• Roasted Sweet Potatoes with
    Maple Syrup Brown Butter, Bacon, and Sage

    November 26, 2008

    Posted in: Portland, The Recipes

    I recently cooked up a Faux Thanksgiving Feast, and though only intended to be a peripheral attraction, this dish stole the show. I love sweet potatoes. Love, love them. Earthy and sweet, evocative of the holidays and provocative of the sort of deep-down comfort that settles low in your belly and warms your mind and body from the inside out. Thanksgiving was never celebrated in my un-American home, and as sweet potatoes are not part of French or Brazilian culinary traditions, my infatuation with these rosy tubers is sparkling and new, unmarred by horrific failures. The bacon, sweet potato, and sage trifecta is inspired by Suzanne Goin’s Sunday Suppers at Luques, the freshest addition to my cookbook collection, and a superbly beautiful masterpiece I highly recommend. I would never have thought of it without her, as I’m absolutely not a bacon person, finding it to be the greasiest and most aberrant component of the All American Breakfast (scorned by my famille.) Youthful traumas involving this pork product have made me very wary (approximate rhyme!!!) but when I saw bacon listed on the “Lucques” page, it resonated in that soulful way that lets me know I have thought up or read about a golden combination. It was sensational. I’ve long lusted to cook sweet potatoes with maple syrup, and I found this to be a ripe opportunity; my guests and I were well rewarded.

    Ingredients, for 4:

    • 5 small sweet potatoes, of the Garnet or Jewel yam varieties (they aren’t actually yams, but distant relatives of the potato. The term yam is applied to sweet potatoes grown in the South, namely Louisiana, to distinguish them. True yams are enormous and are found only in Africa and Asia.)
    • 3 T good butter, preferably French butter from Normandy.
    • 8 sage leaves.
    • 4 T maple syrup. The real stuff, not pancake syrup. This is not IHOP!!!
    • 10 slices Applewood smoked bacon. I used Niman Ranch bacon, which is all natural and not preserved with bizarre, unpronounceable chemicals.
    • Finely milled sel gris, and freshly ground black pepper.

    Procedure:

    * The sweet potatoes are intended to be cooked ahead of time. The action of letting them cool to room temperature allows their flavor to mellow, and reheating and caramelizing them with the bacon and sage imparts them with added depth of flavor. Even the bacon can be cooked earlier on, making this a fantastically easy dish to prepare when entertaining large crowds.

    For the Sweet Potatoes:

    1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
    2. Peel and cube the sweet potatoes. I did this by halving them vertically; incising them twice, still vertically; and then about three times horizontally, to produce medium large, approximately even cubes. This is not a dish, however, in which it is necessary to ensure that the pieces are of exactly the same size. I actually like the textural contrast when the smaller ones melt in your mouth and the larger ones offer pleasing resistance.
    3. Place these in an oven-proof dish, either Pyrex or, if you should have the good fortune, a Le Creuset ceramic sauté pan.
    4. Heat a small pan over medium high heat. Add the butter and cook until it is nutty, fragrant, and hazelnut brown.
    5. Swirl the maple syrup immediately into the butter.
    6. Pour over the sweet potatoes. Salt and pepper generously.
    7. Toss gently (it should seem that there is more buttery liquid than necessary. If you start fearing for the safety of your waistline at the mere sight of it, you’ve done it right!) and pop into the oven for about 40 minutes, or until the sweet potatoes are fully cooked and soft, but still a bit firm.

    For the Bacon:

    1. If there are expansive stretches of ivory, opalescent fat, remove about 3/4 of it.
    2. Heat a nonstick pan over high heat.
    3. Stack half the bacon slices and slice horizontally, producing thin lardons (bacon rectangles that are part meat, part fat). Repeat with the other half. I actually cooked mine in two batches, crisping the first more, and leaving the second meatier and softer.
    4. Render the lardons until nicely crisped, but keep in mind that they will continue to cook breifly after you remove them from the heat.
    5. Strain the contents of the pan, reserving the rendered fat and placing the lardons on a paper towel to drain.

    Before Serving:

    1. If cooked in a Pyrex dish, transfer the sweet potatoes and all the succulent maple butter to a pan. If prepared in a ceramic dish, keep them in there. Heat over high heat.
    2. Tear the sage into small bits and scatter the herb and the bacon over the sweet potatoes.
    3. Push around gently every so often to maximize caramelization (making use of the increased surface to mass ratio produced by cubing!)
    4. When heated through and golden brown, taste. Add more salt and pepper as needed, and a fresh drizzle of maple syrup if you find the sweetness of the dish needs to be pepped up. If you aren’t already calling up Jenny Craig and feel that the dish you’ve creates can support an additional drop of fat, a minimal amount of the bacon drippings will lend fabulous smokiness to the final product. But do be careful and discerning! If the maple butter wasn’t adequately absorbed into the sweet potatoes, the addition of more fat will render the dish a greasy mess. It’s a fine line.

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