When it comes to game day/finger foods, dips are hands down my ultimate weakness. My hand’s ability to grab, dip, and stuff my mouth with “dippers,” whatever they may be, is quite remarkable, I must say. I hate to admit it, but what’s equally impressive is the amount of crumbs I apparently manage to leave behind while doing so. My sister always says, “It seems like more comes out of your mouth than actually goes in.” Wow..that’s an unattractive picture I just painted for you. Perhaps I should just stick with non-crummy dippers, like apples, carrots… One of my all-time favorite dips is seven layer dip. It actually forces me to slow down my eating pace (less crumbs, perhaps?) bc I MUST get all the layers in one deft motion. Although there are many variations, the refried bean layer seems to be the one constant. Until now that is…meet the roasted sweet potato/black bean layer.
There’s nothing wrong with refried beans. I just have crazy ideas all the time sometimes that need to come to life. I simply roasted the sweet potatoes in olive oil (you can boil or steam if you’d prefer. I just love the intensity of flavor that roasting brings out) and pureed them in my VitaMix. If you’d like a bit of an arm workout, you can always mash them by hand. I didn’t add more oil or other liquids to keep that thick, creamy consistency, similar to refried beans. But because beans are such an excellent source of protein, I threw in a can of no salt added black beans along with salsa, hatch chiles, cumin, and chili powder. Voila. First layer done.
Then, rather than using sour cream (and that tanginess is much needed to balance out the sweetness/spicyness), I spread a layer of Greek yogurt. Next, I topped with heaping amounts of tomatoes, romaine lettuce, avocado, scallions and….
shredded cheese! I used my current obsession – Cabot Alpine Cheddar…#cheddarisbetter
Another obsession – Trader Joe’s Quinoa and Black Bean Tortilla Chips. They are the perfect dippers, in my opinion.
It was just me and the Hungryman watching football in our PJs this time, so we ended up eating this all throughout the day. Post 3 games, the dish was licked clean. So much for leftovers.
