sweet potato

Smokey’s Spicy Bean Burger

| Rhiannon

Recently, we were in Brighton for the day and decided to top it off with a veggie burger. There are a lot of great veggie and vegan options in this city – we’re planning a round-up sooner or later – so narrowing it down was tough. We eventually settled on Smokey’s, which is a bit of a weird one. It’s downstairs – we actually walked past it at first because we didn’t expect to be looking downwards to find it – and despite the American BBQ theme, actually looks more like a traditional English pub inside, albeit with Spanish-language film posters. It’s a strange vibe but quite a nice one, and we settled in well after walking through the rain to get there.

Smokey’s Bean Burger

We were served the “Spicy Bean Burger with salad and Monterey Jack cheese”, which comes in at £7.95 and includes your choice of two sides. We both went for the garlic mushrooms and sweet potato fries, which seemed the obvious choice. Now, value for money is always one of my points of assessment, and here you get it IN SPADES. The plate was huge. I couldn’t finish it all. Me. A food blogger and therefore big eater. Faced with three of my favourite foods of all time, I couldn’t finish it all. That is incredible value.

Smokey’s Bean Burger

Now, onto the burger itself. It was actually kind of an average burger – I definitely enjoyed it, though I wouldn’t say it was anything close to the best burger I’ve ever had. It had a light hint of spiciness but was overall a great bean and vegetable burger. The bread used was very tasty, there was just the right amount of salad (I even ate the gherkins – I’m growing up!), and the amount of food on the plate was amazing. The sweet potato fries were as delicious as they always should be. The mushrooms were a bit of a pleasant surprise as there were no breadcrumbs involved, but very rich and tasty mushrooms simply coated in a garlic sauce. I can say with 100% certainty that we will be eating there again if we get the chance.

Smokey’s Bean Burger

On the VegBurge scale, I give this…

Taste – 7/10

Price – 9/10

Rest of experience – 9/10

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Mildred’s Polish Burger

Mildred's Polish Burger
| Rhiannon

By now, regular readers know that I am a huge fan of Mildred’s, so it’s probably no surprise that I returned in order to try yet another of their marvellous burgers. This one is the Polish Burger from the regular menu. It’s served in a focaccia bun with iceburg lettuce, mayonnaise, pickled cabbage and gherkin, and my favourite: vegan cheese! It’s a beetroot, white bean and dill burger, which sounds amazing even to start with. 

Mildred's Polish Burger
Mildred’s Polish Burger

I chose sweet potato fries as my side – this is probably the one thing that lets Mildred’s down, in that you don’t get your burger with fries or salad as standard. It does rack the price up a bit, which is annoying. But it’s all really amazing food, and even if they don’t change the menu often, I’ve still managed to have something different on three different visits, so there is a lot of variety. 

Mildred's Polish Burger
Mildred’s Polish Burger

This was probably my favourite burger from Mildred’s so far. The tangy dill against the beetroot is always such a great combination, and the ratio was just right here. The smooth taste of the pesto mayonnaise went beautifully, and it was just so so good with perfectly balanced flavours. It was big too and very filling, which means it a) took me ages to eat and b) was really satisfying. And yes, I managed to eat it without a knife and fork. I will not be defeated by a huge burger! 

Mildred's Polish Burger
Mildred’s Polish Burger

On the VegBurge scale, I give this…

Taste – 9/10

Price – 6/10

Rest of experience – 8/10

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Vine Recipe: Sweet Potato Macaroni Cheese Bake

| Rhiannon

One of the latest additions to our cookbook shelf is Simply Nigella, which J received for Christmas, so we’ve been trying out a few of the recipes from it and playing around with them. As soon as I read about this sweet potato version of macaroni cheese, I knew I had to give it a try. As you’ll see below (especially if you have the book to compare to), we did change a few things around and put our own spin on it. Here’s what we came up with!

This was so delicious that we served out half the dish, then came back for seconds. There’s just something magical about sweet potato, cheese, and pasta that I never would have thought of before. I did cheat a little bit: I had some cheese sauce left over from making a lasagne in the week, and since the recipe calls for lots of butter, I decided to skip that part and use my sauce as a base. You can find your own healthy cheese sauce recipe if you wish! Vegan cheese in particular has come on leaps and bounds, so be sure to give it a try if you want a version that is lower calorie and doesn’t require butter or milk.

Sweet Potato Cheese Bake
Serves 2
Originally conceived by Nigella as as a Macaroni Cheese variation, here we've transformed it into a proper cheese bake.
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Ingredients
  1. 500g sweet potatoes
  2. 300g large pasta shells
  3. Half jar of cheesy sauce (eg white lasagne sauce)
  4. 1 tsp English mustard
  5. 1/2 tsp paprika (split in half)
  6. 75g feta cheese
  7. 150g grated cheddar
Instructions
  1. Peel the sweet potatoes and chop into rough 2cm pieces.
  2. Boil a pot of water, add salt, and cook sweet potato pieces for around 10 mins until soft.
  3. Scoop potatoes out of the pan with a slotted spoon, reserving the water for later.
  4. Mash sweet potato into a puree with a fork.
  5. Stir 1/4 tsp paprika and English mustard into the cheesy sauce until fully mixed.
  6. Add the pasta to the sweet potato water and cook according to packet instructions; remove two minutes early.
  7. Drain pasta and fold into the sweet potato mash.
  8. Fold in the white sauce and 125g cheddar.
  9. Place into a baking dish and sprinkle with remaining 25g cheddar and 1/4 tsp paprika.
  10. Bake for around 30 mins at 200c.
Notes
  1. This dish is a great way to use up extra sauce. I find a lasagne only ever needs half a jar of white sauce, so making this the day or days after will use up the excess.
Adapted from Simply Nigella
Adapted from Simply Nigella
VegBurge https://vegburge.com/
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Asda Sweet Potato and Kale Nut Bake

Asda Sweet Potato and Kale Nut Bake
| Rhiannon

This nut bake from Asda has an interesting concept. Much like the Brazilian grills we tried last week, it comes with a sachet of sauce that you can pour over the bake in order to enhance the flavour. This allows you to try it with or without the sauce – though in all honesty I’m still dubious about this format. It’s little more than a gimmick in my eyes – and when you are creating something for the sake of a gimmick, it’s not always going to be the highest quality in terms of actual taste and enjoyment.

Asda Sweet Potato and Kale Nut Bake
Asda Sweet Potato and Kale Nut Bake

Still, we gave this one a try. We both love sweet potato and are often using kale in our recipes, so this one couldn’t go wrong, right? I’m always a bit wary of something that calls itself a nut bake or nut roast as these terms, in my mind, are usually associated with boring and unimaginative veggie options. 

Asda Sweet Potato and Kale Nut Bake
Asda Sweet Potato and Kale Nut Bake

The sauce was not too spicy, just nicely sweet and tangy, so in this case it felt like a good addition. Not perhaps strictly necessary – but still nice. The square bake had strong nutty flavours and was actually quite rich; the kale taste was mostly indistinguishable from something like spinach, so there wasn’t really anything that screamed kale about it necessarily. The various layers were great and there were chunks of sweet potato to enjoy. It had a varied texture throughout to keep things interesting, especially where the nuts were concerned. As far as bakes go, this was definitely better than I expected.

Asda Sweet Potato and Kale Nut Bake
Asda Sweet Potato and Kale Nut Bake

On the VegBurge scale, I give this…

Taste – 7/10

Price – 5/10

Rest of experience – 6/10

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Vine Post: Thai Sweet Potato Soup

| Rhiannon

This week we wanted to share something deceptively simple, delicious, and full of flavour. This Thai-inpsired soup is vegan-friendly and is so lovely you will want to make a little extra for the next day. We made a Vine of how it’s done – be aware that this recipe can take a little longer to prepare than most of our soups thanks to the inclusion of the sweet potato, but it’s totally worth it.

We adored this soup – it’s so simple and filling, and the texture is really interesting. That little Thai flavour makes it perfect for spice addicts without being too strong for those who prefer mild heat. Yum! Here’s the recipe so you can recreate it yourself.

Thai Sweet Potato Soup
Serves 2
Sweet potato soup with a secret kick!
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Prep Time
10 min
Cook Time
35 min
Total Time
45 min
Prep Time
10 min
Cook Time
35 min
Total Time
45 min
Ingredients
  1. 200g sweet potato, chopped up and peeled
  2. 1 small red onion, chopped
  3. 1/2 tbsp Thai curry paste (check vegan/vegetarian as required)
  4. 1/2 tbsp olive oil
  5. 250ml vegetable stock
  6. 250ml coconut milk
Instructions
  1. Heat oil in saucepan and add sweet potato and onion.
  2. Cover with a lid and cook for 15 minutes, until soft and starting to turn golden. Stir frequently.
  3. Increase heat and add curry paste.
  4. Stir-fry for five minutes until curry paste is cooking and fragrant.
  5. Add stock and coconut milk.
  6. Bring to a boil.
  7. Add to blender and blend until somewhat smooth - the soft sweet potato should easily be reduced to tiny fragments.
  8. Return soup to saucepan to heat through.
  9. Serve hot!
Notes
  1. Some brands of Thai curry paste will contain seafood, so be careful!
Adapted from Easy Vegan
Adapted from Easy Vegan
VegBurge https://vegburge.com/
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Birchwood Farm – Sweet Potato and Mozzarella Burger

| Rhiannon

I recently ate this veggie burger while out meeting friends to celebrate Christmas, and of course a great night was had. There was Baileys, good food, and good company, and what more could you wish for? The sweet potato and mozzarella burger, as described on the menu, is served “with peppers and soya beans served in a floured bap with seasoned chips, homemade coleslaw, and a salad garnish”.

So how did it stand up to that description? Well, deliciously, basically. There was smooth sweet potato inside, so creamy and soft that you could barely tell what vegetable it had originated from. If you don’t like sweet potato, you could still love this burger. It was flavourful and a little spicy too, crammed full of lots of little pieces of vegetables like beans and carrots. This was all served up in a coating of crunchy breadcrumbs to make the perfect combination of textures. The bun was also nicely soft and floury, which contrasted well.

Birchwood Farm sweet potato and mozzarella burger

The chips and coleslaw were not anything special, but they were good enough. Simple pub fare with no thrills – they were finished off with the inclusion of a small section of salad in a vinaigrette dressing. This was a very filling and satisfactory meal indeed, such that all plans for dessert were abandoned (largely in favour of more Baileys). Please excuse my slightly wobbly phone pictures on this review… it seems the excitement had already got to me!

Birchwood Farm sweet potato and mozzarella burger

On the VegBurge scale, I give this…

Taste – 9/10

Price – 6/10

Rest of experience – 9/10

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Mildred’s Classic Burger

| Rhiannon

Recently, it was time for another visit to Mildred’s, our favourite veggie spot in London. This time, I decided to try the classic burger: smoked tofu, lentil, piquillo pepper in a focaccia bun with relish, rocket, red onion and tomato with vegan cheese. Vegan cheese! Tofu! Focaccia! I can’t explain the excitement. I also went for a side of sweet potato fries because, well, why wouldn’t you?

Mildred’s Classic Burger

So this was a pretty amazing burger, I can’t deny. It was stuffed with a bounty of peppery rocket which was absolutely perfect against the beautiful basil mayonnaise. I could marry this mayonnaise. I want to eat this mayonnaise at every meal. There was also a perfectly smoky-but-sweet relish which was everything I expect from a burger dressing. There was just enough onion and salad in the bun, rather than the too much or too little I am often complaining about. The burger itself featured whole lentils wrapped in blended soft tofu, all of it cooked to have a crunchy outer shell for a fantastic burger texture.

Mildred’s Classic Burger

Overall it had what I would describe as Italian flavours – the basil, the rocket, the tomato and onion, the pepper. But it was all topped off by what must be considered as a holy grail. The vegan cheese: beautiful, beautiful vegan cheese. We’ve made our own vegan cheese, but that was more like houmous when all was said and done; this is nothing like that. This is a beautiful and almost heartbreaking rendition of Kraft singles cheese – made vegan. The taste, the texture, even the way it moves when you tear it off – all perfect. Scratch what I said about the mayo. I’m marrying this cheese instead.

Mildred’s Classic Burger

The sweet potato fries were creamy and lovely, though some were a bit underdone. I didn’t mind. I smeared them in basil mayo and all was forgiven. I think this must be what the eat in heaven.

On the VegBurge scale, I give this…

Taste – 9.5/10

Price – 7/10

Rest of experience – 9/10

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Vine Post: Hello Fresh Sweet Potato and Carrot Curry

| Rhiannon

This week’s Hello Fresh dish was a sweet potato and carrot curry, which contained more of the dreaded green beans but did promise goodness with the sweet potato at least. This is a good example of a recipe I would never have tried normally – I hate green beans, carrot always seems a bit boring, and I’ve certainly never heard of a curry that combines the two of them. We gave it a try though – as always!

The first thing I noticed was that the directions are a little off. You are told to put exactly 400ml in a pan to boil the carrot and sweet potato, but that was nowhere near enough. I added more to help them cook, which they did beautifully – but then you’re told to add the curry paste without draining the water. Even with boiling it for 20 minutes, there was far too much water. I drained the extra and then about half again, and as you can see below, the sauce was still far too watery. 

Hello Fresh Veggie Curry

The veggies were also just really boring. I would have preferred to add the stock pot to them instead of the rice – in fact, I cooked my own recipe and did exactly that a few days after we ate this, and it was amazing. The rice did taste good here, but it was a little too creamy – the taste and texture not something I normally associate with rice, making it a bit off-putting. 

There isn’t much I would leave the same about this recipe if I was making it again – in fact, I think you’d have to call it a new recipe by the time you got to the end! The green beans were more palatable than I expected, however: boiling brings out the best in them.

So, let’s see a #curryfail in action – here’s the Vine!

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Walrus and Carpenter Vegetable Burger

| Rhiannon

I recently met up with a friend that I don’t see often. He works in London now, and when I’m up there, it’s normally only during the day, so our timetables clash. But recently, I realised that the meeting I had would finish around 5pm, leaving me free, so I fired off a text before heading in. Unfortunately, when I came out, I still hadn’t heard back, and his phone was off when I tried to call. Shrugging my shoulders, I started to head home – two connections on the Tube before getting to the station where I would be taking my final train.

Then of course, my phone went off. By now it was starting to get later, and with both of us on opposite sides of London, we headed for the Tube stop that was easiest for both of us to get to relatively quickly – which happened to be Monument. So far, so good. But where to go for food?

We stumbled across the Walrus and Carpenter, a pub just a short walk from the station that seemed inviting enough. We picked up a menu, I spotted the veggie burger, and it was settled.

It’s priced at £8.95 and is described as “Sweet potato, spiced aubergine, red pepper, sweetcorn and chickpeas, topped with mature Cheddar and tomato salsa”. It’s a fair price for a meal in London, and it was pretty filling, so I was happy with that. It also came with thick cut chips and coleslaw in a homemade style. The menu allows you to add guacamole for 50p, which I did!

Walrus and Carpenter vegetable burger

The chips were tasty – pretty normal pub fare, but good all the same. I’m half certain they are the same ones used by Wetherspoons. The slaw was good too, if a little too peppery for my tastes – but to be honest, I’m not a huge fan of this style of slaw anyway.

The burger bun had a great balance of firmness without being too hard to eat comfortably, an indication of good bread. Inside the bun was a bit of a mess with sauce everywhere (my own fault for ordering the guacamole!), but it all went very well together. The guacamole was smooth and the tomato salsa was not spicy, so it was a good mix. The burger itself was really quite nice: the sweet potato and chickpea flavours came through most, and the chickpeas also contributed to an excellent texture. I’m not sure I could detect the spiced aubergine, though there was a nice mild kick to it. The cheese was a little thin on the ground but had been melted over everything to add extra deliciousness, and the salad was ample (even after I had done my obligatory removal of the tomatoes).

Walrus and Carpenter vegetable burger

Generally speaking, it was a good eat. At that price, in London, at hometime, you couldn’t go wrong with this. We found a quiet, dim corner (sorry about the lighting in the photos!), had a couple of drinks, and had a great time.

On the VegBurge Scale, I give this…

Taste – 7/10

Price – 8/10

Rest of experience – 9/10

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Recipe: Sweet Potato Burger Scones

| Rhiannon

My first idea with this recipe was simply to try and make a sweet potato burger from scratch. I’ve made a few burgers by now, I love sweet potatoes, and I had plenty of ingredients on hand. What could possibly go wrong? Well, a lot, as it turned out. Rather than burgers, I made something which had a very strange consistency. After eating the whole batch, we agreed that they were more closely related to scones, which was a little dent in my cooking ego. Though they were delicious, I have thus far refused to make them again, due to J’s constant insistence that he “would like to have those scones again”. Here’s how I made them.

Sweet Potato Burger Scones

Ingredients:

  • 2 medium sweet potatoes
  • 3 tablespoons agave nectar
  • Around 100g sundried tomatoes
  • 1/2 red onion
  • 1 medium egg
  • 8-10 tablespoons flour
  • 4 teaspoons BBQ spice mix
  • 4 teaspoons pasta spice mix

First of all, I softened up the sweet potatoes by boiling them in water and agave nectar. They went in the blender along with the sundried tomatoes, onion, egg, and spices. As I blended the mixture, it became clear that the mixture was far too wet. There was no way it was going to hold into burger shapes. So the solution was the make it less wet – and adding flour would do that, right? After adding somewhere between eight and ten tablespoons (I lost track), I finally had to concede defeat. The mixture still was not enough to shape into solid lumps of burger, but there was so much flour in it already that I was halfway to making bread. In the end, I shaped it into burgers and then put it into the oven until it was looking more solid and the colour had improved to a more golden shade.

Sweet Potato Burger Scones

As I mentioned earlier, they were actually really tasty. They had the same kind of consistency of a scone, although perhaps a slightly denser one, with the sweet potato flavour. They were a little chewy but very filling. They definitely had a moreish quality to them, and I could actually quite happily make and eat them again. They were hearty, and went well on their own as well as accompanied by elements like avocado and mayonnaise. I perhaps would recommend not bothering with a bread bun, because they are doughy enough not to need one. I would probably describe them as a more Italian take on a scone, with the flavourings from the sundried tomatoes and pasta spices.

Sweet Potato Burger Scones
On the VegBurge scale, I give this…
 
Taste – 7/10
 
Price – 7/10
 
Rest of experience – 6/10
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