Roasted Sweet Potato Pasta

Sweet Potatoes are super cheap here in Israel and I was recently told that they are a very dense source of nutrition, so I feel even better about using them.  They really fill you up, too!  There’s not many recipes out there that use them as a main dish, so we pretty consistently stick to this one.  Everyone really loves it.

• Peel and cube sweet potatoes (3 big ones or a bunch of little ones)
• slice 3-4 onions into semi circles, not too thin
• Put these 2 veggies in a roasting pan and toss with olive oil
• Roast at 400F/200C for about an hour.  Every 20min or so, toss to keep the onions from burning.  You want the potatoes to be soft and a little browned, hopefully not entirely mushy, and the onions should be caramelized.
• While the veggies are roasting, dice some garlic (half a head) and and set a small pan with olive oil on low heat.  Cook the garlic, watching closely, till golden.  Don’t let it get too brown or it will taste bitter.  Set aside.  
• As the vegetables are getting close to finished, cook your pasta.  We usually use a full bag of rotini usually, but anything should do.  It’s nice if they have some texture to catch the sauce.
• Combine the pasta, veggies, and garlic/olive oil sauce in a large bowl or the pasta pot.  In the end, you can either add the rest of the ingredients in the kitchen or set them out on the table for each person to do their own.  The finishing ingredients are:  Sour cream, salt, and grated parmesan to taste.  Usually we set this out on the table, but each bowl usually only takes 1 or 2 spoonfuls of the sour cream if you need an estimate.  

Note:  to save energy/time, sometimes we steam the potatoes and just roast them briefly to firm and brown them.  If so, we also saute the onions on the stove so they still get caramelized.  In all it probably cuts the time in half, though it’s a more labor intensive time.