V-Day - Learning About Why Sweet Potatoes like Whiskey

So here we are on recipe #3 - Glazed Sweet Potatoes

His final menu was

• Tangy Citrus Chicken
• Glazed Sweet Potatoes
• Spinach Leek Tart
• Peanut Butter Chocolate Mousse Terrine
• Virgin Mojitos
• Cappuccino

The links go to the recipes already written about in case you missed them and the tale of The Boy cooking a Valentine's day dinner for His Girl

So here's the thing about Sweet Potatoes. I love them.

And until recently I was the only one. You'd think they would be an easy sell when kids are little but no. I couldn't convince the children that they were delicious, even though the same children devoured things with pumpkin and were at least neutral about things with squash. The Perfectly Normal Husband comes with a few quirks as well and one of them is a distaste for sweet potatoes. After various failed attempts to lure them in culinarily, I took to buying single small sweet potatoes and baking them when I was making baked potatoes as a side dish. And making them for company, and for any large gathering where I was asked to bring a side dish.

But at home I was all alone. Until this summer.

I don't know what went on in that camp kitchen overall, but either the other choices were so egregious that The Boy decided sweet potatoes were worth trying, or the camp chef was magic and convinced The Boy that resistance was futile.

Either way he came back voluntarily looking for sweet potatoes. But I was still surprised when he put them on his menu.

And you may have noticed a pattern of which Poppets like to help in the kitchen.

You may remember that you last saw the Pumpkin Spice Poppets with another recipe - my Tzimmes, which Brings All The Boys To The Yard. It seems that whenever I cook with sweet potatoes they show up to assist. I kind of expect them now.

It's because they care.

At least about the sweet potatoes. I think they like us too, but I'm kind of happy they don't want to make sure we are cooked properly, with appropriate flavor.

The original plan had him making the glazed sweet potatoes on Saturday night so it was one less thing to do on V-Day, but after Shabbat ( that holiday thing where you're not supposed to do work that happens every Fri/Sat) the grown ups in his life decided that they were going to get together and eat chocolate and drink port instead. Because we had all been snowed into our respective residences for about four days and some of us were starved for adult conversation.

So for humanitarian reasons, he decided that he could just start early on Sunday instead of late on Saturday.

INGREDIENTS FOR GLAZED SWEET POTATOES

4-5 lbs. sweet potatoes, peeled

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) margarine

1 cup of dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon of vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1/4 cup of whiskey or bourbon, such as Jack Daniels

When we read the ingredients during the planning session we discussed the whiskey issue. I've cooked a few dessert recipes that called for Jack Daniels in my life and they're pretty good but I don't keep it in The House. We have a kind of "one sip" teaching exposure rule to alcoholic drinks, so if a grown up is drinking a wine or a cordial or something and the child in question would like to sample it they get a sip which usually ends up with wrinkled nose and disinterest.

Wine is in the house weekly for Sabbath, beer is usually for guests or sausage dishes. Most of the liquor in the house, Grand Marnier, Kahlua, Creme de Cacao, Vermouth, vodka, chambord - those are all cooking ingredients. I never had much alcohol in my house until I got a subscription to Bon Appetite. Then all of a sudden I was getting close to a fully stocked bar.

I also cook with a lot of rum. Especially bread pudding. And mocha butter rum frosting. And chocolate rum Mexican wedding balls. I've also got a great recipe for a rum punch that I make in the summer for parties. Like Jack Sparrow, I find myself always wondering why the rum is always gone.

So my kids have grown up with alcohol demystified, people who are drunk defined as "targets" instead of "people having fun they can't remember" and first hand exposure to alcohol as a kind of ingredient that can also be enjoyed on it's own - like chocolate.

But still, this recipe required that I go out and buy some whiskey for my 15 year old for Valentine's Day. And because of the 1 sip standard and the fact that whiskey and scotch are used for very specific blessings in religious observances over the year The Boy knew for a fact that he hated whiskey.

But he knew enough about both cooking and chemistry to stick with his choice. So pre-blizzard whiskey shopping went I.

I hate whiskey too. So I was looking for the smallest possible bottle, but then I also realized I have friends who don't hate whiskey. I was going to have whiskey left over, so I would serve it to friends as an after dinner drink at some point and I didn't want it to be poor quality. Of course I had no idea what good quality was and I wasn't willing to spend a lot of money on it.

I got some help. While I was staring helplessly at the state store, a friendly connoisseur discussed the finer points of cooking vs. drinking and then confided he like whiskey a bunch after recommending the Jim Bean over the JD for cooking with. I asked him if he would be happy to be served the Jim Bean at a dinner party and he told me that he'd be quite happy because it was like drinking a decent 11$ bottle of wine with a good dinner even though you also drink really ridiculously expensive wines. Price doesn't equal quality in context. Context is very important.

Always.

So Jim Bean was going into the glaze, and if you visit and drink whiskey, it's what will be offered to you. Probably for the next year. This was the smallest bottle I could find that wasn't a sample size.

The arrival of the Jim Bean drew the attention of a Poppet who doesn't usually assist in the cooking adventures.

Directions for Glazed Sweet Potatoes

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Cut the sweet potatoes into 1/2 inch slices.

Now just to set the record straight. The Boy can cook. He can fry, saute, bake, follow a recipe, make a reduction sauce and plan a meal. However he does the practical thing and except for main courses, tends to use semi-processed foods or frozen vegetables for side dishes. Most of his "from scratch" stuff is baking.

So it was with some awareness I asked, "Have you ever peeled potatoes?"

"No."

"Well, you're going to now."

I confessed to him immediately that he should not accept my teaching as the definitive word on it. I am a terrible potato peeler. I've got a lot of decent kitchen skills but frankly, I suck at this. I'm slow, potatoes slip out of my hands. I understand that a stint in the armed forces or being a Boy Scout leader would rectify this deficiency, however I am willing to do neither of those things. I usually delegate it to the Perfectly Normal Husband who is a peeler par excellence, and has been my sous chef on many a food based performance project when he was just my Perfectly Normal Accountant.

I showed him how to hold the potato, the peeler, initial safety tips and told him to take his time. Like the eggs I did the first one and let him do the rest. I told him not to stress about it and go slow and maybe someday someone would teach him the secret that I lack to getting it done quickly, but properly.

After the experience of peeling with the peeler (Good Grips - great for peeling klutzes like me) he took a look at our knives and immediately took out a paring knife wondering if you could use that to peek the suckers. Well yes, yes you can. And that's exactly the knife you'd use, but if you think I'm bad peeling with a peeler well I'm just an impending ER visit waiting to happen with a paring knife. Maybe Grandpa will teach him next visit.

He peeled all 4 lbs.

Cut the sweet potatoes into 1/2 inch slices.

Yeah, about that. Uncooked sweet potatoes have the consistency of balsa wood. I have very good knives but I usually cook the potatoes to soften them first and then slice them for presentation but the recipe was really clear. This was the only task I took over for The Boy, for the sake of my knives and my nerves. Also, having taken The Girl to the ER for her shoulder the week before I wasn't interested in doing that when all the downed trees and shoveling based heart attacks were going to fill up the ER.

Steam the sweet potatoes for 10 minutes or until soft but not mushy.

So The Boy learned what a vegetable steamer was.

He laid the sweet potato disks around the edges and center to open up the steamers "petals" as wide as they would go, there was about an inch and a half of water at the bottom to produce the steam.

He managed to get them all to fit without compromising the steamer. Covered it and started timing the steam from the water boiling - to get them "soft" took about 15 minutes.

Remove the potatoes from steamer and set aside.

We just moved them off the heat and set them aside on the counter still covered.

Now it was time to make the glaze; certain Poppets were very happy about this.

In a small saucepan, melt the margarine over medium heat. Add the brown sugar, vanilla and salt stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Stir in the whiskey or bourbon ( which the gentleman at the store told me is the same thing) and cook for 5-10 minutes or until slightly thickened. Stirring occasionally.

The Boy likes, and is pretty good at chemistry. He made sure that the margarine was melted and thoroughly stirred before adding the sugar and did that again with the sugar before adding the whiskey.

10 minutes is a long time and he felt stirring frequently was better than occasionally so he pulled up a chair and tended the glaze for the 10 minutes.

This is what it looks like when it is the right consistency.

While the glaze is cooking you should spray a large 9x11 glass baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. Place sweet potatoes in the pan

and drizzle the sauce over the top when it's done.

Bake uncovered for 1 hour. Baste with the sauce every 10 minutes to keep the potatoes from drying out. He used the turkey baster after trying the basting brush. The turkey baster worked much better.

When they were done we re-plated the potatoes into a baking/serving dish for the dinner for the two of them and sampled the finished product.

The whisky made it fuller, the glaze was sweetened but not sweet. The outer portion of the disk had a soft crispness and the inside was soft. It was definitely savory. If the whiskey weren't in the recipe it would at best be bland and at worst be cloying.

The whiskey was definitely the thing that knocked this recipe up to a higher level. Sweet Potatoes and Whiskey - perfect together - as long as they've been cooked for an hour or so.

And as the boy would say, "Tasty".

We were already looking forward to when we were going to eat the leftovers.

But it was getting close to noon. His Girl was due at 5.

The Skeleton Poppet Who Wants a Flower Shop showed up with a bunch of vases, three different types of flowers and fill and some florist shears.

Bustling around and checking color, cut and health he insisted that The Boy use his time between bastings to learn how to arrange the flowers for the table himself.

"Seriously?"

Dead Serious.

We are really going to have to break the Skeleton of his penchant for bad puns.

The Taunting - Cheapass Edition

Do you all remember The Taunting? It is my family's personalization of our Americanized Holiday celebration.

As time goes on and I study more, I am harboring a secret suspicion that Judah and the Macabees became a macho male veneer on a holiday that had been celebrated by Jews previously that celebrated Judith. I've done a presentation on Judith in art and history- she is fascinating in the mixed up worlds of art history and political history . . . . but that is another truly wonky, geeky, potentially controversial story - for another time and perhaps a different audience.

Questions like Judith burn through my brain - but the someone to tear through the questions with me, well that doesn't work out so well. Their brain would have to be burning too. It's tied up with Western religion and history and art and the role of women and the values of monarchy. Too complicated, to much trust needed to have the conversation. No one wants to play with me. . . . .

So my fevered brain and I put all of our energy into the Taunting instead. And indeed, Channuka snuck up on us this year, and I "lost" my job 4 days before it started, (it's not lost, just ending in a few weeks, but in the Meatworld the effect is the same) and I was far too optimistic about time estimates for some artwork I was trying to do. So as a result the Taunting was planned, but the execution was not out of Phase II:Find Key Elements. Phase I is Create The Theme.

Every year at the beginning of Channuka, I put all of the presents out at the first candle. They are numbered, there are 8 for each child (who aren't so childish anymore) and each present is a clue. Every Taunting has a Major Theme, and every night has a Minor Theme. You have to open the presents in order. The "big" present is always the 8th Candle.

The wrapping is part of the Theme - and last year it was Poppets. And Chinese Takeout Containers - My sister was the one to get the wrapping theme. It's an in joke. But this year, we opted for The Taunting - Slacker Edition:

As you can see things were ordered and arriving - instead of hiding the packages as they came in I stacked them all in front of the portal mirror and set the Poppets from Last Year's Taunting to guard them.

The Slacker Taunting actually is related to a legendary event called Slacker Camp. When My Perfectly Normal Husband was simply My Accountant Who I Brought With Me to the Desert, Because You Only Bring The Things You Really Need, we set up very elaborate, generous interactive performance art and helped everyone who needed it with their own.

Then we went to a local event about 3 -4 weeks later and brought everything we needed and enough for lot of other people, and offered to share and give instructions but only performed the barest minimum needed. Those who had known us from the other events saw the art in it, and those who had just met us thought it was a brilliant conceit while they ate the steaks that we brought but they cooked.

It was interesting for us, because we are people who do, and help, and plan, and execute. It taught us things like letting go of complete control, and that if we give that out into the world, good people who are fun to hang out with will come to us and give us their enegry, work and company. However I must admit - we were only willing to do Slacker Camp once. It's not our nature.

So the same way Slacker Camp was not conducted in a vaccum, The Taunting - Cheapass Edition was also held within the context of Tauntings gone by. Good traditions grow new stories.

When the first Box arrived it was approximately 4 feet tall and 5 inches square and I had no time to unpack it so it stayed in the livingroom and I declared that the Cheapass Taunting had begun. The Boy asked if it was one gift but it actually contained several - it would take me three days to be able to get enough time to unpack it. The Taunting had begun! It Taunted me too.

On the First Candle I had a lovely stack of Amazon Boxes. ( because I'm a Prime Member and they deliver in two days with free shipping for me) and a few boxes from other places.

First Candle also happened to be Shabbat and it was such a Slacker Channuka that I hadn't bought candles for the Channukia ( menorahs) so we scavenged the leftovers from previous years.

However The Skeleton That Want's To Run A Florist Shop came up with a backup plan.

He likes to arrange things. He gathered a group of the minis and they put together Poppets Pretending to be a Menorah.

See - the mini wizard's wand is pretending to be the first candle and Wind is the Shamesh.

I reused the Chinese Food Gift Containers from last year's Taunting. See Slacker Channaka is Green!

We lit the regular candles, The Boy got a timepiece and The Girl got recycled kimono fabric made into fabulous shoelaces, which in turn ended up looking a lot like something Mini Poppets should dance with.

So they did.

Last year it was the Calender that caused Chaos because of the Great Holiday Overlap. This year the Chaos came because I was tricked into believing in The Week That Was Not There. But just you wait Calendar . . . . I'll get you my pretty, and your little ticking minutes too.

The Taunting can be messed with, but it cannot be stopped.

We emerged from the eight days victorious - The next entry or two will tell the story.

My Tzimmes Brings All the Boys to the Yard

Pronunciation Guide - Tzimmes (tzim-MESS)

Definition -slow cooked stewy-like goodness

My Tzimmes brings all the Boys to the Yard, and they're like

"It's better than yours"

Damn Right! It's better than yours.

I could teach you, but I'd have to charge.

But it's Rosh Hashanah and I'm feeling generous. So the Pumpkin Spice Poppet and I will teach you for the minor cost of your time and the pedagogic teaching that comes with the recipe.

Rosh Hashana this year falls on Shabbat. Shabbat is full of all sorts of rules. They're important. Rosh Hashana has a bunch of rules too. So when you get the "double mitzvah" of a holiday falling on Shabbat you get RulesFest. Although there are some rules that are I think in need of revisiting I am hesitant to tinker with the thing for everyone, because baselines in Judaism are about history and following the rules makes you walk the history.

Your people's past is your present and not just the stuff where everyone hates you. Keeping all the rules can isolate you from the outside world, which I do not approve of, but I do believe you should try to learn all the rules, before you make a decision on what is too much you need to know why it is there. This is one of the reasons organized Judaism is in a bit of a pickle right now. The people who created the movements of Reform, Conservative (Maosorti) and Modern Orthodox all had fully Orthodox educations. They were not reforming or modifying from rebellion but from a position of knowledge and a love of those laws.

But people now haven't really got the whole history of these laws, because frankly learning that much stuff takes a lot of time and most modern Jews outsource the intense studying to the rabbis, which creates a bit of an imbalance because rabbis were supposed to have day jobs and now they can't. They study so you don't have to. It's a lot of pressure. People just do what they say instead of understanding why they are saying it. It's too much power. Some of them crack. Save a rabbi - study Talmud.

I'll bet you're wondering what that has to do with Tzimmes. Everything.

Judaism is about Food and Fire. And Time.

Tzimmes takes care of all three.

Ingredients:

4 Large Sweet Potatoes - I use giant Yams. - Peeled and Diced

1 Butternut Squash - Small - Yes it has to be butternut - you can see the squash with Pumpkin Spice in the second picture - It looked smal to me. - Peeled and Diced

4 Granny Smith Apples - I believed that the first time I made this recipe and then I determined that they were incorrect - so I use 5. Peeled, Cored and Diced ( not so fast there pardner - read all the way through first)

Dried, pitted prunes - halved

1/3 cup of water

1/3 cup of Sweet Passover Wine ( I refuse to buy Maneshevitz Passover wine, I'm Jewish but I still have a palate dammit, I use King David when I'm making it for someone other than my family and just tried Port for when I'm making it for home. )

1/3 cup of sugar

1/2 a teaspoon of ground nutmeg

1/2 a teaspoon of ground ginger.

This Tzimmes is important because you're not supposed to light a new flame on Shabbat, but you're not allowed to put out a flame that was left unextinguished after Shabbat starts. You are prohibited from doing "work" which was initially defined as things that were done to build the temple. One day a week, time was suspended and you could not "make" you had to "be" instead.

But of course there were logistics problems with just being - for instance apparently you were also supposed to celebrate with foods. There's a big deal between the Sadducees and the Pharisees about whether or not you were allowed to have a flame at all - since we have warm foods, that's how you know that the Pharisees won. For the record , the preaching that Jesus did in the red word bible indicates that he was on the Pharisees' side of the big arguments so when he was calling them out, it was more like when Democrats tell other Democrats that they're hypocrites because they aren't doing enough.

So yeah, we have warm food on Shabbat, because the Pharisees won, and the way we have it is by working like lunatics before sundown, having everything ready and keeping the ancient equivalent of a hot plate going. Then you put the Tzimmes on it and pretend you're not working to serve the meal. Because feeding people wasn't considered part of building, but you couldn't cook from scratch because that was creating, and the 7th day is a no-creation zone. But Rosh Hashanah is supposed to be an even fancier meal - so this recipe is full on FANCY.

This tzimmes is so beloved by my friends that I have been asked to supply it to several meals I will not be attending - I wasn't bragging. I was being fully and completely honest. My Tzimmes brings all the boys to the yard, and the vegetarians, and the foodies, and people who love sweet potatoes . . .

There are other Tzimmes that are meat based and savory. This is savory/sweet.

So here are some of the tricks - when you go to buy the large sweet potatoes get the really large mutant looking ones about the size of newborn baby heads. Cook them in the microwave at 8 minutes per potato - because they are huge. You'll still have to peel them but they will be the right consistency. I dice them in 1.5 inch chunks because they usually have to be served with a number of other foods that have been slow cooked and I like them to have some heft.

Butternut squash is a killer. I had never cooked one before I started making this Tzimmes. My first time I tried to cut the thing up raw. What did I know. Let me tell you, if you haven't tried this - the next time I want to use something for longsword practice it will be me throwing up butternut squashes and trying to see if I can hit them in motion. Why? Because I don't think the sword will do more than dent it if it's not cooked first. I may make armour out of it.

My mom told me to nuke the squash for 10 minutes and then try. Lesson the second, let it cool for about 15 minutes. I needed to make this on no notice once, and the only place I could find butternut squash was Whole Foods and they only had pre-cut. I've never found pre-cut butternut squash there again, but I was all about prayer at that moment. "Blessed art thou O Lord Our God, Ruler of the Universe who createst pre cut squash - amien" That I should live to see such wonder!

Obviously that Tzimmes was meant to be.

For the apples I actually use a tool that was meant to be used for blooming onions to make the wedges and core the apples. Then I cut the wedges in half. This is not really diced - but frankly diced apples in a slow cooked thing become applesauce.

And finally the pitted prunes. Here's what I didn't know. People won't buy prunes because they think they are for old people and no one, including old people thinks prunes are sexy. So I'm desperately looking for dried pitted prunes and thanks to the wonders of technology I call my mother from my cell phone when reaching near hysteria in the supermarket. She tells me that they're calling them sun dried plums now and they are in the area where they keep the raisins.

Wow - the more you know.

Thanks Mom. Of course she wanted to know what I was cooking that needed prunes. I told her I'd bring some up for next Passover. It was a hit. You know something is good when your mom likes it and she didn't give you the recipe herself.

So it's three years later and now I can sometimes find prunes that are actually called prunes.

Ok, so you have all your vegetative matter in a giant bowl - it needs to be giant because it's a lot of stuff.

I use medical gloves when I'm handling food, they're disposable, they prevent cross contamination and you can still feel what you're working with. I recommend this for the next step.

The recipe tells you to mix things in the large bowl - HA! You'll break your spoon. Mix it with your hands pulling through with your fingers while sliding them down the sides of the bowl and bringing them up from the bottom. Then keep moving things in the bowl around the same way you would do meatballs. When everything looks evenly distributed stop.

Now you take the sugar, nutmeg, and ginger and mix that together in a bowl. Sprinkle the mixture over your giant bowl of stuff and then do a little of the meatball mixing thing again.

Now I will go into the politics and history of kosher wine at some other time. Suffice it to say that it's cool and I sort of understand. It's a sacrament and you don't really want to drink a sacrament made by people who were trying to kill you. However the rules grew into something else, and that is a something else I find runs counter to what I believe Judaism is supposed to do. It's a rant of sorts and won't be indulged here.

Very much like I will not ask people to believe in my religion as long as they stop trying to get me to believe in theirs, I will not ask my co-religionists to compromise their understanding of the law to accomodate mine. So I will not sneak non-kosher wine into a Tzimmes I make for other people. Not even if I think they are righteous selfish pricks that are trying to bully people with how observant they are.

However, I damn well will use port instead of sweet passover wine in mine.

Taylor Fladgate makes a kosher Ruby Porto Cordovero. It's the first real kosher port.

I say with no irony at all - "Thank you God for making a world with such port in it!"

You pour the water and the wine over the things in the bowl and then you can try mixing with a spoon or tossing it like a really massive salad until all of the things are coated with the liquid and the sugar and the spice pretty evenly or you can do the meatball mix style again.

You'll be able to see when it looks right. Or your Poppet will let you know after the inspection.

Then you are supposed to place it in a pan. Yeah, right. You place it in two pans. Cover it tightly with tin foil and a lid if you have one.

Bake 1 hour at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Cool.

To serve reheat, then empty into a serving dish. Don't serve it out of the pan you cooked it in, the movement of the tzimmes into the serving dish squeezes the juice out of the fruit.

The alternative method it to take the whole shmagegee ( that's a technical term, folks) and put it in your electric crock pot. It will fill up a whole one of those suckers. Cook on medium for an hour and then turn it to low. Leave it there overnight. Come back from synagogue the next day, serve it for the festive meal that you pretend is getting there magically.

I love this recipe because it has the things you would use for fall, it has echos of American Thanksgiving, it echos and is appropriate for Passover - which is another "New Year" in the ritual calender (I'll explain that later too) and it allows me to fulfill an important part of being in a community which is sharing food and meals for the holidays.

So to bring this back to Food Fire and Time: a tzimmes lets you eat like kings without violating shabbat by prepping the food, lighting the fire and keeping through time.

I know you want it

The thing that makes me

What the boys go crazy for

They lose their minds

Cause I use good wines

I think it's time.

la la la la la la

Warm it up

la la la la la

The table's waiting

My Tzimmes brings all the Boys to the Yard, and they're like

"It's better than yours"

Damn Right! It's better than yours.

I could teach you, but I'd have to charge.