I Would Eat That Off A Squirrel: Sweet Potato Valentine

The recipe I picked out was the Bittersweet Salad from Yotam Ottolenghi's vegetable centric cookbook, Plenty, identified by the chef as his choice for a Valentine’s Day dish for its beautiful red palette of radicchio, cress, and blood orange juice and a bitter, sweet taste that embodies the flavor of love (a little cheesy, I know). For the record, I didn’t make it; I didn’t even come close. I never bought the radicchio, and I peeled and ate the last of the blood oranges standing over the sink so I didn’t have to wash another plate.

There is one dish that continually wins my heart. If I see it on a menu, there’s no debating what I’ll order—butternut squash ravioli with a sage and brown butter sauce. Something about those flavors so perfectly warms me, I love the sweet, and the salt, and the soft interior of the pasta with the al dente shell and crunch of fried sage leaves. Oh, and the toasted flavor of the brown butter instantly melts my heart. I decided that was my Valentine's recipe; the one I really love.

In preparation for this ambitious lunch, I first neglected a stack of homework and laundry, and then combed through the pantry with a list of necessary ingredients and tools. Pastry Flour? Nope. Butternut Squash? Not so much. Butter? Negative. Pasta Mill? Not even a little bit. So I improvised.

The results were, of course, uneven. Without an actual pasta roller, the whole wheat dough was a bit bulky, comically so, and since I was out of eggs for the egg wash to seal in the stuffing, I just crimped the pasta edges with a fork, creating several doughy pillows that looked like a congregation of ladies in Sunday bonnets, lined up at the edge of the stove, waiting for the water to boil. The filling was sweet potatoes, oven roasted with some fresh herbs until tender, and then mashed in a food processor with a whack of plain Greek yogurt. To finish the dish I flash sautéed some sage, rosemary, and chopped scallion in olive oil, and tossed it over the boiled pasta with some dried basil and a heavy-handed dash of cinnamon.

Lunch was like that Valentine’s ornament you made for your parents back in elementary school from red tissue paper adhered to a tin can—it didn't look all that impressive, but the love with which it was crafted was beautifully obvious. I enjoyed my lunch quietly, accompanied by an essay for my Theories and Methodologies course and a mug of tepid tea still lingering from breakfast.

The recipe in full is not ready (the dough needs some adjustments), but the stuffing is delicious, and a great idea for a winter pasta filling that hits the mark without piling on the calories.

Sweet potato pasta filling

Makes enough for 10 medium sized ravioli (or for 8 ravioli if you eat some of the filling by the spoonful as a pre-meal time snack).

1 small sweet potato, skinned and cut into small chunks

1 Tbs olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

2 tsp mixed dried herbs (rosemary, thyme, basil and sage)

2 Tbs nonfat, plain Greek yogurt

Water for texture

Toss the sweet potato with the salt, pepper, herbs and the olive oil and roast in a 350 oven for 30-40 minutes or until tender. Add the roasted sweet potato bits to a food processor and puree with the yogurt. Add in the water slowly until you reach the desired texture (similar to a soft mousse) but don’t let the filling become runny. Drop the sweet potato puree onto the prepared pasta wrappers by the spoonful.

Sweet potato filling.