Vegan Recipes

 One of my favourite Japanese sweet is the baked sweet potato wagashi. I made something similar to this before, and I thought that the New Zealand kumara looks like a Japanese potato... but then I ended up with something completely different :-).

First of all kumara are much softer that Japanese sweet potatoes, then I only had an orange kumara at home (the red ones are better because they are white inside). I thought of baking my kumara, as steaming it was going to make it even softer and in the meantime I drunk a bit of Umeshu,  (my husband came back from Japan with a bottle of Choya Umeshu, sweet plum sake) and decided to soak a few sultanas in some too to add to my cakes. Once my kumara was done I quickly realized that it was going to be far too soft for molding, so I reverted to plan B, i.e. not shaping the sweets by chakin shibori (with a muslin cloth or handkerchief), but simply dropping them on the baking tray with a spoon! For one mashed kumara I added 2 tsp of brown sugar, and then 'dropped' three tablespoons of the mixture on the baking tray. I did the other three adding the sultana soaked in Umeshu, just to make a variation. 

 I baked everything at 180°C for about 15 minutes. To look at them I think that these are among the ugliest sweets I have ever made, but they tasted incredibly good, especially the ones with the sultana. I will make them again, but I will also look for some more 'floury' sweet potatoes (not kumara) so if you know where I can get some in Auckland please let me know!

I was not sure if you post this or not... I roasted some veggies, pumpkin, potatoes (previously boiled but not too soft) and orange kumara with red onion... everything was drizzled with olive oil and the first two were seasoned with salt, smoked paprika, garlic, cumin seeds and just a little chili. The kumara and red onion just had salt and olive oil, and once baked I added some Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena. Everything was so yummy, but ... by mistake I must have deleted the image with the roasted veggies! I looked for it on my phone, it was gone, completely gone! I think that these days I am taking far too many photos with my iPhone, and to make space I need to delete a lot of them, and sometimes I delete them before downloading them!!! Yes, it is not the first time that something like this has happened :-(. Does it ever happens to you? And does anyone know how many pics I can have on my iPhone at any moment? I am so scared of overloading it... thank you and enjoy the pics of the 'raw' vegs!