Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published December 18, 2007 Sweet Potatoes Sweet potatoes are much liked around New Orleans, and not just because they're grown in profusion in Louisiana. They taste good with many local dishes, from gumbo to slow-roasted duck to blackened fish. Sweet potatoes are the roots of a vine related to the morning glory. They have thin, reddish brown skins and the soft, orange insides, with a substantial sweetness. All varieties of sweet potatoes are New World vegetables, and have been cultivated in the Americas for perhaps as long as five thousand years. The were one of the first things Columbus discovered; he ate them on his first voyage. Although most sweet potatoes are harvested in mid-summer to early fall, no season really shows up in stores. Sweet potatoes are stored by farmers for months with no apparent effects. (Indeed, some storage seems to help them.) Sweet potatoes are good in both savory dishes--as in baked and eaten out of the skins, or fried--and sweet desserts, like sweet potato pie. That line is constantly being crossed; most mashed sweet potatoes are made very sweet, with extra sugar and molasses and the like. I think most version would be better with less sugar. On the other hand, I think we could add a little more in the way of spices--cinnamon, nutmeg, even a little cardomom. The sweet potato dish of the moment is sweet potato hay--shredded, then fried. Looks good, tastes like nothing. My all-time favorite use of sweet potatoes may sound strange, but it's something I grew up with. When my mother made chicken gumbo, she also baked sweet potatoes, and we ate the two together. Dig out a half-spoon of sweet potato, then dunk the spoon right into the gumbo. Sweet potatoes have become much more common in restaurants, largely because for some reason they can be substituted for white potatoes by people on low-carb diets. So we're getting a lot of sweet potato fries and baked sweet potatoes. Because they're requested for reasons other than taste, most of these are eminently forgettable. Give me the spicy, soft ones with the butter and cinnamon. Preferably in the company of a slow-roasted duck. The best of all are, of course, the local product. Louisiana sweet potatoes are as good as that vegetable gets, softer and sweeter than those grown farther north. We call sweet potatoes are yams in Louisiana. That wasn't a problem until real yams started showing up here. The true yam--an African root vegetable--is larger, harder, less sweet, and taste nothing like sweet potatoes. Even in Africa the sweet potato is replacing the true yam, simply because it tastes better. © 2007 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com