Dosas with sweet potato mash

A really tasty weekday meal, which takes 30 or 6o minutes depending on how you would like your sweet potatoes cooked. Start by making the mash. For the longer version, halv the sweet and baking potatoes and roast them on an oven tray for 45 minutes (200 degrees centigrade). If you want to save time, just peel and chop the sweet and baking potatoes and boil for 20 minutes. In the meantime, fry the ginger, fresh and dry chilli, mustard seeds and turmeric in a bit of sunflower oil until the spices warm up and the mixture is well combined. Put to the side.

To make the batter, add the gram flour, plain flour, bicarbonate of soda and mustard seeds in a bowl. Add water until you have a smooth, thin batter. The consistency should be like double cream and quite runny.

Before you start making the dosas, you’ll need to finish the mash. Drain the potatoes, roughly mash them and add the fried spice mixture. Add the juice of one lime, spring onions and chopped coriander. Once the mash is ready you can start making the dosas. Put a non-stick frying pan over medium heat (don’t add any oil as the batter need to ‘stick’ to the pan to spread out thinly). Add a ladle of the dosa batter, lift the pan and tilt it all the way around until the batter has evenly spread out into a really thin pancake. Once there are little holes in the batter and the edges start to lift from the bottom of the pan, add a couple of spoonfuls of the mash in a row in the middle and gently roll into a pancake. Sprinkle some coconut and yoghurt on top and serve immediately.

For the mash:

2 baking potatoes

2 sweet potatoes

1 fresh red chilli

1 cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled and finely sliced

1 1/2 tsp black mustard seeds

1 tsp turmeric

A pince of dried chilli flakes

For the dosa batter:

200ml gram flour

200ml plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 1/2 tsp black mustard seeds

To garnish:

1 lime – halved and juiced

4 spring onions – trimmed and finely sliced

Coriander – roughly chopped

Toasted desiccated coconut (optional)

Minted yoghurt (optional)

Serves 4 people (when I cook this as dinner for two I half the batter and keep the same amount of mash)

Vegging out

Nights drawing in and I’ve gone into hibernation mode, craving hearty food. But trying to stay reasonably healthy at the same time. Halfway house has been cooking vegetables, being inspired by Hugh’s latest TV series. These are some of the dishes from his latest book which I tried this week. Both are quite easy to make, both under 1 hour from start to finish, and they taste great.

The Beetroot Tarte Tatin is easy to make. I bought mini pre-cooked beets from Sainsburys. These were in vinegar already, so you need to change the quantities in the recipe, adding less vinegar and more sugar. I started by adding some olive oil, butter, 2 tbsp of apple vinegar and soft brown sugar to a skillet pan (that fits your oven). Once it’s all melting and coming together, toss in the halved beets and warm them through. Turn all the small beets with their halved sides facing upward. Add the ready rolled puff pastry and trim off the excess using some kitchen scissors and place the skillet pan in the oven. Cook in a pre-heated oven at 190 degrees until the pastry is well risen. Once cooled a bit, turn it out onto a plate. I served it with some salad around the tarte.

We also tried the sweet potato ‘satay sauce’ gratain. Taking 4 large sweet potatoes, cutting them into thin slices using a mandolin. Placing the slices in a bowl and mixing in some sunflower oil 200ml cream (I used single rather than double), a small diced red chilli and 1 garlice clove finely chopped. Adding a bit of salt and pepper. Then adding half of the slices to a gratin, oven proof dish. Then taking 90g peanut butter (150g felt too much), mixing it in a bowl with a bit of oil and 50m of the cream until smooth. Add a layer of this on top of the sweet potato before placing the remaining slices on top. Salt and pepper on top and bake in a pre-heated oven at 190 degrees (20 minutes covered in foil, 30 minutes without foil). We served it with some blue cheese which cut through the slightly sweet and fragrant gratin.