roasted sweet potatoes & lemongrass crème fraîche

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Sometimes we come across a recipe that, like a phone booth, turns you from dinner schlub into culinary hero. And like that phone booth, which would be an apple store today, this one takes less effort than it took me to put the accent grave & circumflex marks of crème fraîche into this post. So little effort that if you don’t want to make the sauce, we have an almost comparable way to get the same flavors with a pinch of your fingers.

Let’s start with the recipe above from Ottolenghi, you know the Jerusalem author; only this recipe is out of his Plenty cookbook. The sweet potatoes, pure gold in their own right, are baked in an two-part seasoning mixture. Before serving, we top the sweet potatoes with cilantro leaves and finely diced red chili pepper (Fresno or Thai are my favorite – the only thing the two locations have in common).

This sauce could make a dishcloth palatable and I implore you to make the attempt. If you’re not into the hassle or want to avoid crème fraîche and it’s accent graves and circumflexes, you simply spritz the baked wedges with lime juice before adding garnishes. That’s right, lime juice. The balance between the sweetness of the potatoes and the tartness of lime juice creates tastebud magic. Make this tonight!!!

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