These are more or less one of the sweet potato dishes* that came to Thanksgiving with me. The scalloped sweet potatoes were tasty (one day I will manage to cook scalloped sweet potatoes as they exist in my head and they will be AMAZING -- this effort merely very good), but this is the one that people raved about.
I will confess straight away that the recipe I give here is not what I actually did. I was using leftover sweet potato coconut soup** as the liquid. If you want to make sweet potato coconut soup and then use that (and why not? sweet potato coconut soup is awesome) go right ahead.
I got the idea because as I was pouring a cup of cream into the scalloped sweet potatoes, I realized that only bringing that dish would exclude the aunt who is not on speaking terms (let alone eating terms) with lactose. I contemplated and decided to use the leftover soup as liquid and mash the rest of the sweet potatoes (I massively overbought sweet potatoes as I am wont to do).
Mashed Coconut Sweet Potatoes
3 lbs sweet potatoes
coconut milk
chicken or vegetable broth
ginger, paprika, black pepper, garlic, salt to taste
butter optional
Fill a largish kettle with water, add a tea spoon of salt or so, and bring to boil on the stove
Peel and thinly slice the sweet potatoes.
Place them carefully in the boiling water, trying not to splash oneself. Wait for the water to reboil.
Boil for five minutes.
Drain
Transfer to a mixing bowl and add liquid using approximately three parts broth, to one part coconut milk. One might also employ the butter at this time if one is doing so. The amount of liquid and butter used is left to the personal taste and good judgement of the person doing the mashing. Just as the requisite amount of mashing is also left to their taste and judgement. Me? I like my mashed root vegetables a bit lumpy.
Add the spices to taste.
Transfer to a serving dish. Feed to an impressed crowd.
The attentive will notice that this leaves one with most of a can of coconut milk. May I suggest a coconut cinnamon latte while preparing the feast? Or one could make soup. Or piña coladas. Or a smoothie.
* I usually bring sweet potatoes if I tactfully can. I have very strong feelings about the use of marshmallows in non-combat situations.
** It's basically my coconut squash soup recipe with the addition of some smoked paprika and cayenne.
Marshmallows do not belong in food. Or really anything. Even homemade marshmallows are questionable.
ReplyDeleteI prefer my sweet potatoes boiled, peeled (the inner peel thing can be left or not, as you wish--I personally like it), thickly sliced (just shy of a centimeter or so thick discs), and tossed in a caramel sauce. Melt butter with brown sugar and a pinch of salt, and whisk in cream. Pour over sweet potatoes in a baking dish, toss a bit, and bake. Or just cram in your pie hole as fast as you can.
There is, in fact, a precise recipe for this somewhere. I actually pull it out when I bother to make them, because I have questionable luck with caramel sauces--I usually get something rather solid when I experiment.
I actually have eaten worthwhile marshmallows. Even marshmallows that I would have spent money on, if I did not have access to the samples bin at work (I miss that job).
ReplyDeleteHOWEVER for reasons that probably make me deeply Un-American, I can't stand sweet potatoes that are sweetened. At least not as part of dinner. Your caramel sweet potatoes sound like the beginnings of a lovely dessert. (Layer caramel sweet potatoes over a bed of lady fingers, slosh with brandy, top with cinnamon mousse -- or something.)