Miso Week Recipes 2 & 3: Two Sides

Continuing on with MISO WEEK, here are two sides featuring the fun ingredient of miso!  I served these both with the last recipe on the miso-week-train: a cauliflower and miso soup.  Oh, was it a dinner to be had again!

I will say up front, that we enjoyed both of these sides.  There are recipe cards for both of them now in my recipe box.  The sweet potatoes were a little over the top for me for a simple dinner.  Maybe I'm just too used to the sweetness of them on their own, but they screamed Holiday Dinner to me and so I'll probably reserve them for something like that since I don't have a good candied sweet potato recipe already.  We couldn't quite taste the miso, though, so I'm wondering how much different they would taste without.

Original recipe found here.

Sweet Potatoes with Molasses and Miso
serves 6-8 sides

• 2 1/2 lbs sweet potatoes, washed well and chopped (8-10 cups total)
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 TBLS molasses
• 1 TBLS soy sauce
• 2 TBLS maple syrup
• 1 heaping TBLS miso
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 1 TBLS lemon juice
• 4 TBLS water

-- Half-cook potatoes in the microwave (7-8 minutes) or roast in oven.  

-- Place potatoes in 9x13 baking dish, mix all other ingredients together and pour over potatoes

-- Bake uncovered at 400 for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes to make sure the sauce is coating the potato chunks

(I haven't tried it, but I think it would work well to roast the potatoes and make the sauce minus the water and just mix it all together.)

The chickpeas, too, were delicious.  And we liked that we could taste the miso along with the honey and ginger.  Amazing.  I originally started to roast them on parchment paper as opposed to my Silpat to ease the clean up process, but something happened and the liquid started to burn off a little, so I switched everything to my Silpat and continued on from there and we were fine.  Not sure why that was, but I don't think I'll ever shy away from my Silpat again, even when sticky honey is involved.

Original recipe found here.

Honey-Miso Roasted Chickpeas
serves 6 - 8 sides

• 2 14oz cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained 
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 TBLS miso
• 1 TBLS grated ginger

-- Mix honey, miso, and ginger together in a mid-sized bowl

-- Add chickpeas and stir until chickpeas are all coated well

-- Place on a silpat or other non-stick baking mat, and spread evenly.  Bake at 400 for 30 minutes, or until starting to crisp, stirring after 20 minutes.

(You can also do this with 1/3 cup BBQ sauce if you're not into honey-ginger combo.  Just skip the miso if you go the BBQ route!)