Slow-grilled vegetables on a bed of sweet potato mash

I’m still on a health kick but that doesn’t have to mean boring food! Well, not all of the time anyway.

I find it takes a lot of effort to plan fresh, healthy and interesting meals! For example, if I were to say, eat a relatively unhealthy meal…meat patty and chips. I’d just go to the supermarket, get myself a bag of frozen chips and frozen patties (or even fresh patties from the deli section), fry it all up quickly and call that a meal. OR, I could just hop over to the nearest fast food outlet!

A fresh and healthy (ie. full of vegetables) meal on the other hand means that I have to check to see if I have fresh veggies in the fridge, and also how to spice up the veggies and make them more interesting! If I can’t find any decent vegetables (that are still alive!) in the fridge, I would have to decide which vegetables I would like to have and what spices I would need. I would then have to head to the fruit and vegetable shop or the market, which is only open on certain days (more planning involved there!)!

I’ve therefore learnt to keep some basic vegetables always on hand, eg. courgettes (zucchini), broccoli, tomatoes, capsicum, mushrooms and sweet potatoes! The problem is not forgetting about the vegetables and finding out 1 week later that I have 10 black mushrooms and 3 mushy tomatoes with nice green mould on them!

Anyway, this brings me to my last concoction: Slow-grilled vegetables on a bed of sweet potato mash. Well, actually, the vegetables were just grilled not slow-grilled. Slow-grilled just sounds fancier! (I suppose if I turned the heat down, they would be slow-grilled!)

Sweet potato mash
2 stalks spring onions (green onions or scallions, however you call them!) chopped
2 medium sweet potatoes
1 tsp coconut milk
¼ tsp salt

I diced the sweet potatoes, boiled them then mashed them with a fork (I need to buy a proper potato masher). I then added the spring onions, coconut milk and salt to the sweet potatoes and mixed away. The coconut milk and salt nicely contrasted the sweetness of the sweet potatoes. I found myself sneaking little bits while mixing it up!

Grilled Vegetables
½ zucchini sliced thinly lengthwise
½ capsicum sliced
3 mushrooms sliced
a few florets of broccoli
1 tsp garlic roughly

I mixed the garlic in with the vegetables before grilling. You could even stir-fry the vegetables!

I also made a quick and easy light curry sauce (I love curry!) to drown the nice healthy meal in but I didn’t really need to use it.

Curry sauce
½ tsp chill powder
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp ground tumeric
1 ½ tbs ground coriander
pinch of salt
½ cup coconut milk
pinch sugar
1tsp tomato paste

Mix all ingredients together and heat until boiling.

Last but not least, spread your mash on your plate and top with grilled vegetables! The ingredients above were just right for 2 people.

I also decided to add a bit of protein to the meal and had some leftover store-bought smoked tofu (I didn’t smoke it myself!) so I plonked the tofu on top of it all.

I felt all nice and healthy after the meal!