A millet pilaf with cilantro, scallions, and soy sauce is the supporting grain for this bowl’s layers of shredded greens, roasted sweet potatoes, chopped fresh tomatoes, and roasted peanuts. A drizzle of our coconut-lime dressing brings it all together. It’s an interesting combination of flavors and textures.
We like a mixture of spinach and romaine: spinach for the color and flavor, romaine for the crunch. But it’s fine with one or both.
Serves 4 to 6
Time: 50 minutes
8 cups peeled sweet potato chunks (1½-inch pieces; about 2 pounds whole)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1½ cups millet (see sidebar, here)
2¼ cups water
¼ cup packed minced fresh cilantro
½ cup chopped scallions
2 tablespoons soy sauce
½ cup coconut milk
¼ cup packed fresh cilantro
¼ cup chopped scallions
¼ cup fresh lime juice
¼ teaspoon salt
⅓ cup olive oil
1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
1 cucumber
4 to 6 cups thinly sliced spinach and/or romaine
3 cups chopped fresh tomatoes
1 cup salted roasted peanuts
Preheat the oven to 425°F. Oil a baking sheet.
In a bowl, toss the sweet potato chunks with the olive oil and ½ teaspoon of the salt. Spread them out on the prepared baking sheet and roast for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and stir. Return to the oven and roast until tender and lightly browned, 5 to 10 minutes.
While the sweet potatoes roast, cook the millet. In a saucepan on medium-high heat, dry-roast the millet, stirring continually for about 4 minutes, or until it becomes golden brown and aromatic with a scent something like popcorn. Add the water and remaining ½ teaspoon salt and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer without disturbing for 15 minutes. Uncover and don’t stir, but using a spoon, push aside the millet in the middle of the pan to see if the water has been absorbed. If there’s little or no water on the bottom of the pan, remove it from the heat; if there’s more than ½ inch of water in the bottom of the pan, drain it off. Cover and let stand, off the heat, for 10 minutes. Fluff with a fork. Stir in the cilantro, scallions, and soy sauce.
While the millet cooks, in a blender, whirl the coconut milk, cilantro, scallions, lime juice, and salt until smooth. With the blender running, slowly pour in the olive oil. Add the sugar if you’d like the dressing to be a little less tart. Peel and seed the cucumber. Slice lengthwise into ¼-inch-wide strips and then cut the strips every ¼ inch or so.
To serve in individual bowls, layer millet, greens, cucumber, roasted sweet potatoes, and then tomatoes. Drizzle on some dressing and top with peanuts.
If you’d like something to munch on while you prepare dinner, look to lightly curried Spiced Nuts or piquant Pickled Sweet Peppers. Of course, after an African Bowl you don’t really need dessert…. No, of course you don’t, but if you do, we recommend Custard and Pear Pie, or easiest of all, freeze some banana slices and then purée them in a food processor last minute for a creamy-seeming sorbet.
Millet is an African grain, also widely eaten in China and India. It’s gluten-free, has about the same protein content as wheat, and is a good source of vitamins and minerals. Its flavor is distinct but mild, making it a good carrier of other flavors.
One cup raw millet makes about 3½ cups cooked. Invariably, online recipes for cooking millet call for 2 cups water for each cup of millet, but when we make it, that’s always too much water. Several things probably affect it: size and heaviness of the pan, how tight the lid is, how low your low heat is. Maybe it’s the millet itself—the conditions when it was harvested, how it has been stored (different “batches” may be more or less dehydrated), and how fresh it is when you cook it. When we use 1 ½ cups of water for each cup of raw millet, it usually works fine, although occasionally, we need to add a little more boiling water, say ¼ cup, near the end of cooking.
When you want fluffy millet, it’s important to leave it alone while it cooks: don’t stir it until it’s done.