Kumara with pine nuts and mint
Introduction
Kumara is the New Zealand name for sweet potato. It comes in two colours - purple and orange. I like the purple ones, but in this case it doesn't matter because they get peeled.
Ingredients
Serves four.
- 2 tbs currants
- 3 tbs red wine
- 800g sweet potato peeled and cut into 2cm (about!) cubes
- 90ml water - just out of the tap, no bottled stuff please
2 tbs red currant jelly - see below 1
- 2 generous tbs of copped mint. Chop just before using
- some butter
- freshly ground black pepper
- 2 tbs pine nuts toasted in a dry pan
Directions
Warm (no more) the wine in a small pan and then add the currants and leave them to soak for an hour or so.
Steam the cubes of kumara with a sprinkling of salt until they are just tender (about five minutes depending on the size of the cubes and what altitude you are at,) take off the heat and allow to stand and dry.
Add the water to the wine-currant mixture and bring to the boil and let it simmer very gently for a few minutes and then add the redcurrant jelly, pinenuts and the mint.
Tip the kumara onto a serving dish, gently stir in the butter with plenty of black pepper and then pour the redcurrant mixture over the top.
You can eat this on its own with some rice, it's great with lamb and good with an oily fish.
Variations
Comments
By currants to you mean black raisins? Or red or black currants? -- AdamShand
Sorry, I didn't see your comment, and now it's almost a year later! Anyway, in case you haven't solved it, you can buy dried raisins, sultanas and currants in the supermarket. Sultanas are the big light brownish ones, raisins you will know as the middle sized ones and currants are the quite small very dark almost black ones. In fact I think raisins and sultanas would work just about as well. --BrettShand
1 Red currant jelly is hard to find these days. So you can substitute some other tart jelly, like quince or black currant. American readers note that "jelly" means the strained and set fruit juice, not what the English would call "jam."