sweet potatoes and gives the bright orange flesh a kind of fluffiness—light and soft at the same time. Sweet potato is terrific combined with salty olives, creamy feta, and hot chile pepper. Once they're baked, you can easily keep them in the fridge for days, or you can use them to make a quick, flavorful soup.

Recipe information

  • Yield

    1 serving, with leftovers

Ingredients

2 very large or 4–5 small sweet potatoes
Olive oil, for greasing and drizzling
Coarse sea salt
50 g creamy feta (about 1/3 cup crumbles)
A small handful of salty black olives, pitted and coarsely chopped
1 red chile pepper (with or without seeds), sliced into rings
A small handful of fresh cilantro leaves, coarsely chopped

Preparation

  1. Step 1

    Preheat the oven to 400°F. Scrub, rinse and dry the sweet potatoes. Pour a little olive oil on to your palms and rub this over the unpeeled sweet potatoes.

    Step 2

    Next, rub in some coarse salt. Pierce the sweet potatoes a few times on all sides using a small sharp knife, then wrap them in tin foil and bake for an hour (or a little longer, if necessary) until done. Use half of them immediately and leave the rest to cool.

    Step 3

    Place the sweet potato(es) on a plate and open the foil. Cut in half lengthways, then press on the outside of the halves so that the fluffy flesh bulges out slightly. Crumble the feta over the sweet potato(es), top with the olives, chile pepper and cilantro, and drizzle generously with olive oil.

Cover of the cookbook featuring four images: a ramen, a pasta, fish over rice, and dessert in coffee cup.
From Solo Food: 72 Recipes for You Alone © 2019 by Janneke Vreugdenhil. Reprinted with permission by HQ, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Buy the full book from HarperCollins or from Amazon.
TagsSweet PotatoPotatoRoot VegetableVegetableMainSideLunchDinnerNut FreeGluten FreeVegetarianEasyRoastThanksgivingHarper CollinsCookbooks

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