RECIPE | Cheese-stuffed sweet potatoes topped with crispy bacon

Serves: 4 as a main or 8 as a side dish

Difficulty: Easy, 2 hours

Ingredients:

4 sweet potatoes

15ml (1 tbsp) olive oil

8 rashers of bacon

125ml (½ cup) peas, fresh or frozen

30ml (2 tbsp) butter

200g ricotta cheese

Salt and black pepper, to taste

2 spring onions, chopped

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 190°C.
2. Prick the sweet potatoes all over with a fork and rub all over with the olive oil. Wrap each sweet potato tightly in foil and bake for 60-90 minutes until tender when pierced with a knife.
3. Fry the bacon rashers until crispy and set aside to keep warm.
4. If using frozen peas, plunge into boiling water to thaw, refresh with cold water and set aside.
5. When sweet potatoes are cool enough to handle, halve each sweet potato lengthways and scoop out the flesh, leaving a rim of flesh remaining inside the skin.
6. Place the sweet potato flesh in a bowl, along with the peas, butter and ricotta. Mash until well mixed. Season with salt and pepper and mix in the spring onion.
7. Spoon this mixture back into the skins and bake for 10 minutes until just beginning to brown. (You can put them under the grill to speed up the process but make sure they don't burn.)
8. Top each potato half with a rasher of bacon and serve.