The first time I had this salad was at a Thanksgiving dinner with our beautiful – literally beautiful – friends, Isabelle & Serge.
The food that night was delicious but I was mostly attracted to this salad. I was charmed by the combination of sweet potatoes, their tenderness and the spicy, crunchy onion and, the nutty flavor tahini. I made sure that it stays on my side of the table.
Since Serge gave me this recipe I’ve made it at least five times (at some point we started to get sick of sweet potatoes in general; We have been eating them almost every day for a month to improve some digestion problems that I had.)
Serge roasted the onion together with the sweet potatoes, but, honestly, I forgot to, yet it still came out delicious and gave the salad its crunchiness. Serge also added toasted pine nuts and I added roasted hazelnuts or almonds. In other words, any nut will do, or skip the nuts if you need to.
It can be served as a side dish or a light-dish for lunch as well.
Sweet potato salad with tahini
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons canola or coconut oil (melt the coconut oil before - just put it on the baking paper for a minute before you add the potatoes)
- 2 large sweet potatoes
- ½ cup tahini butter
- ½ lemon
- ½ cup filtered water
- Half small onion
- handful parsley leaves (soaked in cold water to remove sand)
- Salt & pepper
- Handful toasted pine nuts or any nut of your choice- optional
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Line a baking pan with baking paper.
- Wash the potatoes and scrub their skin. Dry with a clean kitchen towel and cut them into 1" x 1" dice. Pour the oil onto the baking paper and add the potatoes. Mix the potatoes with the oil, sprinkle salt over and put the baking pan into the oven for 20 minutes or until the sweet potatoes are tender.
Meanwhile prepare the tahini dressing
- Put the tahini butter in a small bowl. Squeeze inside the lemon juice. Stir gently with a spoon until the tahini butter begins to thicken and harden. Gradually stir in some water until the texture is smooth and velvety. Put it a side.
- Slice the onion as thin as possible (Japanese mandoline does a great job). Set the onion a side. Dry the parsley leaves with a kitchen towel, then roughly chop them.
- Put the roasted sweet potatoes in a medium size bowl, add the onions and parsley, and pour the tahini dressing over. Sprinkle nuts, salt and peppers and serve. You can toss gently and then serve but it looks nicer before tossing.
