This dish has a welcome place at anyone’s table — during a holiday or anytime during the year. You can choose whether to make it with smoky meat or keep it vegetarian. You can also change which type of cheese, herbs or spices you want to keep the recipe fresh and flexible.
For those that don’t eat meat, I suggest that you use smoked cheese to evoke the smokiness of pancetta or bacon, and I promise you won’t miss a thing.
Arliano Update (a small community in Lucca, Italy):
We said goodbye to our last (AirBnB) guests for the season. No one’s car fell into a ditch this year – huzzah! The pool is awaiting its winter cover, and the umbrellas, sun lounges, and summer plants have been cleared from the decks and are safely stored away.
With cooler weather it is now safe to grow grass – or so we thought. I’m sure there are documentaries about the genius of ants that I must have missed, but that’s ok, we learned a lot about them with our own experience. After hours of manual labor, the little buggers absconded with thousands of grass seeds. First, they formed circular mounds of seeds. Then they moved them to long lines. Then… poof! the seeds were largely gone. It was fascinating, funny, and frustrating all at the same time. The ants avoided a patch of fresh topsoil that we put down to level a small area, and lovely tufts of grass appeared around a week later. Well, then ok, bags of topsoil it shall be for the next attempt! We need to get the grass established before the hard frost comes. We can’t go for another season living in a dustbowl, now, can we?
Quick story: Growing up I lived in Barstow, California for a few years. This is in the Mojave Desert. All our neighbors used sod (rolls of grass) and my dad, instead, planted grass seeds and our neighbors questioned his choice. Along came a powerful sandstorm, leaving piles of sand like banks of snow. This was the kind of sandstorm that strips paint off cars. Our neighbors’ grass perished. My dad’s didn’t. Lesson learned. Seeds are cheaper and create a stronger, longer-lasting root network. Thanks, Dad!
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Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Pancetta and Cheese
Ingredients
- 4 pounds (about 1,800 g), about 7 medium sweet potatoes
- 3/4 cup (about 300 g) small diced cubed pancetta or extra thick bacon. NOTE: For those that don’t eat meat this recipe can be made just as deliciously using smoked cheese to evoke the smokiness of pancetta or bacon
- 1 + 1/2 cups (about 170 g) shredded Provolone, Asiago or Gouda cheese
- 1 teaspoon kosher or fine sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon dry ground sage
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 1/2 cup water
Directions
- Pre-heat the oven to 375F (190C) with the rack in the middle
- Peel and cut the sweet potatoes into 1/4-inch (.5 cm) medallions. In a large mixing bowl toss the medallions with olive oil, salt, black pepper, and ground sage and set them aside
- Grate the cheese and set it aside. Pour 1/2 cup of water into the bottom of your baking dish. The steam the water produces with help the sweet potatoes soften as they roast
- Place a layer of slightly overlapping sweet potato medallions on the bottom of a 9 X 9-inch (23 X 23 cm) or similar baking dish. Sprinkle 1/3 of the shredded cheese on top of the layer you just placed in the baking dish. Sprinkle 1/3 of the pancetta or bacon over the layer of sweet potatoes and cheese
- Add the next layer of sweet potato medallions on top of the layer already placed and repeat with the next 1/3 of shredded cheese and 1/3 of the pancetta or bacon
- Add the final layer of sweet potatoes on top of the two other layers already placed followed by the remaining 1/3 cheese and the remaining pancetta or bacon
- Bake for 45 – 60 minutes or until a knife can pierce through all layers of sweet potato medallions. The time range depends on how thickly you cut the medallions; how old the sweet potatoes are; and how hot your oven is. If the top is browning too much, loosely tent aluminum foiled over the baking dish. Serve hot or warm
