A lovely recipe from the Taste of Home Cooking School magazine (spring 2010); it can also be found on Philadelphia cream cheese's website. It's a very filling and velvety side dish.
Roasted Sweet Potato and Carrot Puree
Serves 6
Ingredients
1 lb carrots, peeled and sliced into 1/2 inch rounds
1 lb sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons brown sugar (I used light)
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups chicken broth, divided -more may be used at the end if desired
4 oz cream cheese, cubed
Equipment: food processor, jelly roll pan (or half sheet pan), saucepan
Preheat your oven to 375°F. Now would be a good time to prep your jelly roll pan, if you so choose. I personally lined my pan with aluminum foil to help with clean up.
After you've peeled and chopped the carrots and sweet potatoes, move them to a medium mixing bowl. Pour the olive oil over the veggies, and sprinkle with brown sugar and salt. Mix so that everything is well coated. (Clean hands are the best tool for this job.) Spread them out on the jelly roll pan in an even layer. Pour 1 cup of the chicken broth over the potatoes and carrots.
Roast the carrots and sweet potatoes for 45-55 minutes, or until all the broth is soaked up and your vegetables are tender and a bit caramelized. While roasting, give everything a good stir occasionally.
When the vegetables are roasted, move them to the food processor. Add to the processor the last 1/2 cup of broth and the cream cheese cubes. Process until the mixture is smooth. If you want a bit thinner puree, add more chicken broth and process again. Move the mixture to a saucepan and heat through, stirring often.
Notes: I changed a bit of the methodology from the original recipe - they would have you pour your puree back on the sheet pan to reheat. To me, that seems like a large pain to move the finished product to a serving bowl from that pan, so I say use a saucepan. Honestly, my puree was plenty piping warm after being processed, I skipped the reheating at the end.
Use regular olive oil for this - save the good stuff where the flavor adds something to the dish. The olive oil is just for roasting the veggies, you aren't going to taste it.
And, if you are like me, you grew up calling a jelly roll pan a cookie sheet (and I still do around the house). The main difference is - the jelly roll pan has those short sides where as a cookie sheet is a pan that may or may not have sides. For clarification, I said jelly roll because with that broth, you are obviously gonna need sides.
