Double-Baked Sweet Potatoes with Sausage

A few months ago I had dinner at a restaurant in Adams Morgan neighborhood. It was a perfect night, fun company, and great food. I had a dish of sweet plantains mixed with cheese and beef. That mixture was then stuffed back into the plantain "shell" and baked again.

Last week I decided to recreate that dish using sweet potatoes, sausage, mozzarella cheese and some garbanzo beans for added protein.

Ingredients

4 sweet potatoes
1 pound sausage [I used a bratwurst sausage with cheese]
1 can garbanzo beans, drained
1 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1 tablespoon minced parsley




Directions

1. Bake sweet potatoes (without puncturing the skin) at 475 for about 30-40 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, remove the sausage from the casing and brown in a pan. Add garbanzo beans. Depending on the flavor of the sausage, you might need to add extra spices. Mine was flavorful enough on its own.
3. Once the potatoes are baked, let them cool a bit. Make a slit in the middle of the potatoes (lengthwise) and carefully remove the flesh of the potatoes. Add that flesh to the sausage/garbanzo bean mixture and slightly mash together.
4. Incorporate 1 cup of cheese into the sausage/garbanzo beans/potato mixture.
5. Evenly split the mixture into 4 potato skins and top with the remaining 1/4 cup of cheese.
6. Bake for 5 minutes to let the cheese melt.
7. Sprinkle with parsley and enjoy.



This is the first time I've made a double-baked potato of any kind. This dish is incredibly versatile: you can use chicken instead of sausage, regular potatoes instead of sweet potatoes, and red peppers instead of garbanzo beans. Let your imagination go wild!

In other news, check out my food styling photo in Robyn Webb's latest post :)