If you know me, you know I love sweet potatoes. So, when it came time to create a Thanksgiving menu, the question wasn’t whether I was going to serve sweet potatoes, the question was simply what recipe to choose.
I wanted something fairly simple to make, but that would nonetheless impress. I also wanted it to be something unique and fun. This recipe met …
Sweet potatoes are probably the first thing I ever put in the oven.
I can’t quite remember how old I was, but I can remember the early fascination with the magic of baking. I tore off a sheet of foil, set the oven to 420 degrees, and placed a hard, unattractive object into the oven. There was no cutting, no slicing, no mixing, no peeling. There was no other ingredient, and no other steps. And yet, after ninety minutes, a sweet smell enveloped the kitchen and much of the house, beckoning me downstairs. I grabbed the pot-holders, cut a tablespoon of butter, and sat down to dig into the soft, sweet flesh of a baked sweet potato.
I couldn’t have been older than twelve or thirteen, …
It seems almost unpatriotic to serve a burger without fries. So when grilling my favorite hamburger, I always make sure to have a few servings of these grilled sweet potato and white potato fries ready!
These fries are yet another expression of my love for sweet potato wedges and/or sweet potato fries. Like those recipes, these grilled fries are a healthy alternative to deep-frying. Throwing them on the grill makes them quick and easy to make, with less mess. The colors and grill marks …
Like strangers on the same page of a phone book, sweet potatoes and white potatoes share nothing more than a common last name. Both potatoes are, of course, plants. But sweet potatoes belong to the morning glory family, while white potatoes belong to the nightshade family – sometimes called the potato family. More to the point, sweet potatoes are roots of the dicotyledonous plant; white potatoes are underground stems (tubers) of the potato plant.
Yams, meanwhile, belong to the yam family, and are tubers of the monocotyledon plant. But even though they are tubers, yams have a closer lineage to lilies, than to either the white potato or the sweet potato. The confusion over yams …
Spring officially arrived a few weeks back, but from the look of it here in St. Louis, you would never know it. Between a light snowstorm to start the week, and freezing rain at week’s end, the thaw of Spring remains in hiding. Given the wintry conditions, I decided a few winter vegetables would make a suitable side.
Roasting over high heat gives the vegetables a crisp outer skin while keeping the inner flesh moist. The high heat also serves to caramelize the natural sugars in the sweet potatoes and carrots, for a sweet, yet healthy, cold-weather treat.
If you like, …