Gluten free: Sweet Potato Toast

Replacing bread with sweet potatoes fits into a gluten free diet and is great for diabetics. A big plus: It replaces simple with complex carbohydrates and delivers a wealth of nutrition.

Sweet potatoes oxidise immediately when they hit the air and turn a rather unappealing darkish-greenish tone.

Warning: Sweet potato is difficult to work with although it delivers a healthy base for a kind of Ersatz-sandwich.

I knew this, so I had a big bowl with water ready to avoid oxidation of peeled slices. When I started to cut the skin of, I met with heavy resistance. It required all my gym-trained muscle to get rid of the dirty skin. Now I know why many cooks use sweet potatoes with the skin.

The second difficulty was slicing the colossal sweet potatoe. I tried with my biggest kitchen knife from Solingen and failed miserably. So I took my sharpest, Swiss made kitchen knife and sliced all around the sweet potato to have a guiding line. That delivered chunky slices.

Some cooks recommend using a mandoline. But this leads to tiny slices — I do not consider a chips-like thingy to be an adequate replacement for toast. Other chefs praise how easy it is to prepare sweet potato toast in a toaster. I consider this an urban myth.

It took me half an hour to slice my giant. Once again I was astonished how quickly the sweet potato changes colour. I decided to blanch them to preserve their colour before baking them in the oven. This worked well. The slices left the salt water with a golden yellow colour. However, during baking they turned into their usual darkish-greenish tone. I might as well have saved the effort of blanching them — it reduced the baking time though. Next time I will try to deep-fry them in ghee, clarified butter.

The taste was a revelation though. “Highly addictive” was the comment of my 17 year old son who does not praise culinary achievements lightly.

Wishing you happy cooking, always!

PS: My new book Cooking for Happiness got the title ‘Best in the World’ at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in the category innovation.

Ingredients:

• Sweet potatos
• Coconut oil
• Salt
• Toppings of your choice

Method:

Keep a bowl of water handy. Peel and slice the sweet potatoes.

Keep the slices in water to avoid oxidation.

Bring plenty of water to boil in a big pot. Add salt and blanche the sweet potato slices for three to five minutes.

Take the slices out of the boiling water with a slotted spoon and place them onto a cookie tray. I covered mine with a silicon sheet to avoid sticking. You can also spread some coconut oil over the sheet.

I used homemade coconut oil and a kitchen brush to cover the sweet potato slices.

I brushed the slices on both sides with coconut oil to ensure crispiness. Then I baked them for half an hour at around 210 degrees Celsius. After half of the baking time I turned them. You want to see brown-golden marks on the surface.
Remember: The baking time depends on your oven.

For the picture I chose three different toppings: Cream cheese with slices kiwi, tandoori hummus with stripes of red bell pepper and homemade chocolate-peanut butter cream with slices of banana, sprinkled with cinnamon.

Our favourite: chocolate and peanut butter cream with banana. For the cream melt dark chocolate with peanut butter and some milk. Don’t ask me for amounts please. Just wing it. I also liked the cream cheese with kiwi. The slightly sour, fresh taste of kiwi provides a nice contrast to the sweetness of the potato.

Originally published at https://korneliaskitchen.blogspot.com.