Sweet Potatoes & Spinach Barley
By: Tanya
Published: Monday, April 4, 2011 - 5:05pm

Ingredients




1 1/4 cups uncooked barley
3 medium sweet potatoes
1 package frozen chopped spinach
1/2 cup whole milk ricotta
salt
2 cans cream corn
1 pound ground beef
minced garlic
3 tablespoons butter
nutmeg
olive oil

Preparation

1 I started boiling some water to cook up 1 1/4 cups pearl barley. 2 I cooked the ground beef with a little pink salt, pepper, oregano, garlic powder, onion powder and marjorum. Once it was finished, I put the beef into a bowl and set it aside. In the same pan (to get the flavor of the spices I had used) I threw in some minced garlic. 3 While the garlic was sauteeing, I took out some frozen spinach I had and cooked this according to package directions, and also by adding a little sea salt and lemon slices. By the time the spinach had finished cooking, so had the barley. I removed what was left of the lemon slices and poured the pot of cooked spinach into the pot of barley. I drizzled some olive oil in and then stirred it altogether. I let it sit over low heat. 4 Once the garlic had started browning, I added one tablespoon of butter. As that finished melting/sauteeing with the garlic, I added in 2 cans of creamed corn. I stirred this altogether and let it sit over medium heat. 5 I put the sweet potatoes into the bowl of my stand mixer, added in a couple tablespoons of butter and some ground nutmeg and then turned the mixer onto low. I just let it go and it worked like a charm! Perfectly mashed sweet potatoes! 6 While my potatoes were getting mashed, I added the browned ground beef into the pan of creamed corn--which had started simmering. I let that come back to simmering so that the beef would absorb some of the moisture and tastiness of the cream corn. 7 Just before plating, stir in the ricotta cheese to the spinach barley. 8 First onto the plate was the spinach barley. Then the mashed sweet potatoes went on top of that. The final finish for the plate was the ground beef and creamed corn mixture overtop it all.