The sweet potato, a root which most people probably think is rather unremarkable, is my new interest. My mom never cooked it so it remained a vague orange mystery; one which I’d never had any particular interest. I do know that it would appear baked underneath marshmallows at Thanksgiving. I just ate the gooey browned marshmallows since Mom said she didn’t really like sweet potato, and if Mom says it isn’t good, then clearly it can’t be good. One time, my grandma came to stay with me while my parents were out of town. She made a nice dinner with pork chops, broccoli made perfectly the way only she could do it, and finally with baked sweet potato. Unfortunately, I was only just peaking out of my picky stage. Despite the loads of butter she piled into the orange flesh, I didn’t like it. It was different, and I didn’t do different as yet.
But the other day in class, I was startled by the appearance of someone’s lunch of sweet potato and the amazing smell that it was giving off. I must confess, I did covet my neighbor’s lunch. Then I went out and bought a sweet potato. It was the most bizarre purchase of my life, one sweet potato and one tangelo (because, like my Dad, I cannot stand buying only one thing at the grocery store). I brought my dinner home and pulled down the trusty Betty Crocker cookbook. She told me to bake it for 40 to 60 minutes at 350 degrees. I followed the directions and soon caught a whiff or two of the scent which had so tempted me in class. Finally, I sat down to my dinner and cut into the potato. It was perfectly cooked, but I was confused, it wasn’t orange, instead more of an ivory color. I shrugged to myself and dug in anyway, it smelled right, though not quite as strong.
It was a bit disappointing. It smelled right, but the flavor just wasn’t as intense as I expected and seemed more like a potato that was kind of sweet than an entirely different species. It was good, baked exactly the right amount of time, the texture was good, but something wasn’t quite right. Yet that did not deter me. After my frustration with the first sweet potato, I did some pretty thorough internet searches on the topic, wondering if I had actually wanted a yam or if there was something else I needed to do. I learned that yams are often called sweet potatoes in the US despite being a completely different vegetable and that both yams and sweet potatoes can range in color from pale to deep orange, with the yam veering even into the purple color scheme. Newly educated, the next Sunday I bought a couple sweet potatoes from an elderly lady manning a card table at the farmers market. She did not look like she spoke English and the produce seemed like it might have come from her back yard, but hers were the best looking ones at the market, especially since it really is not sweet potato season. These looked like they would yield what I had learned from Wikipedia to be sweeter, more beta-carotene loaded orange flesh.
This time I got it right. Orangey-sweet flavorful sweet potato, hot from the oven, it turned out that the second time was the charm. I took a page from Grammy Bev’s book and added a bit of butter, but it would have been good without it. I could understand the reverence I heard in my Dad’s voice when I asked him about sweet potatoes. I could practically hear him drooling as he described how they were prepared when he was a kid,
“You take it and cut it in half and put it with the cut part up. You salt and pepper it then cover it with the little mini marshmallows and bake it. The marshmallows melt into the flesh until you wouldn’t even know they were there, and I guess you’d say they caramelize…”
Maybe soon I’ll experiment with mini marshmallows, or into various other recommendations I’ve been given, like mashed sweet potatoes with ice cream or dessert options. I’m also starting to eye the yams at the market, perhaps it is time to find out for myself the actual difference between a yam and a sweet potato.
