Monday, November 2, 2009

A remake of Mark Bittman's Spinach, Bacon, and Sweet Potatoe Salad

I've decided to care about my blog more. Consequently, I've made the goal to post 3 times a week. One of those days, I'll devote to a nutrient dense recipe I've recently made.

After coming across Mark Bittman in the October 2009 issue of Runner's World, I decided he's definitely my new culinary crush. I first tried his Cassoulet with Lots of Vegetables with great success, and then I made his Spinach, Bacon, and Sweet Potato Salad. I LOVED both of these recipes and have now added them to my food rotation.

Bittman's Culinary philosophy is a lot like Michael Pollan's, in that he believes in eating less meat, more plants, and in keeping food as close to it's natural state as possible. That mindset sounds logical to me. I don't always eat this way, but I'm constantly on the look out for tasty recipes that at least loosely follow this culinary viewpoint.

I decided to try Bittman's Sweet Potato Salad because a)I loved his Cassoulet and b) I heard the fastest man in the world, Hussein Bolt, grew up on sweet potatoes.



I think it's very logical to deduct that Bolt's amazing speed and muscular physique have almost everything to do with his consumption of sweet potatoes and only a small part to do with genetics and training. In fact, in preparation for LA I may stop running all together and just start eating sweet potatoes in large quantities.

Anyways, today I made Bittman's Sweet Potato Salad for the 2nd time, but instead of adding cumin to the potatoes I drizzled them with honey and used my own salad dressing. (Two parts balsamic to every one part olive oil + oregano to taste.) Sometimes I add sugar to my dressing, but I didn't today because I had already added honey to the recipe. Bittman's citrus dressing is also great; just don't feel like you need the exact ingredients in order to try this salad because it's very versatile. My results were DIVINE!



PS: If you're interested in trying more Mark Bittman recipes, How to Cook Everything and Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express are on my wish list. I'm currently reading Food Matters, which is a great book, but there aren't a ton of recipes.

6 comments:

  1. that looks so good! I can never figure out a way to eat sweet potatoes so I actually like them!

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  2. LOL, I LOVE sweet potatoes. I could stick to that training plan. ;)

    MMM, that salad looks great. Thanks for sharing!

    Love the new layout, btw. ;)

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  3. Looks great! Thanks for sharing!

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  4. Thanks for the post. I will have to try it out. BTW, I enjoy your site.

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  5. sweet potatoes are a super food they say! though they may not be the total answer to Usain's success.

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  6. The spinach have a lot of nutrition properties as not only provides energy and strength, plus they are light and don´t have a single gram of fat. So spinach can help us even to keep a good shape. And can help you even in your sexual performance for all vitamin that this plant contain. In some cases when you´ve tried everything,is better to buy viagra i have no complain about this product, just the opposite.

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