Food Blog: Spiral Sweet Potato Bake and Postcard #2 from Tasmania!

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Spiral Sweet Potato Bake and Postcard #2 from Tasmania!

Meet your new favourite sweet potato recipe! Set in a mesmerising spiral pattern, this Sweet Potato Bake is simple to make, looks striking, and tastes even better than it looks. An excellent special occasion worth side dish, yet so easy you can make it for dinner tonight. Do it!

Also, dropping in Postcard #2 from the food trail in Tasmania - see below! - Nagi xx (& Dozer in spirit from his own holiday at the Golden Retriever Boarder's place)

Spiral Sweet Potato Bake

Get the recipe

Postcards from Tasmania!

{In case you missed it, click here for Postcard #1}

Hello again from Tasmania! Dark MOFO festival done, we're now on a Foodie Trail! First stop, Bruny Island, a small island about 40 minutes from Hobart city (the capital of Tasmania).

Famous for spectacular coastal wilderness and also for boutique produce at farm gates and cellars. Cheese, wine, gin, whisky, seafood, chocolate, fudge, honey, to name a few!!!

Did you know Tasmania is one of the best producers of whisky in the world?? Apparently the wild variations in the climate from day to day are ideal conditions to barrel age whisky. And judging from the prices some of these bottles sell for ($16,000 for one!!!), they must be good!

We visited the famous Bruny Island Cheese, makers of small batch artisan cheese that my Tasmania friends have been telling me about for years. Excellent cheese, no surprises there. I love that it's quite unique, nothing like the standard cheeses we get on the mainland in Australia (Bruny Island doesn't have any outlets on the main land).

Also, another big (unexpected!) hit - Tasmania oysters! The ones pictured below were just from the local pub (well, the ONLY pub on the island!) and they were amazing. BIG, plump, juicy, super sweet, not too salty and no edge of bitterness that you can sometimes get with Pacifics and other common varieties of oysters we get in Sydney. I AM OFFICIALLY OBSESSED with Tasmanian oysters!!!

The oysters pictured above are done Kilpatrick style and battered. Very, very tasty. Want a recipe for different ways to cook oysters? HIT REPLY if you do!

Oh and Ma - look! I actually took a break from eating and did some exercise!!

Suffice to say, I'm enjoying the trip. Doing the foodie trail in Tasmania has been on my bucket list for many years, and it took COVID and the inability to travel overseas to finally take the time to do it.

And I'm so glad I did. Because Tasmania is known for excellent produce - that's fairly common knowledge these days. But what you don't really understand until you come here and speak to the producers is why it's so good. Yes, there's the obvious - the conditions down here are conducive to raising excellent grass fed cows, growing conditions for certain types of produce etc.

But more than that is how proud these producers are of the food and produce they grow and make. Everybody we speak to is so passionate about what they do, and the quality. I've lost count how many times I've heard producers say they made a conscious decisions to keep things small batch to maintain quality, rather than expanding to become more profitable.

I also think that Tasmania is leading the way for Australia in terms of sustainability. We have come across some extraordinary people doing innovative things in the war against waste and sustainable food. Such as turning leftover bread (which is a massive food waste issue due to short shelf life) into quite possible the best vodka I've ever had in my life. Normal straight vodka is way too harsh for me - even the "good" stuff.

Bread vodka? Dangerously easy to drink!