my silly little sweet potato
everyday i eat my silly little purple sweet potato and my burnt honey matcha latte.
Time: <10 minutes
(20 minutes, if making burnt honey for the first time)
Servings: 1-2, depending if you are emotionally eating or not
Ingredients:
1 purple sweet potato
2 tbsp good tahini (see non-negotiables for recommendations)
Burnt honey (read how to make burnt honey here.)
Black sesame seeds
Flaky or coarse sea salt
Recipe:
Clean and scrub sweet potato skin. Wet two paper towels and wrap sweet potato in towels. The paper towels should be somewhere between sopping wet and damp.
On a microwave-safe plate, microwave sweet potato for 4 minutes. At the 4 minute mark, carefully remove sweet potato. Without removing the paper towel, poke the sweet potato with fork or knife 4-5 times. Return the microwave for 2 minutes. (The sweet potato will spend a total of 6 minutes in the microwave.)
Carefully unwrap sweet potato and discard paper towel. Cut sweet potato in half, and gently depress the lateral side of a spoon into the open face of the sweet potato. You will create crevices in the sweet potato for the tahini to sit (rather than spilling off the smooth side of the potato and onto the plate.)
Add tahini. Drizzle burnt honey to your heart’s desire. Sprinkle black sesame and flaky sea salt. Voila–your silly little root vegetable!
Non-negotiable:
Purple sweet potato – No, you cannot make this with an orange sweet potato or yam. It has a completely different flavor profile and texture. (I will make an exception for any other Asian sweet potato you have on hand though.)
Good tahini – If you don’t like tahini, it is because you are eating the wrong one. I remember when I first tried tahini in 2016. It was the one from Trader Joes, and I was so confused why tahini was 2016’s new “it girl food. “ (2016 version of “hot girls eat tinned fish.”) The Trader Joes’ version is so bitter–almost so that it tastes like rancid seeds.
My go-to and affordable tahinis are the generic Sprouts one, generic Wh*le F**ds one, and recently the premium-quality Soom brand.
Black sesame – If I tell you that black sesame is one of my favorite flavors of all time. . . would you dare try to substitute it?
Try experimenting with:
Burnt honey – I don’t mind if you substitute regular honey for this recipe. Make this is an easy snack, breakfast, lunch, or dessert. I only use my burnt honey because I usually have so much extra when I make a batch. The burnt honey does add a caramelized candied taste.
Steaming the sweet potato – I microwave my sweet potato because 1) I’ve seen my grandma do this a thousand times 2) I don’t have the patience to preheat the oven 3) I don’t have a steamer currently. You could steam the sweet potato in a steamer or even your rice cooker. You can also bake/roast the sweet potato in foil, the natural sugars will caramelize, which I’m sure would make it even better (again, I am just lazy).
I have this hunch that if you took an extra step and swirled perhaps ½ tsp of miso into the tahini…it would be really delicious. But in an effort not to be the girl who adds miso to everything, I didn’t. You can try it though, and make it your silly little sweet potato.
Food styling tips:
I was initially going to call this recipe “galaxy potato” because once you drizzle and swirl the tahini, burnt honey, and black sesame against the purple canvas, it looks like a nebulous space scene. But for whatever reason, “galaxy potato” sounds very 2012. Nevertheless, when adding the toppings, go for a galaxy-like effect. You can add the toppings and let it untouched. Or you can swirl with a tooth pick or chopstick. I find chopstick drags along the sludge better. If you don’t like the design you created, add more tahini and burnt honey and swirl again.
I’ve seen people create flowers out of black sesame seeds, precariously placing 5 seeds as 5 petals in a circular-fashion so that their pointed ends face toward the middle. I do not have the patience for this, but I would like to see it done.
Add black sesame paste for more dimension.
Flaky salt will melt into the tahini and honey, especially if hot. Try to sprinkle the flaky salt immediately before you take the picture to capture the crystalline structure.
Recipe development notes:
From time-to-time (read: always), I like to forget that I have IBS. When I was younger, I subscribed to this very Western idea of resetting your gut with green smoothies and raw salads. And while the native Angeleno in me truly does find comfort a green smoothie, I would also like to retrain my brain to find comfort back intraditional, cultural foods. After learning in school how closely GI motility (and subsequently IBS) can be tied to emotional state and serotonin levels, when I’m experiencing IBS bout, I’ve decided that I also want to return to foods that simply make me feel good–that is, rice, eggs, kimchi, ssam, and fish.
I’ve also taken inspiration from my mother with this recipe. My mother eats a Korean sweet potato every night to “soothe” her stomach, and so I decided to take after her and try my own silly little sweet potato every day as well. And one night, while facetiming, we shared a sweet potato together but separately from thousands miles apart, relishing in our own silly little potato. (My mother’s silly little sweet potato is a Korean, red-skinned but pale-bodied sweet potato, steamed in a metal pot. No toppings.)
So that just as my mother comes to the humble starch every night with a healing wish, I’ve incorporated a silly little sweet potato into my daily sustenance–whether for breakfast (or more like a late-breakfast-cum-lunch), snack, or dessert. There’s no specific test numbers for this recipe because this recipe has come along quite organically. I’ve learned a thing or two each day. I’ve learned how to wet the paper towel just enough, time the microwave, and create crevices so that tahini doesn’t spill off. In this case, the difference between burnt honey and raw honey yield slightly different nuances but nothing too substantial. I added letover black sesame paste (from when I was testing the babka) once, but it did not add anything life-changing to the meal. The toasted black sesame seeds was enough to get the flavor across.
If you decide to make your own silly little sweet potato, please tag me @everythingalexcooks,
(and I mean actually tag me, the new IG update doesn’t notify me when I simply get mentioned in a caption).
I want to see your creations and hear your thoughts!
