Got A Great Recipe To Share????

[janice shell]

I can see the appeal of the recipe, but it'll be awfully sweet. And I don't really see the point of the eggs, which I think will make it heavy. But then I often don't see the point of eggs. Unless, perhaps, you were making a sweet potato soufflé, in which case you'd whip the whites and add them carefully before baking. That might be good, but I've never seen a recipe.

Just looked. Such recipes do exist, but for some reason most of them aren't real soufflés; they're just sweet potato casseroles. There is this one, however, and it's more authentic:

https://www.foodtasticmom.com/french-style-sweet-potato-souffle/

As to the difference between sweet potatoes and yams, I did know. But as the article points out, usually at the supermarket, they're called yams. I generally get "garnet yams". Even so, they vary widely; some are much starchier than others.

However, I object to this:

The orange-fleshed variety was introduced to the United States several decades ago. In order to distinguish it from the white variety everyone was accustomed to, producers and shippers chose the English form of the African word “nyami” and labeled them “yams.”

A few decades ago? I remember orange sweet potatoes from my childhood. As a casserole, with (UGH) marshmallows on top.

This article offers more enlightenment:

The reason for the name mix-up, she explains, is because Louisiana sweet potato growers marketed their orange-fleshed as “yams” to distinguish from other states' produce in the 1930s—and it stuck.

There're some interesting recipes in the article, too:

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/difference-between-sweet-potato-and-yam

A different kind is sold in Italy. I don't know where they originated. Once when I hadn't been there long, I made a meal for a couple of friends and decided to include them. They were called "patate dolce" and looked like sweet potatoes. I threw them in a pot and boiled them. And boiled them and boiled them and boiled them. It took forever. And they turned the water a sort of gunmetal gray. When cut open, the potatoes were gray inside as well. Nasty. Very fibrous, too; stringy. I threw them out.

One of the guests, an Italian, explained that you had to cook 'em in the oven. Though they weren't really very good, people of his generation recalled them with fondness. He'd been a child during WWII, and they were one of the few kinds of sweet food available in winter.

Years later, I did find "real" sweet potatoes a few times. They must have been imported, perhaps from Turkey, where they're popular. This would certainly be a departure from the usual:

https://omnivorescookbook.com/turkish-potato-casserole-patates-bastisi/

I think it'd be very interesting, though perhaps not for Thanksgiving.