Name: Loaded Mediterranean Sweet Potato Fries (Vegan)
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 1 h
Cuisine: Mediterranean
Ingredients: 4 large or 6 medium sweet potatoes, peeled if desired; 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil; 2 tbsp arrowroot starch; 1/2 tsp fine sea salt; Freshly ground black pepper; 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil; 3 cups cooked chickpeas (or 2 14-oz cans, drained and rinsed); 2 tsp za’atar*; 1/2 cup tahini; 1/3 cup water, plus more as needed to thin; 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice; 2 tbsp nutritional yeast; 2 medium garlic cloves; Big handful fresh parsley; Big handful fresh cilantro; 1/2 tsp fine sea salt; Freshly ground black pepper, to taste; 2 tomatoes, diced; 1/2 an English cucumber, diced; 1/2 a red onion, thinly sliced; 1/2 cup pitted Kalamata olives, sliced; A few leaves of romaine lettuce, shredded

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These loaded Mediterranean Sweet Potato Fries are topped with crispy za’atar-coated chickpeas, diced tomatoes, red onion, lettuce, olives, and lemon herb tahini sauce. This dish makes a fun appetizer, but it’s satisfying as a main dish, too! The perfect summer loaded fries recipe.

Loaded sweet potato fries. What’s not to love? Sweet potatoes, rich in beta carotene and fibre, are piled high into a dish and topped with any combination of vegetables, sauces, and proteins your heart desires. Think of it as high vibe vegan poutine that takes its cues from the Mediterranean, rather than French Canada!

This is my third kick at loaded sweet potato fries recipes, and I think this is my favourite version yet. (I know, I say that a lot.) The toppings this time around take their inspiration from Mediterranean ingredients and flavours: chickpeas, lightly pan-fried in za’atar; tomatoes, onion, cucumber, olives, and a bright green lemon herb tahini sauce.

ingredients you need for the loaded sweet potato fries

For this recipe, you’ll need the following ingredients:

Sweet potatoes
Extra virgin olive oil
Arrowroot starch
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Tomatoes
Cucumber
Red onion
Chickpeas
Za’atar (a Middle Eastern spice blend that contains sumac, sesame seeds, and thyme- see recipe card for more information about this ingredient)
Tahini
Lemon juice
Nutritional yeast
Garlic
Cilantro
Parsley

how to make loaded sweet potato fries (mediterranean-style)

Start by making the sweet potato oven fries. You’ll use the same method from my previous loaded sweet potato fries recipes (Loaded Sweet Potato Oven Fries with Miso Tahini Gravy, and Loaded Korean Sweet Potato Fries with Tempeh and Kimchi). So, if you’ve made either of those recipes, you’re already familiar with it! Slice the sweet potatoes into matchsticks and place in a bowl. Drizzle with the olive oil and toss to coat. Then, add the arrowroot starch, salt, and pepper. Toss again and transfer to two baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Make sure that they’re in an even layer with enough space in between to allow them to cook evenly and develop crispy edges! Roast for 30-40 minutes. NOTE: If you’re short on time, or you simply want a less hands-on recipe, feel free to use 4-6 servings worth of frozen sweet potato fries. 🙂
While the sweet potato fries are doing their thing in the oven, you’ll have time to prepare all of the remaining toppings!
First, prepare the chickpeas by lightly pan-frying them in olive oil and za’atar.
Second, make the lemon herb tahini sauce by adding tahini, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, cilantro, salt, pepper, and water to an upright blender and blending until smooth.
Finally, chop up some tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, and Kalamata olives.
To serve, place the sweet potatoes in a large dish, skillet, or platter. Add all the toppings and drizzle with tahini sauce. Enjoy immediately!

This recipe serves 4 as a main dish, with some chickpeas and sauce left over. If you plan to serve it as an appetizer or side dish, note that it makes 6-8 smaller servings.

and a little life update (feel free to skip if you just want the recipe!)

If you’re a longtime blog reader (thank you!), you might find that my posts are less wordy and more to the point than they once were. I’ve honestly found it challenging to strike a balance between writing from the heart (and potentially over-sharing), and writing in a style that is more impersonal but more suitable to a wide audience. I don’t know how much people care to know about what’s going on in my life, and I certainly don’t want to come off as egocentric in so doing.

In early April, I found myself with more time to dedicate to the blog, so I started to work very hard at promoting my blog on Pinterest. Thanks to a few of my pins gaining traction, I ended up with a decent increase in traffic, and I submitted an application to Mediavine, an ad management network, once I reached 27 000 monthly sessions. (Mediavine’s minimum sessions requirement until recently was 25 000/month, but they have recently increased it to a minimum of 50 000 monthly sessions.) Throughout April and May, my traffic increased steadily, and there was a day when I looked at my Google Analytics and saw that the blog had received 85 000 page views in the past 30 days.

I got accepted by Mediavine and started running ads on the blog at the end of May… just in time for my traffic to drop dramatically, back down to 1000 page views or fewer per day. I felt a little dejected for awhile, especially since I had been seeing a steady increase in traffic for a couple of months. Some of the decline can be attributed to economies opening back up and people spending less time cooking; some of it can be attributed to the “summer slump” that many food bloggers see every year; and some of it can be attributed to my own lack of interest in spending hours on end promoting my blog on social media. In blogging, as in practically everything else, it ceases to be fun as soon as it becomes all about the numbers. As someone who can get pretty obsessed with numbers, looking at my disappointing traffic stats on a daily basis hasn’t been great for my psyche, so I have been trying to detach myself from them and focus more on what I love the most, which is creating recipes, improving my photography, and writing.

I started this blog as a creative outlet, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that’s how I want it to remain… at least for now. Yes, I am making a modest amount of money from ads now, and I don’t rule out the possibility of collaborating with brands or even writing a book down the road, but for the time being, I am content with continuing to focus on creating really delicious recipes, and trust that the right readers will find me regardless of how heavily I promote my site on social media platforms.

Which leads me to my next point, which is that I have decided to go back to university in September. For awhile, I wanted to become a registered dietitian, and had planned to upgrade my maths and sciences so that I would be able to get into a nutritional sciences program at university. But every time I thought about it, I encountered resistance in my heart. I just don’t think I am cut out for the hard sciences. Further, food is my passion and my joy, but I don’t think I want it to be my career.

So, I am going back to university to further my studies in geography and ecology at the University of Victoria. I don’t think anyone who knows me is surprised at this announcement. While this semester will be delivered online, I am incredibly excited to move back to the west coast of Canada later in the fall. I might not have as much time to blog once I move back there, since I will be in school full time and working a lot to cover the cost of living, but it will be an amazing experience, one that I am incredibly grateful for. I’m pretty footloose and fancy free at this time in my life, and I’m looking at this as a great opportunity for personal and professional growth. Moving back home for these past few years has yielded a different sort of growth, and I’ll look back on it as a very special time with my family and friends. But for the first time in my life, I feel completely uninhibited and confident in my direction. It’s a good feeling to have, after so many years of struggling to believe in myself and my purpose. Oddly enough, I feel more at peace with how things are going in my own life than I have in a long time. I’m not making light of the pandemic and how many lives have been lost or permanently affected by it- this is just speaking of my own situation, which I am incredibly lucky to be in.

Going forward, I think that I might share life updates in a monthly “coffee date” style post. That could be fun!

well, that was longer than I intended…

Apparently, I am chattier than I thought! (And I haven’t even gotten into the beer yet, wink wink.) Anyways, I am grateful, as always, to you for reading the posts and making the recipes! And I hope that you love these loaded Mediterranean sweet potato fries as much as I do.

If you make this recipe, leave a comment and rating below to let me know how you enjoyed it! And be sure to share a photo of your creation on Instagram- just tag @upbeet.kitchen and #upbeetkitchen so that I can feature it in my stories!

Enjoy!!