"sweetpotatoes" news and stories

If you can believe it, there's sweet potato in this tasty treat.

Slashfood had the delicious task this Wednesday of helping judge the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission's blogger recipe contest. One of the finalists was this delectable cheesecake sweetie by East Village Kitchen.

The contest asked bloggers to come up with recipes that used sweet potatoes in new ways to encourage home cooks to get them on the table after the Thanksgiving dinner season.

Get the cheesecake recipe, see the winner and learn the difference between a sweet potato and a Southern yam after the jump.

Say what you will, nothing works better with a sweet potato than savory spices. Forget that sweet stuff. Taste it with garlic in a soup, make a twice-baked potato with some garlic, hot peppers, smokey paprika, and other spices, or use it as a vessel for stew.

It takes a little time to prep, but it's so delicious and worth it. Simply take a raw, large sweet potato, and hollow out the center to make a bowl. The beauty of a sweet potato is that as much as you roast it, the flesh just gets more and more malleable while the skin stays firm. So, while you want to make a bowl, don't make it too hollow, leave some flesh for eating.

Once prepared, spray with some oil, season, and bake while you prepare the stew to go inside (I made a quick beef stew with leftover ingredients). Basically, cook the heck out of it, and even pop it under the broiler for a little while. When it's out, scoop out a little more flesh if you weren't able to get enough while raw, and then fill with your stew and eat. And this is where some leftover flesh comes in handy -- as you scoop out the stew, scrape the walls to get some great creamy flesh. The skin will stay in tact, and your stew will be all the tastier -- even if you put sweet potato in your stew.

When a friend of mine recently asked me to help throw her a baby shower, I had many questionable suggestions-- like making it race-car rather than baby themed (accepted) to making a baby-shaped red-velvet cake with gooey red filling, except the diaper part, which would have brown icing filling (rejected).

But one of the things she was most excited about was my suggestion that I make a meatcake. That is, a cake made of meat, an idea I had found (like so many nutty ideas) on the interwebs. I took the concept, but created my own recipes--two, since a non-red-meat eater needed turkey. It may sound peculiar but the result was delicious and even rather spectacular. If you want to try it yourself....

I have been contributing to Thanksgiving dinners since I was a child, doing everything from polishing the silver to serving the cocktails to making all the side dishes to inventing new deserts. However, this year will be the first that I'll be hosting and, admittedly, the thought fills me with dread.

I've thrown many a party and cooked many a feast in my time but the idea of making a whole turkey in a temperamental oven is, simply, frightening. Thus far, I've dealt with my problem in my usual way--avoiding it by becoming absorbed in everything that surrounds it. In this case, the side dishes. By dint of my location (Las Vegas) and the thrift shop acquisition of a pertinent Sunset cookbook, we are having a southwestern Thanksgiving this year.

On the menu: sweet potatoes with tequila and lime, garlic green beans with Manchego, corn pudding (I'll be adding some chiles and perhaps sprinkle some cheddar cheese on top), mashed potatoes, cranberry salsa, cornbread chorizo stuffing, roasted poblano gravy and, of course, that blasted turkey. The thought of it stops me cold so I can't even plan desert, although I am thinking about pumpkin cheesecake or sweet potato cupcakes with dulce de leche pecan frosting. Although I could just say the heck with the whole thing and go over to Freed's Bakery and order a Thanksgiving dinner cake.

This is a pretty traditional sweet potato recipe that I got from my friend Linda Arnold shortly before the first Thanksgiving that I cooked. It uses relatively small amounts of sugar and can be adjusted to fit almost any size gathering.

Take unpeeled sweet potatoes, of any quantity, and drop them into boiling water. Cover and cook for about 25 minutes, or until they can be easily and smoothly pierced with a fork. Let the sweet potatoes cool until you can comfortably handle them, then peel and mash. Preheat oven to 375°.

For every two cups of mashed sweet potato (about five medium potatoes), add:

5 Tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons brown sugar
Lemon juice to taste

Beat with a fork, whisk, or hand mixer until very light. Place in a deep oven-safe dish, arrange large marshmallows on top (if desired), and heat through in oven. Be careful, as the marshmallows can easily burn. Serve immediately.