Let The Sky Rain Potatoes

I went into work today only to discover that, when your employing institution considers Easter to be SRS BZNS, everything is closed on Thursday and you can't actually hold your office hours. And so, in honor of... Jesus deciding to take the day off and do some tidying up around the house or something, I bring you this short and felicitous entry.

I recently decided to revisit a recipe I had tried before: Homesick Texan Carnitas, from Smitten Kitchen. The last time I did it the meat was delicious but not exactly falling apart. More like tasty bricks. I needed something else to eat with it, but coleslaw and guacamole don't get me any closer to my actual cooking goals. So I flipped through the cookbook until I found something that almost sort of went and wouldn't completely be at odds with the carnitas. Lemony Sweet Potatoes with Dates seemed to fit the bill.

There was, however, a minor miscalculation. The plan was to get the sweet potatoes roasting, then the carnitas into the pot while they were cooking, then the rest of the sweet potato recipe in the two hours it took to boil down all the water in the pot. But the problem was that two hours is a long time. So my side was done and partly eaten and stored by the time that the main course finished. I do have one useful picture for you. There's still a lot of fat hanging out on some of the pieces (there wasn't enough room at the bottom of the pot to make sure it all rendered down) but it's been really useful for reheating servings in the cast iron. The fatty pieces go in first to melt, and then the rest to crisp a bit and reheat.

Onwards and potatowards! Lemony Sweet Potatoes with Dates is one of those annoying recipes where a main ingredient is, under other circumstances, a full recipe. Because before I even start "cooking," I need to turn these...

...into these:

Ok, so that doesn't really tell you anything. I have harnessed the power of fire to transform these previously ordinary sweet potatoes into ROASTED SWEET POTATOES! LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR!

The lemon flavor in this dish comes from a half cup of limoncello, which is great because limoncello is delicious and also I now have a bottle of limoncello to deal with. Turns out it tastes great in orange juice.

I went back to the pitted dates instead of the pre-chopped. Not for any culinary reason, it's just that the recipe calls for 8 dates and I didn't know how to estimate that otherwise.

Here you can see the potatoes peeled in the... not background, really. Underground? And gravity defying dates.

I got sort of lazy, since the dates were going into a food processor. I mean, why cut them up if they're getting cut up? Dates, limoncello, mace, and a little salt into Caliban.

And then I left them there because I thought I should probably get the sweet potatoes ready for the sauce. Here they are, sliced up. Oh, I forgot to mention: the recipe only calls for two sweet potatoes, but I used three because I have been burned by a lack of sweet potatoes in the past. I think I made the right decision - the final dish may have been too sweet if there had only been two sweet potatoes. No more than three, though, without increasing the sauce.

I learned that Caliban is not a blender. If there's a liquid inside and you aren't pressing the lid down really hard when the blades start spinning, you get limoncello everywhere. Which is especially weird if the liquid isn't actually limoncello.

The puree gets boiled for a couple of minutes to reduce.

It gets poured over the sweet potatoes, and if I could do this again I'd probably toss them gently to coat instead of trying to spread it out. The next step was to dot butter over the top. I had no idea what that meant, so I guessed.

Brown sugar over the butter.

And into the broiler! The weirdest part is that I managed not to burn everything. Not really sure how that works yet, aside from it involving laying on my kitchen floor staring into the dark heart of the broiler.

Verdict: Every day is a battle to not run to the store to buy more sweet potatoes. I want to be eating this again right now. The only other thing I can do to convey the deliciousness to you is to refer to the limoncello. There is a delicious alcoholic beverage in my kitchen that I could be drinking at this very moment,  either chilled, in orange juice, or as part of a lemon drop. But instead I find myself thinking, "Best not; I may need it for potatoes."

And that's all I have to say about that.


Writing about the limoncello has made me thirsty. Dammit.