Sweet Potatoes

The sweet potato is not a pantry staple like the potato, yet not sufficiently exotic to catch the culinary trendy train like kale or quinoa. Baked into a sweet casserole during the holidays, snubbed by the pumpkin pie like a wallflower, it fills the void in between brown sugar studded ham and stuffed turkey, gravy bathed mashed potato and bread rolls slathered in butter, cranberries soused in orange juice and Brussels sprouts swimming in bacon fat.

We treat our food in the same manner we wear our clothes, each categorized into the classic, the trendy, and the in-between, rising and falling with the zeitgeist of the time. How does the artichoke, nutritionally poor and wasteful for its low ratio in edible parts, come to be among the priciest vegetables? The floral isle is where it belongs; a flower is what it is.

Certain grains have bonded with their human counterparts since the dawn of agriculture, such as wheat in Europe and Mesopotamia and corn and potato in the Americas. I come from rice country where rice is sacrosanct. We honor our ancestors with a bowl of steamed rice, the earth and sun with sweet rice cakes boiled and pounded into their respective square and round molds. Only when rice is scarce that it is supplemented with corn, potato, or sweet potato.

But we all know that monocultural habits are no good for any of us. We could all benefit from a diverse diet. The sweet potato really is an underrated vegetable. It is nutritious, filling, and colorful. I want to bring some fun into cooking the sweet potato, so that during your next trip to the grocery store, hopefully it won’t be passed over for the potato or the pumpkin pie.

Sweet potato, especially the orange variety, is high in water content. It yields a mushy texture when cooked. To concentrate its flavor and sweetness, it should be baked until the skin wrinkles and bursts open so that much of the starch has been broken down into sugar. Depending on its size, around 375F for an hour ought to do it. When it is blended into a smoothie, you will find that it is still rather wet, thus best combined with another flour, only adding water as needed until we have a soft and pliant dough.

This recipe is a spin-off from the classic sweet rice doughnut. The baked sweet potato is blended with sweet rice flour and mashed banana to make the wrapper. The filling is also made with baked sweet potato and a drop of vanilla extract. Orange sweet potato is good for the dough. It is fine for the filling as well, but purple sweet potato is even better. It is more starchy, thus holds up better, plus you get a nice orange purple swirl in your doughnuts. An estimate of quantities is given here, but best to practice with a feel of hands. The dough is ready when you can flatten and then mold it around the filling into a ball the size of a golf ball.

Dough: half of a baked orange sweet potato, blended with half of a mashed banana, a third cup of sugar, and a pinch of salt, then kneaded with ¾ cup of sweet rice flour. Depending on the water content of the baked sweet potato, add more water if the dough is too dry or more sweet rice flour if still wet. It should be malleable in your hands. Cover with a damp cloth and let it rest for 20 minutes.

Filling: one baked purple sweet potato blended with ¼ cup of sugar, a pinch of salt, and a drop of vanilla extract. Stir this mixture in a non-stick pan over medium-low heat until most of the water has evaporated, but it should not be burnt.

Putting it together: Take a tbsp of dough and flatten it on the palm of your hand. Put a tsp of filling in the middle and wrap the dough around it to form a golf-ball like. Dredge the doughnut balls in toasted sesame seeds and fry until golden. Best eaten at room temperature. Make about 10 doughnuts.

Another recipe blends baked sweet potato with tapioca flour to make a cheese bread. Mash 200 grams or 1¼ cup of baked sweet potato with 200 grams or 1½ cup of tapioca flour, an egg, ½ cup of shredded cheese, 3 tbsp of milk, 3 tbsp of vegetable oil, and a tsp of salt. Oil your hands well before forming this dough into rolls, since it will be quite sticky. If it is too sticky to handle, add a tbsp of tapioca flour at a time and try again. 450F for 20 minutes should make about a dozen sweet potato bread rolls.

Last but not least, one of my favorites is sweet potato fritters. I drizzle maple syrup on them for a fine sweet treat, but a sprinkle of powdered sugar will do. I also chop these into crunchy bits to scatter onto my rice or noodle bowls. Orange sweet potato is required, sliced into thin rounds, then cut into matchsticks. They should be soaked in a mild salt water solution for about half an hour, then drenched in a sweet sparkling batter and fried until golden.

Batter: whisk together ½ cup of wheat flour, ¼ cup of rice flour, 1 tbsp of tapioca flour, 1 tsp of baking powder, a pinch of salt, and ¾ cup of sweet sparkling wine such as peach moscato. If the batter is too thin, add 1 tbsp of wheat flour at a time, or if the batter is too thick, add a tiny bit of sparkling until it feels like a thick cream.

Putting it together: Rinse and dry the sweet potato sticks. Add just enough of the sweet potato to the batter at a time so as not to overfill it. Take spoon-fulls and drop them into the hot oil. Take care not to overcrowd the frying pan by frying only a few at a time.