A Work in Progress

A month or so ago I was in Umeke Market and I saw in their deli case a square of something with a dark purple layer, yellow layer, and green layer. The colors were so rich and delicious looking I instantly got all these ideas in my head of how to make something like that and what to use for the ingredients.
Well, I finally got myself together and tried it yesterday. It's definitely a work in progress, but it has a lot of potential and I already have improvements in mind! The finished project was definitely sweeter than I'd originally planned, but somehow it still works and is delicious.
This is a super long post and if you really are interested in making this concoction, reading and making note of the changes to the recipe are necessary - no skimming and half-assing like I like to do!!
Oh yeah, and if anyone can think of a good name for this thing I'd be really excited.


Ingredients:

3 Okinawan sweet potatoes
yamaimo (about 6")
butternut squash (probably about 3 lbs)
leafy greens of your choice (I used collard greens, but would like to have had spinach as well)
2 large onions
coconut milk (I used a whole package of Hawaiian Sun frozen coconut milk)
16oz ricotta cheese
butter (about 1/2 stick)
nutmeg
olive oil
salt and pepper to taste


Directions:

pre-heat oven to 375 deg. Split the squash and remove the seeds. Brush all exposed surfaces (except the skin) with olive oil, put the squash face down in a pyrex dish, baking sheet, or equivalent and bake until the skin is browned and you can easily stab with a fork (45-60 mins depending on the shape of the squash). Wash the sweet potatoes, rub with olive oil, split down the middle and bake along with the squash (they're fine on the oven racks).

The sweet potatoes should be finished around the same time as the squash and should also be easily stabbed with a fork. They will be dark purple and soft on the inside. While the squash and potatoes are baking, cut the yamaimo and boil until it is also easily split with a fork as if you were making mashed potatoes. Remove everything from the oven and let it cool - enough to be easily handled. The potatoes don't take too long if you finish cutting them in half and separate them.

Scrape the sweet potato off of the skin and into a large mixing bowl. Combine with the yamaimo and coconut milk and mash with a potato masher until creamy.

like this! woohoo!

Spread the potato mixture into the casserole dish/es

Next, remove the skin from the squash, add the ricotta, nutmeg, and salt and pepper to taste. I used quite a lot of nutmeg, but I'm a nutmeg monster so figure out your own level of deliciousness.

When I was finished, it looked like this:

Make a squash layer on top of the potato. I would have preffered mine was about twice as thick as this

For the greens I chopped up all the onion, and sauted them in the butter with salt and pepper.

While they were cooking I washed and chopped up the collard greens

then added them to the onion. I let them cook for maybe 15-20 minutes or until the leaves are cooked. Depending on the type of greens you use the time will vary majorly. I definitely would have preferred to have maybe 3 times the amount of greens I used. Next time, I'll be combining spinach and whatever other kinds of big leafy greens I can get my hands on. I added 6 eggs to my greens due to the fact that I had such a small volume of greens but I wanted a thick enough layer to balance out the sweetness of the potato and squash.

I scrambled the eggs first then added them to the greens after they'd cooled enough to not cook the eggs through contact heat. In retrospect, I'd do this step (the cooking of the onion and greens) first so they have plenty of time to cool off while everything else is cooking.

The oven was preheated to 350 deg and I cooked both casserole dishes for about an hour - it took that long for the egg to solidify. I'm not sure how long I'd cook it if I had more greens and less eggs.

In the end, this dish took a lot of prep and time. It's really tasty which makes it worth it, but I think with some mostly minor changes it could be really great. My first change would be to really make sure I have enough greens, otherwise, by the time the coconut milk is added to the sweet potatoes and baked a second time, everything is pretty sweet and the small amount of greens and egg just didn't even it out as much as I'd have liked. The flavor was excellent though.
Also, a suggestion that Ann at work brought up was the possibility of playing with filo dough or laying down some large leaves on the bottom of the casserole dish so the stuff can be scooped out without losing most of it. I will try any or all of these things next time! I could also see adding some regular blue potato to the mixture as well to bring down the sweetness factor... anyway, the possibilities are really endless. Have fun!