Francesca's Baked Sweet Potato & Chickpea Ratatouille

So if there's another special person to sit at the table - it's Francesca. A person who has played basketball with me in braces and cheap hair dye, is the only person who has shared a detention with me for having hair that resembled "a rat's nest", laughed with me in pure hysteria at school class after class, danced many performances on stage in oversized fake eyelashes, buckled down to serious English tutoring during the HSC, landed in the same University course and then five years after our paths diverted, became famous flatties and helped fan the flame of honing the art of hospitality.

Francesca Dalton - a woman of such grace, beauty, strength and vitality. Who else could get up at 5:50 regularly on a weekday morning to swim 2kms and come home to whip up a vegetarian delight for dinner. I'm so proud that we're flatmates - so happy that I get to glean your thirst for life through osmosis and ask you a gazillion questions as we cook with ingredients I've never seen or heard of.

Thank you for your beauty... And your amazing skills.

Ingredients:

2 small sweet potatoes, scrubbed with skin left on

1 medium onion, chopped roughly

4 garlic cloves, chopped finely

1 red birds eye chilli, seeded

dash of olive oil

1 tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed

2 vine ripened tomatoes, diced

3-4 tbsp tomato paste

1/2 cup water

Pinch of sugar and salt

1 tsp ground cumin

1 handful fresh basil

Method:

1. Pre-heat a fan forced oven to 180C. Skewer potatoes with a fork and place in oven for 50-60min until soft.
2. Heat oil in medium pot on moderate heat. Cook the onion until soft and transparent.
3. Add garlic and chilli. Stir constantly to avoid burning garlic.
4. Add chopped tomatoes and fry until tomatoes are soft and falling apart.
5. Add chickpeas and tomato paste and water. Stir.
6. Add sugar, salt and cumin and lower heat until the potatoes are almost ready.
7. Add basil and stir.
8. Take out potatoes and slice down the middle as a nest.
9. Pour in chickpea mixture.
10. Garnish with hommous, yoghurt, paprika and basil leaf.

Serves two. Enjoy:)

See Chez's very own blog here: http://thehumblepea.wordpress.com