A sheet pan side dish of roasted sweet potatoes and spinach tossed with a pickled jalapeno dressing and feta cheese.
Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Spinach with Pickled Jalapeno Dressing

Now that I have two very mobile children, neither of whom seems to have any sense of fear or danger or impending doom, meal prep has become a bit of a nightmare. Gone are the days when I could plop Nico down in the kitchen next to me or strapped into his little chair and trust that I could turn around and he would still be where I’d left him.

Oh, no. Now if I look away for five seconds he is already well on his way to another room, undoubtedly plotting his next attempt to remove the child guards from the electrical outlets and stick his fingers in them. 

Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Spinach with Pickled Jalapeno Dressing

Lest you think Remy (who is 6 and definitely should know better) is helping to protect her brother from the many deathtraps all over our apartment…uh, no. Typically she is either playing with her Legos right in the middle of the floor where he could easily reach them or playing The Floor is Lava using every possible surface in the house, but especially ones that require her to leap directly in his path.

It’s basically a circus, every night. SO FUN.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Spinach with Pickled Jalapeno Dressing

To say that all of this had made making dinner complicated is an understatement. I’m back to trying to do all of my cooking on the weekend when there is another adult around for child supervision (a tactic I relied on heavily during residency when Remy was younger and I had even less time), leaving only the quickest or most hands-off meals for during the week.

One of our family favorites (and by “our” I mean Remy’s) is bean and cheese quesadillas – they’re super easy, adored by both Remy and Nico, and are simple enough for me to keep the ingredients on hand at all times. I’ve even started baking them in the oven, which saves me even more time since by doing this I can cook a whole slew of them all at once.

The only downside is that they just don’t feel like a complete meal to me and so I’m constantly on a quest to find a simple side dish to accompany them.  

Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Spinach with Pickled Jalapeno Dressing

Ali Slagle, who I’ve declared as my personal Queen of weeknight dinners, recently posted this ingenious recipe for roasted sweet potatoes and spinach with pickled jalapeno dressing to the New York Times Cooking website and the second I saw it, I was hooked. Not only am I a sucker for anything that involves pickled jalapenos (swoon!), but I could also tell that these flavors would work so well alongside a quesadilla dinner.

Spoiler alert: I was right.

This side dish comes together easily on a sheet pan where the sweet potatoes are roasted first until tender and caramelized. They’re then topped with a drizzle of pickled jalapeno brine and a hefty pile of baby spinach, and returned to the oven briefly to cook just long enough for the spinach to wilt and the pickling liquid to really seep into the veggies. 

Once out of the oven the vegetables are poured into a large bowl or serving platter and then topped with pickled jalapenos, feta, and scallions. The resulting salad is at once sweet, salty, spicy, tangy, and filled with so much nutrition that you’ll feel completely vindicated in helping yourself to just a few more scoops. It also keeps well in the fridge (honestly, I think the flavors just get better) so feel free to make it ahead of time and then reheat just before serving. As mentioned, we ate it as a side to quesadillas but it would also be pretty great on it’s own with some beans added in or topped with a fried egg for a little bit of protein.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Spinach with Pickled Jalapeno Dressing

Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Spinach with Pickled Jalapeno Dressing
 
A sheet pan side dish of roasted sweet potatoes and spinach tossed with a pickled jalapeno dressing and feta cheese.
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
  • 2 lb sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces
  • 4 tbsp grapeseed oil
  • salt and black pepper, to taste
  • 3 tbsp pickled jalapeno brine
  • 10 oz baby spinach
  • ¼ cup sliced pickled jalapenos
  • 3 scallions, thinly sliced
  • 4 oz feta cheese, crumbled
Instructions
  1. Heat the oven to 450F.
  2. Toss the sweet potatoes with 3 tbsp of the oil and salt to taste on a large baking pan. Spread in a single layer and roast for 15-20 minutes, or until fork-tender.
  3. Drizzle the potatoes with the pickled jalapeno brine. Top with the baby spinach. Drizzle with the remaining 1 tbsp of olive oil. Season with salt and black pepper. Place back in the oven and roast, stirring halfway through, for 5-7 minutes or until the spinach is wilted.
  4. Transfer to a serving bowl and toss with the pickled jalapenos, scallions, and feta cheese. Serve warm.
Notes

 

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2 Responses to Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Spinach with Pickled Jalapeno Dressing

  1. I’m going to be looking up Ali Slagle on youtube later tonight (hoping she’s on there). This recipe is such a fun combination of ingredients – It almost reminds me of an Ottolenghi recipe, albeit an Americanized Ottolenghi recipe. I love the mix of veggies with the feta and the pickled jalapeno dressing sounds like something that should be doubled and literally doused over anything and everything else…pizza, pasta salad, maybe eggs or egg salad, regular salad. Lots of possibilities!

  2. Lori says:

    I had prepped some butternut squash on Sunday so this was very quick. Delicious! I added a huge squeeze of lemon. Really delicious!

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