On social cooking

Have you noticed the small buttons below each recipe at the bottom of the page? They help you spread the word recipe. Try it with this recipe Roasted sweet potato salad with pomegranate and baked ricotta! 😉

I love social media, but it makes things confusing every now and then. Who was it, that asked me about roasting garlic? And who in their turn inspired me to experiment with kale? How did I end up at that beautiful foodblog? Who posted that great photo and where? And how did I came up with that great idea to use watercress in my pasta salad?

I don’t dare to count all the ways I am social, but I’m on twitter (all day), google + (but not very active), post my illustrations at pinterest, get updates from other foodbloggers via their mailinglist (subscribe here for mine!), read another set of foodblogs on bloglovin and (food)magazines on issuu. And on all those social media you can follow me back (hint hint!).
It sometimes is hard to keep track, despite all those sites have a way to make you own collection of favorites. Or maybe it’s because of that. You do your best to keep that great recipe idea, but just can’t remember where you left it! Maybe it’s time for one new site, one that collects all my favorites, starred items, collections or how they’re called (another hint fellow Silicon Valley’ers!).

And still, I’m about to add a new social site to my list. One that is all about cooking. Just like pinterest, it shows a huge amount of pictures and after clicking on it you see more information and your grocery list. You can make your own collections of recipes and even add new recipes from the web. I already have put almost all of mine on this collection on foodie.com.

The idea for this salad I got on there, I’m dead sure about it. A picture of a sweet potato salad with pomegranate seeds showed up next to one of mine and it intrigued me enough to buy a sweet potato. I already had a pomegranate, which was a gift from a neighbor that I met on nextdoor. Together with the rosemary that I got from another nextdoor-neighbor you justifiably can call this a social recipe, don’t you think?

Potato Salad with pomegranate and baked ricotta #POMEGRANATE  #illustration by EDIE EATS by Edith Dourleijn

RECIPE ROASTED SWEET POTATO SALAD WITH POMEGRANATE AND BAKED RICOTTA [vegetarian]

From previous roasting experiments with sweet potato I know it pairs well with 5-spice powder. Then my eye fell on the rosemary in my window sill and I started to wonder… Well, proof is in the eating and it turned out to be a great combination. In a way it made my kitchen smell like an old pharmacy.

You need:
1 sweet potato
4-5 tablespoons of  olive oil
2 pinches of 5-spice powder
1 big branch of rosemary
1 pomegranate – you don’t need all seeds [keep what’s left in your fridge]
1/2 lb | 225 gr ricotta cheese
fresh lime juice – to taste
salt + pepper
2 handfuls of fresh chewy green leaves *
few chive sprigs

* Like young kale leaves, spinach, chard, etc.

You do:
Preheat the oven at 400 F | 200 C.

Prepare the potato. Peel it and cut it in bite-size chunks (approx 0,5 inch | 1 cm). Mix with 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 pinch of 5-spice powder and leaves of the rosemary. Put them on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 30 minutes.

Bake the ricotta. Cut the ricotta in pieces of the same size as the sweet potato. But them on a piece of parchment paper. Put in the oven when the potato is halfway.

If the ricotta is very soft, you can cut of some and roll carefully a ball of it between your hands. This will make the ricotta a bit firmer, but can't prevent it from melting a bit in the hot oven, which is fine though.

De-seed the pomegranate. Cut it in two halves and break each half open to pick out the seeds.

Make the dressing. Mix the other pinch of 5-spice with approx. 1 tablespoon of lime juice, some salt and pepper and add while you’re whisking the olive oil. Wash the green leaves if necessary and mix them through the dressing.

Plate. Divide the green leaves over 2 plates. Add sweet potato, baked ricotta, pomegranate seeds (to your taste) and garnish with the chopped chives. Add some more lime juice if the salad it too sweet for your taste.

Tip: If the ricotta is too sweet for your taste, try this recipe with feta or soft goat cheese.

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