As fall gets underway, do you know the difference between a sweet potato and a yam? The subject of much confusion, the orange-colored tuber that is often referred to as a "yam" is in fact, a sweet potato.

This potato fritter looks, in our humble opinion, exactly as a potato fritter should.

It's crispy around the edges with little shreds of potato and sweet potato trailing seductively from a perfectly golden brown, tender center. It sort of reminds us of the sun, or, less abstractly, of what we'd like to be eating right now. The fact that this fritter's creator, Molly Watson of The Dinner Files, originally intended for this to be a potato latke makes us love it even more.

We know the pain and sorrow of potato latkes -- indeed, our mother's first and only attempt to make the starchy little devils resulted in an unscheduled visit from the fire department -- so we can sympathize with the myriad frustrations Ms. Watson describes on her blog. And we can also relate to the unexpected joys of happy kitchen accidents that yield gorgeous fritters like this one, particularly if they're accompanied by a few spoonfuls of applesauce or tangy Greek yogurt. So please, go fritter some time away -- yes, we went there -- with Molly.

[Via The Dinner Files]

Got a killer original sweet potato recipe? Well, post it to your blog and you could bag a more-than-sweet $1,000 prize. The North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission has just announced their 2009 Bloggers' Recipe Challenge. The $1,000 prize will be awarded to the creator of the winning recipe; five finalists will win $100 prizes.

Check out the instructions, directly from the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission, after the jump.

Seriously? Sweet potato and cheese cookies? That's what I thought when I saw this recipe too. But Dawn from Vanilla Sugar swears by them, and I'm inclined to believe her. I've always thought that the cheddar cheese + pie combo was highly underrated, so I can see how the sweet and savory flavors would work together much the same way in these cookies. Plus, since cheese has protein, you can eat the cookies for breakfast. Right? The recipe includes mashed sweet potatoes, shredded sharp cheddar, cinnamon, pecans and raisins. I won't have a chance to test these out myself until the weekend, so if anyone else tries them, please let me know how they taste!

For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.

I'm loving this star-themed bento, thrown together from fridge leftovers, from Catdraco on the Live Journal bento site. We've got cukes with stars cut out of the center, filled with same-shaped sweet potatos. The noodles are rice vermicelli, and there are tofu cubes with soy and sesame oil. The car is a hard-boiled egg.

Not everyone looks forward to the cooler weather of fall, and I'm one of them. I really prefer warmer temperatures, but I do look forward to fall food. All of the different squash dishes, puddings, and citrus flavors are so welcome that I can almost forgive the chill in the air. I've been searching for different fall influenced bread recipes and I think I've found some good ones. Check them out and you be the judge.

1. This fig and anise bread sounds so amazing, I'm planning on making this one soon!
2. What could be more fall than a pumpkin bread pudding?
3. It seems more difficult to find a pumpkin yeast bread, but I found one amid all the quick breads.
4. Chestnut rye is a little more unusual of a flavor, but that's what makes it special.
5. Sweet potato rolls deserve a place on everyone's fall table.
6. This cornbread from the Homesick Texan may not be strictly fall, but the cornbread dressing you can make with it sure is.
7. Orange yeast bread is also more rare than its quick bread cousin.
8. Sure cranberry is usually paired with orange, but why not let it shine on its own?

All the comments I've gotten on the Autumnal Casserole post have led me to believe that there are a lot of you out there looking for alternatives to the traditional Thanksgiving side dishes. So I thought I'd post another one of my favorites. This one originally came to me via 101 Cookbooks. Heidi found it in Artisanal Cooking by Terrance Brennan. It is a sweet potato puree that is flecked with vanilla and orange zest and it so good that you might think it belongs in a pie instead of along side your turkey.

I first made it two years ago to take along to my family's Thanksgiving buffet. I put the bowl down on the table and got hijacked into a conversation with my aunt. When I finally got back to the table half an hour later, the bowl was nearly empty. Last year I made it for Christmas dinner. While we were waiting for my dad to carve the turkey, my mom and I stood in the kitchen together and scraped the bowl of the food processor clean with our fingers, just so as not to let any of this puree go to waste.

Give up your sweet potato casseroles and try this puree. It will convert even the most devoted of the mini-marshmallow fans.

I must have sweet potatoes on the brain, because is the second post I'm writing this week that involves them. This time I haven't actually done the cooking, I'm simply salivating over the Sweet Potato Gnocchi that Brys made over at Cookthink this weekend.

I've never made gnocchi on my own. I've thought about it more than once, but always talked myself out of the idea because I'd heard from so many folks that it's really hard to get it right. This is why I'm doubly intrigued by this post, because Brys didn't even use a recipe, he just headed out and did it by feel (documenting each step as he went with some really lovely pictures). There are lots of things that I can cook by feel, but homemade pasta is not one of them. However, he makes it look so easy that I think I'm going to have to give it a go sometime soon.

I often clip recipes out of the newspaper, but frequently they just get heaped onto the big pile that represents my To-Do list and forgotten. However, a couple of days ago I found myself standing in my kitchen, looking a three-pound bag of sweet potatoes and lemongrass that I had bought on a whim and realized that I had clipped the perfect recipe for those items not two weeks before.

The Philadelphia Inquirer recently ran an article about Ellen Yin, the owner of Fork, a restaurant that helped revitalize the Old City neighborhood of Philly. She's publishing a cookbook/memoir in honor of the restaurant's 10th anniversary. They ran several of her recipes along side the article, including one for Sweet-Potato Lemongrass Soup, perfect for my random ingredients. It turned out a really silky soup (although I think I would reduce the amount of water just slightly, as I like my pureed veggie soups a little thicker) that starts out tasty and gets better over time. It's a terrific recipe for fall, when you want something warm and soft, colored with the hues of fall (the recipe is after the jump).

The quesadilla is perhaps the sturdiest of staples in my roster of go-to meals. Lately, my favorite combination is the one you see here: flour tortillas with Monterrey Jack cheese, spinach, black beans, chicken and sweet potatoes. Really, all you need for a satisfying quesadilla is tortillas and cheese, but taking the time to get a few quality components together yields something far more satisfying. As a bonus, the following recipes for black beans, sauteed spinach and mashed sweet potatoes are all great side dishes on their own. I usually wind up using leftover roasted chicken, but grilled or sauteed shrimp are also a great substitution. The assembly is pretty simple, regardless of the fillings you choose, but we'll get back to that later. The following proportions should be enough for two large quesadillas. All of the ingredients can easily be multiplied.

For a foodie, especially a Slashfoodie, one of the best things about winter is that it signifies a changing of the guard, so to speak, when it comes to produce. Apples, pears and citrus replace the berries and melons of summer, opening up a whole new season of possibilities. Capogiro Gelato expresses all these possibilities with their seasonally changing menu, now geared up for winter. I was fortunate enough to sample some of the flavors from their summer line earlier this year and, this week, had the opportunity to indulge in a few of their winter offerings, as well.

While they still have their classic Italian and chocolate flavors available, Capogiro's holiday table menu is extensive, including Apple Cider with Clove Sorbetto, Castagne (Chestnut) Gelato, Cannella di Saigon (Cinnamon) and Melograno (Pomegranate). The flavors I tried were Zucca (Lancaster County Neck Pumpkin), Apple Cider with Clove, Sweet Potato with Pecan Praline, Meyer Lemon with Vodka, Moro (Blood Orange) and Pure King Leo Stracciatella.

The 18th (I think) round of Sugar High Friday is being hosted by Chandra of Lick The Spoon. The theme is one not unfamiliar to us here at Slashfood: cooking with booze. The official title is "Candy is Dandy...But Liquor is Quicker." My contribution is a sweet potato pie with bourbon, topped with pecans and maple syrup. The recipe comes from Alton Brown and his episode of Good Eats dedicated to sweet potatoes. A transcript of the episode, including the pie recipe, is available through the Good Eats Fan Page. That recipe doesn't include bourbon, but I happened to have a bottle of Baker's on the shelf, and, well, you know, it seemed like a good idea. Since this was the first time I made this recipe (or sweet potato pie, for that matter), I didn't want to tinker with it too much, so I only used two tablespoons of bourbon, around half a shot. It could probably have used a little more, as the bourbon flavor is rather faint. Still, it's one of the best sweet potato pies I've tasted. I'm not ashamed to say that the crust was store-bought. I'm still an amateur in the baking department, and, since I always manage to make a huge mess anyway, I figured I'd make it easier on myself. Truth be told, I still managed to scorch a pot and dirty an extra pie pan. But that's all in the past now. What I'm left with is my favorite type of pie, and a killer version at that.

[Photo: Nick Vagnoni]

Can the lowly Sweet Potato answer the world's ever growing needs for food and energy supplys and remain environmentally balanced? Japanese scientists seem to think so. 

"With people scrambling for food and energy, environmental destruction will get increasingly serious," said Toyoki Kozai, president of Chiba University and an expert on sweet potatoes. "Sweet potatoes can solve these three major problems all at once."

The sweet potato can grow with little use of fertilizers (boosting its green credentials) and also using the same area of land yields five times more than rice in terms of weight.  The food can also be used to make alcohol for fuel and biodegradable plastic. Unlike petroleum-based plastic, that made from sweet potatoes decomposes naturally through bacterial action in the earth. You can even buy hydroponics equipment to grow sweet potatoes designed for rooftop greening as a way to absorb heat. All in all it sounds a most benefical group on so many levels - I can't stand the taste though!

 

The Food Network editors put together a list of their favorite comfort foods of the past year and if anyone needed any confirmation that Paula Deen is the darling of the network, this is it. 7 out of the top 10 recipes are hers and the Sweet Potato Casserole credited to the "Food Network Kitchens" has a distinctly Paula feel, albeit with less butter than she would use. Their top picks are:

• Good Eats Roast Turkey
• Chicken and Rice Casserole
• Lasagna Rolls
• Baked Spaghetti
• Grandgirl's Fresh Apple Cake from Georgia
• Southern Cornbread Stuffing
• Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cakes
• Baked French Toast Casserole with Maple Syrup
• Sweet Potato Casserole
• Cheeseburger Meatloaf and Sauce

It's hard to believe that they didn't pick any macaroni and cheese for their list, particularly since a search of their site turned up 64 hits, two of which are Paula Deen recipes. It is also a surprise that no Rachael Ray recipes made the list, since her specialty is quick and easy comfort food. Instead of going with a list comprised mainly of casseroles, it would have been nice to diversify the list with some chocolate chip cookies, soups or other non-pasta dishes, too.

I just tried the Vanilla Sweet Potato Puree recipe from Heidi at 101 Cookbooks as a side to my holiday meal. After cooking the sweet potatoes until soft and tender, I placed them in a large bowl with cream, vanilla extract, a bit of orange zest and a bit of butter and whipped them with a hand mixer until they were smooth and fluffy.
You can see Heidi's batch in the photo above because her styling of this side is far more appealing than any of my attempts. Somehow, it seems that purees look much less glamorous than they taste. No matter, because this tasted fantastic. The vanilla flavor, though I used extract rather than infuse my cream with real vanilla beans, as Heidi did, came through very well. Its delicate flavor brought out the sweetness of the potatoes without having to add a lot of sugar. Whipping the whole mixture, combined with the cream, no doubt, makes it incredibly light and fluffy. This is a standout dish and is definitely worth a repeat. Or two.