Festive food

[flemmings]

So evidently the Americans have this Thanksgiving dinner tradition of serving sweet potatoes in various ways. Casseroles, I read; pies, I read. So I google for recipes. A sweet potato pie sounds exactly like a pumpkin pie, only we do make ours from pumpkin- the genus known as 'pie pumpkin', oddly enough. The sweet potato version sounds even sweeter, and must come in at a million calories instead of pumpkin pie's 500,000.

So I turn to the casseroles and discover they contain brown sugar, white sugar, pecans and marshmallow topping. The horror, the horror!

My own mother baked sweet potato with butter and brown sugar, and it made my teeth ache. What seems self-evident to me- that the last thing sweet potato needs is more sweetness- is unrecognized by anyone but the long-ago Israeli father of one of my little friends. He sauteed onions and sweet potato slices in olive oil until soft, grated monterey jack cheese over them, and baked the casserole in the oven. In my version I added caraway seeds, just because I love caraway. This gives one a savoury sweet potato pie, and makes me wish we could still call the things yams as they did in my youth.

Comments

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

I'll have to try that pie! I don't understand the American obsession with adding sugar to everything either. But I grew up eating plain roasted sweet potato. and it's like dessert.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I agree, a dessert-type food. And the sauteed onions are sweet too, but a different kind of sweetness. Is why I added caraway.

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

Uhmmm as far as I know ... whilst Asians like sweet things ... I too believe that adding sugar to sweet potato makes me cringe! I usually just bake them or make fritters but baking is the way to go! Sadly I do have a weakness for those Japanese style crunchy glazed things. Definitely unhealthy for anyone!