By Chef Valerie Wilson
It’s that time of the year for holiday cooking. One food that most people include in their holiday menu is sweet potato. I love a good baked potato’s wonderful sweet taste and soft creamy texture. Here is a more fancy and flavorful recipe as an alternative to a plain baked sweet potato. This stuffed sweet potato dish can be used as your main course for your holiday meal.
Sweet potatoes are rich in antioxidants, calcium, vitamins A and C, pantothenic acid, riboflavin, and manganese and are high in fiber. Known for feeding and nurturing the spleen, pancreas, and stomach, they also help quench thirst and lubricate dry conditions.
Millet is most recognizable as the tiny, round, yellow seed in bird feed. It should be recognized as a healthy whole grain to promote a long life. It is very high in fiber, making it a heart-healthy food, and can help lower cholesterol. It also has a good amount of iron, calcium, potassium, zinc, phosphorus, manganese, and magnesium. Interestingly, millet has the highest protein content of the whole grains, 11%. Energetically, millet feeds and nurtures your spleen, pancreas, and stomach. The main organs that help you deal with stress, so millet is your anti-stress grain.
When cooking with millet, it will cook up creamy. It works well to thicken soups and as a casserole. Look for millet in the bulk section or pre-package section of your local health store.
Millet Stuffed Sweet Potatoes
3 small sweet potatoes
½ cup millet
1 cup water
1 onion (diced)
1 cup celery (diced small)
1 cup mushrooms (diced small)
olive oil, tamari
¼ cup tahini
2 T. tamari
½ tsp. sea salt
Poke a couple of holes in the sweet potatoes with a fork. Place on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for one hour until they are soft. Let cool, and cut in half lengthwise. Scoop out some of the flesh and set aside to use in the stuffing.
Put in a pot the ½ cup millet and 1 cup water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes until all water has been absorbed. Sauté the onions in a little olive oil and tamari until they are soft. Put in a large mixing bowl. Using the same pan, sauté the celery and mushrooms with a bit of olive oil and tamari. Once it is done, add it to the mixing bowl. Put sweet potato flesh, cooked millet, tahini, 2 T. tamari, and sea salt in a food processor. Puree until smooth. Add the puree mixture to the sautéed vegetables and mix. Stuff the sweet potato halves with the stuffing mixture and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Serve hot.
