Category Archives: Recipes

Food from Fiction Potluck

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So what does one do, you might ask, as a newly minted Doctor of Literature, unfettered from the everyday proletariat academic concerns?  Well, one grades, and one line edits, and one revises frantically, and frankly, one feels completely different and not different at all.  The school year isn’t over, even though (as of Tuesday, when I upload my “completed” dissertation to our Graduate School’s website) my degree is.  So my daily duties no longer include anxious preparing for the big day, but they still include student emails and lesson planning and reading.

But because they don’t include anxious preparation and last minute rethinking and nail biting about what the committee will think, these days can also include celebrations.  Last night was one such celebration: a party I’ve wanted to have for several years now.  The style: potluck.  The theme: “Food in Fiction.”  Interpretation: bring a dish inspired by or mentioned in a book.  That’s it.  There are so many vivid options in novel, drama and film, and our guests had only to choose one and recreate it in the material, taste-bud-bearing world.

We had tremendous fun, in brainstorming, in cooking, and in sharing the variety of dishes from books we love.  As I mentioned to one friend who thanked N. and I for the great party on his way out the door, this is a party we had to have before parting ways as many of us graduate this June, because only in this company could we feel so self-congratulatory and so excited about immersing ourselves in something so nerdy.

Here are a few of the dishes we enjoyed.  I suggested to folks that they provide the description of the food in question from its source text so guests would know what they were eating and which world it was taking them to.  We had Victorian sandwiches and High Modernism Stew nestling next to a magical realist chutney and a warm wassail of fantasy.  What wandering, all in one house…

Cucumber sandwiches from Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.”

Rorschach’s beans from the graphic novel “Watchmen.”

Boeuf en daube from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.

A trio of deviled eggs to breathe life into Hemingway’s thoughts on being hard boiled in The Sun Also Rises.

A wonderfully smoky molasses cake inspired by the molasses-drenched dinner scene in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird.

Well spiked butterbeer (you drop in a few marshmallows which, as they melt, mimic the foamy head on the beer) from J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

Not pictured: (more!) deviled eggs, from Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, sautéed marinated mushrooms inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, raspberry cordial from L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, and a few sourceless delights: meatballs (Cloudy with a chance of, perhaps?), and a bread, cheese, and hard salami platter.  These were justified by their authors with the claims that “surely there must be moments of literary eating that include these items,” which I was quite willing, given their deliciousness, to accept.  And of course, wine.  If we were picky, we could call this an homage to Hemingway, whose characters “get tight” with abandon, or to Carroll’s Alice, who does imbibe from the mysterious bottle demanding she “drink me.”

I made two offerings: a take on the “green as grasshoppers” chutney so adored by Saleem in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and a pork pie stuffed with hard boiled eggs from Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World.  Both turned out extremely well, but I want to talk about the pie first.

Danny the Champion of the World is the story of a boy and his father.  Without giving too much away, I will only say that Danny’s father suffers an injury almost halfway into the book, and when Doc Spencer, the family physician, brings him home from the hospital to the gypsy caravan in which he and Danny live, Doc also brings Danny a package from his wife:

“Very carefully, I now began to unwrap the waxed paper from around the doctor’s present, and when I had finished, I saw before me the most enormous and beautiful pie in the world.  It was covered all over, top, sides, and bottom, with rich golden pastry.  I took a knife from beside the sink and cut out a wedge.  I started to eat it in my fingers, standing up.  It was a cold meat pie.  The meat was pink and tender with no fat or gristle in it, and there were hard-boiled eggs buried like treasures in several different places.  The taste was absolutely fabulous.  When I had finished the first slice, I cut another and ate that, too.  God bless Doctor Spencer, I thought.  And God bless Mrs. Spencer as well” (Dahl 85-86).

Since my first trip through Danny, I salivated over this savory pie Danny enjoys.  And this party was the perfect excuse to attempt my own.

I found a perfect (and much prettier) base recipe for my pie in the archives of the blog Married… With Dinner.  Though I followed their basic instructions, I made a few amendments for ease and expense.  The key points are as follows:

Use a springform pan.  That way the pie is tall and regal and can sit magically outside a pie plate all on its own.

Roll the bottom crust out large enough to come almost all the way up the sides of the springform (I used storebought crust and it work out just fine), so you can connect top and bottom more easily.

I squashed together a mixture of ground pork, pork sausage, finely chopped ham from a ham slice, salt, cayenne pepper, ground cloves, and black pepper.  I pressed a thin layer of the meat mixture onto the bottom of the pie crust, then laid six hard boiled eggs in a circle through the middle of the pie (regrettably, with ham-covered hands, I did not get a photo of this).  Then I lightly packed the rest of the meat mixture around and over the eggs and sank a bay leaf deep into the very center of the pie.

A traditional English pork pie has warm pork stock poured into a hole in the crust just after baking, which turns into a thick jelly as the pie cools.  This did not sound particularly delicious to me, though I did like the idea of a rich layer of something atop my pork.  I decided on cheese.  I grated about a cup of sharp cheddar and sprinkled it lightly on top of the meat before draping the top pie crust over it.  I cut a little hole in the center of the crust and sliced some steam vents for additional release before baking.

It’s a long baking process (almost two hours), but you are dealing with raw pork, so the cooking time needs to be sufficient.  When the pie is almost done, Married… With Dinner recommends you carefully release the spring on the pan and brush an egg wash all over the top and sides of the pie.  Fifteen minutes more in the oven and this results in a beautiful, shiny golden glaze all over the pie.  It also, in case you are lazy like me and didn’t brush an egg wash over the top edge of the bottom crust to help the lid adhere, creates an after-the-fact glue to hold base and lid together.

I let my pie cool on the counter for an hour or so, then tented it with aluminum foil and stowed it in the fridge until the party started.  It did, after all, have to be a cold meat pie.

It was fabulous.  The meat was nicely spiced and the ham bits shredded in added some smoky, salty variety.  The hard boiled eggs were, indeed, delightful treasures to find, though I admit to over-boiling them slightly so their yolks were not as bright as they could have been.  Still, this is hardly a complaint.  It was like a meatloaf wrapped in flaky, buttery crust, and the cheese was a nice additional flavor and richness.  I suspect this could have been just as good warm as it was cold, but the pie might not have held together quite as nicely.

My second offering was a cilantro coconut chutney.  Saleem, as Midnight’s Children comes to a close, receives a meal from a blind waitress.  He lists:

“On the thali of victory: samosas, pakoras, rice, dal, puris; and green chutney.  Yes, a little aluminum bowl of chutney, green, my God, green as grasshoppers… and before long a puri was in my hand; and chutney was on the puri; and then I had tasted it, and almost imitated the fainting act of Picture Singh, because it had carried me back to a day when I emerged nine-fingered from a hospital and went into exile at the home of Hanif Aziz, and was given the best chutney in the world… the taste of the chutney was more than just an echo of that long-ago taste – it was the old taste itself, the very same, with the power of bringing back the past as if it had never been away…” (Rushdie 525).

I found a recipe for a coriander chutney replete with tart lemon juice, lip puckering spice from serrano chiles, and bright, bright green cilantro, tempered by shredded coconut.  The recipe called for unsweetened coconut but I, in my haste, having only sweetened, forgot to rinse it to get some of the sugar off before dropping it into my food processor.  As a result, my chutney was lightly sweetened, but no one seemed to mind that, especially when it was spread onto the pakoras I made.

I searched around online and made a master recipe from a combination of ideas for these pakoras.  Mine included:

4 cloves garlic, smashed and finely minced

2 tsp. each:

Garam masala

Turmeric

Chili powder

Salt

2 cups Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free all-purpose flour (pakoras are made with garbanzo bean flour, and though the Bob’s Red Mill mix is a blend including potato starch, it is composed mostly of garbanzo and fava bean flours, so since I had it, I decided a little break from tradition would be okay.  This is literature, after all.  It’s all interpretation anyway!)

1 ½ cups water

½ head cauliflower, diced

¾ large onion, diced

1 small sweet potato, diced

1 quart vegetable oil

Heat the vegetable oil to 375F in a large, sturdy pot.  I used my dutch oven.

While the oil heats, whisk together the dry ingredients and garlic until well combined, then slowly whisk in the water to form a thick, smooth batter.

Add the diced vegetables and stir to combine.

Drop spoonfuls of the batter (ever so carefully!  Watch out for splashes!) into the hot oil and fry for 5-6 minutes, or until the batter is deeply golden and the vegetables inside have magically cooked.

I got to taste one of these.  It was crunchy and starchy and slightly spicy and wholesome and delicious.  It was vegan.  It was gluten-free.  Topped with the chutney it was fresh and springy and spicy and then gone.  By the time I went back to have another, the giant platter I’d made was empty, and only a spoonful or two of chutney remained.  Pride overwhelms disappointment, in moments like these.  My little experiment was so successful it prohibited me from tasting further.  So I had another deviled egg instead.

Full and happy, we fell into bed at midnight with a sinkful of dishes and a fridge-full of leftovers to look forward to.  It’s like reopening a book to your favorite chapter: whose world will I lunch from, dine from, be returned to today?

Resistance

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There are 3½ weeks to go until my whole dissertation is due to my committee. I’m through revising three of the six chapters, and embarked on the fourth this morning. Dinners vacillate wildly between complex assemblages of roasted vegetables with ancient grains, comforting cheese-laden casseroles, and baked potatoes with steamed broccoli. My Bittman file (yes, I keep the selections in a manila folder, wouldn’t you?) is buried somewhere under piles of criticism on medieval theology and monographs about poems you’ve never heard of. And the selection I have to share wasn’t my favorite. As usual, these things combine to mean I have all but zero motivation to post. But I’ll do it anyway. For you. Because this project needs completion.

“55. Steam and salt edamame. Whisk soy and honey together in a small saucepan over low heat. Add grated ginger and a bit of cornstarch, stir until slightly thickened and pour over edamame.”

This sounded intriguing, so I decided to pair it with a dish my friend and colleague J. calls “scatter sushi”: all the ingredients you might find in your favorite roll diced small and integrated into a bowl of well vinegared sushi rice. Ours had carrots, green onions, crumbled roasted seaweed, avocado, and crab meat. I’ve also made it with shrimp (when N. was out of town, of course), and it’s delicious.

But anyway, again I’m resisting the heart of the post. Here goes:

16 oz. frozen edamame, blanched in boiling salted water, then drained

½ cup reduced sodium soy sauce

2 TB honey

2 tsp ginger, grated with my microplane

2 tsp cornstarch

As the edamame were blanching, draining, and cooling, I mixed the other ingredients together in a small saucepan and brought them to a slight simmer.  The sauce took a minute or two to thicken, and once it was barely viscous I drizzled it over my bowl of beans and served with a slotted spoon.

This had promise, but in its current form I think it fell a little flat. I didn’t love the slippery slickness the cornstarch imparted to the dressing: it clung to my lips and tongue in an unappealing way. Or maybe there was just too much of it. I think this concept would realize its potential if it became part of a full salad stuffed with brightness and texture: red bell pepper, finely julienned carrots, green onion, maybe even grilled tofu or roasted sweet potato or chunks of firm-fleshed white fish. It needed only a light dressing, not the soupy drenching I gave it. And maybe the sauce didn’t even need the cornstarch. I recognize its thickening purposes, but couldn’t the soy sauce just be reduced a bit instead?

As I work through revisions on the longest, most involved project I’ve ever undertaken, I find myself only rarely wanting to completely start over.  And I think that’s good.  Revisions are one thing, but stubborn resistance and insisting on from-scratch perfection can stay in the kitchen…

Spiking your stuffing

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The one part of Thanksgiving dinner I refuse to make from scratch is the stuffing.  I don’t know why, but no stuffing has ever lived up to the Stove-top brand blend my mom puts together: one box of turkey stuffing, one box of cornbread stuffing, mixed up and tossed together and then, rather than just stirred into boiling water, baked in a casserole dish for twenty minutes or so right before serving, so the top is crusty and crunchy.  This is easy to do, since it takes my dad at least twenty minutes to get the turkey carved.  This is smart to do because it makes a texture contrast and provides a gravy sponge.  Other stuffing mixes I’ve tasted, and the homemade one I attempted this past year for A., who doesn’t like celery (have you ever tried to find a stuffing mix without celery?  Impossible!), just haven’t measured up.

And then, Bittman.

“26. Chop corn bread into cubes. Sauté cherry tomatoes, scallions and corn kernels in butter or oil. Deglaze the pan with beer, then empty the pan over the corn bread. Bake in an oiled dish or use as stuffing.”

You guys, this was amazing.  And given how you now know I feel about stuffing, that’s saying something.  Amazing.  Here’s what I used:

6 cups (roughly) corn bread cubes, toasted (use your favorite recipe)

4 TB butter

6-8 beefy green onions

1 pint red cherry tomatoes, rinsed and dried

1 cup corn, fresh or frozen (if frozen, defrost it first)

Salt and pepper

12 oz. beer (I used Drifter)

I made a pan of cornbread from my favorite recipe in a larger pan than usual; I thought this would result in a slightly drier bread, so it wouldn’t become mushy when the liquid was poured over it.  The cornbread was still pretty moist and springy, though, so after it had cooled for a while I cubed it, scuffed it around in the pan a bit to separate the clinging pieces, and tossed it back in the oven at 400F for fifteen minutes or so to get some toasty edges and dark golden spots on it, then set it aside to cool completely.  This worked beautifully and I’d recommend it, especially if your cornbread is moist and cakey.

While the oven was occupied by an herb-stuffed chicken (again, I know.  I can’t help it), I melted the butter in a skillet over medium heat and sliced the green onions, using the white and green portions.  I tossed these little rings into the sizzling butter along with the corn, and agitated them gently.  When the onions were soft and the corn just beginning to caramelize, I added the cherry tomatoes and seasoned the whole skillet with salt and pepper and, on a whim, a few shakes of garlic powder.

I turned the heat up to medium high for just a few minutes until the cherry tomatoes started to burst through their skins, spilling pulp into the mix, and the corn had browned delightfully, leaving the kitchen smelling like summer.

I then switched off the heat and poured in a full bottle of beer, nutty, yeasty, and brown (Drifter is a pale ale, so it has some body and depth – I wouldn’t go any lighter than pale ale, and might in fact prefer something darker: a brown ale like Newcastle, or even a porter if it’s not too strong).  The aroma changed from summer to fall harvest in an instant as the beer fizzed over the vegetables.

After scraping the bottom of the skillet gently with a spatula to remove any persistent browned bits, I poured the whole steaming bubbling mass over my pan of cornbread cubes and tossed gently to distribute the liquid evenly.  Then I stowed the pan in the oven: 350F for 25-30 minutes until the top is deeply golden and just crunchy.

We ate this with roasted chicken and creamed spinach.  Vegetarians shield your eyes, but the chicken just collapsed so beautifully across my carving board that I felt I had to show you:

But the stuffing!  The stuffing was incredible.  The cornbread soaked up the beer, and the sweetness of the bread plus the sourness of the ale created this yeasty glory I couldn’t stop eating.  And I don’t like beer.  It was just such a perfect liquid for this dish, contributing just the right amount of malty bitterness.  The tomatoes got richer and sweeter in the oven, as did the corn kernels, and they partnered with the green onions to make such a good accompaniment to the cornbread that I’m almost tempted to add them into the batter in my next pan.  Or maybe into a compound butter to spread on top.  That would be better, texture-wise.  Green onions, cherry tomatoes, and corn: three musketeers. 

This stuffing was gone in two days.  With only two of us eating.  It was that good.  If you’re in the Northwest, where Spring is shunning us, make this now while you still need your oven to keep warm.  Accompanying some baked sweet potatoes and leafy greens, this becomes a vegetarian meal.  If you use oil instead of butter and have a good egg replacement, it could be vegan.  If your cornbread is free of wheat flour and you use gluten-free beer, it could be gluten-free as well.  However you make it, make it.  This one is too good not to try.

Blowing Hot and Cold

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I’ve been uninspired to write this post, mostly because the weekend we just experienced made Punxsutawney Phil into a fat little liar.  And then today came, with a promise of freezing temperatures tonight and the specter of snow.  This is perversely appropriate then, because this Bittman recipe for Potato Leek soup is essentially vichyssoise, one of the best known chilled soups (along with Borscht and gazpacho). We had ours hot, but it is often chilled and served in small, sippable portions.

“22. Sauté leeks in butter until soft but not browned, then add cubed waxy potatoes, a little sage and stock or water to cover. Simmer until tender, puree and finish with about a cup of cream for every 6 cups of soup. Serve hot or cold, garnished with chives (if cold, call it vichyssoise).”

Here’s the line-up:

¼ cup butter

at least 3 leeks, maybe more, halved lengthwise, rinsed well to remove sand and dirt wedged between the layers, then sliced thinly into little crescent moon shapes

8 medium yukon gold potatoes, diced in smallish cubes

6 cups chicken or vegetable stock

salt and pepper to taste

6-8 sage leaves, torn or chopped

1 cup heavy cream

I can say right away that I wish I’d had more leeks for this.  My meager supply was just not enough for that unique, sweet garlic/onion flavor.  Nevertheless, I sliced them up and sautéed them in butter for that springy wonderful pale green aroma.  A tub of homemade chicken broth, the sage, and the diced potatoes followed, burbling together and permeating each other with flavor.

I let the pot simmer until a tentative fork prod proved the potatoes were tender – probably fifteen minutes – then seasoned with salt, pepper and, on a whim, a few taps of garlic powder.

I switched the heat off and let the pot cool off just until it wasn’t boiling anymore before taking my immersion blender to it.  Have you used an immersion blender?  I love mine.  It is a bright red Kitchen Aid model and I use it for blending soups and salad dressings.  I know it could also be used to whip cream or maybe even make hummus, though I haven’t yet put it through all its paces.

A few long dunks and careful swirls of the immersion blender and the chunks of potatoes became more of a mash.  Another few sessions and they transformed into a velvety soup.  Even the torn sage leaves were obliterated, leaving only a few shreds of potato skin (I never peel yukon golds) to disrupt the ivory smoothness.

When everything was well blended, I put the pot back on the heat, poured in a cup of cream, and stirred the swirls of white until the whole thing paled ever so slightly in color and the cream was completely incorporated.  It only took a few moments for the pot to rise back up to serving temperature, at which point we dipped it into bowls and sipped away.

It was smooth and hearty and rich.  It’s hard to make potatoes taste like anything but potatoes, but the additions of sage and cream and the barest onion-y flavor from the leeks came through.

I served this with a lovely loaf of dimpled rosemary foccaccia and a glass of white wine.  A thoroughly beige looking meal, but a satisfying one nonetheless.

But satisfying isn’t always enough.  This soup lacked intensity and freshness.  It was a winter meal, and my stomach, along with my skin and heart and brain, is craving spring.  So when I faced the leftovers, I felt the need for a pick-me-up.  The addition of a tablespoon or so of pesto stirred gently into the soup woke up the flavor considerably but somehow didn’t overwhelm the wholesome starchy creaminess of the potatoes.  Were I to make this soup again, pesto might become a required addition.  Or perhaps a gentle, fluffy layer of extra sharp white cheddar to blanket the top like the snow I hope does not fall on us tonight.  This was good, but it’s time for hot soup season to be over, and not yet time for cold soup season to begin.

Chicken’n’chutney

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We’ve become huge fans of roast chicken this year. I rub a mix of herbs, salt, pepper, garlic, lemon zest and olive oil under its skin, and stuff it full of the same herbs, a few cloves of garlic, and half a lemon. The lemon is, I think, the secret weapon. It gives the finished meat a really nice light suggestion of citrus. I’ve also started creating my own rack in the cheap metal rectangular baking pan that subs in for a roasting pan in my kitchen: on Kelsey Nixon’s suggestion, I make a triangle in the bottom of the pan out of a few carrots, a few sticks of celery, and a halved onion. This gives the chicken a nice platform to sit on so it doesn’t steam in the juices it exudes. Plus, I like to think the extra vegetables impart a nice, delicate flavor into the meat as well. (Plus plus, the vegetables roast down and caramelize in the chicken fat and juices, and you can extract them from the pan and gobble them as an extra veggie with your dinner, as you can see I’ve done with the carrots below. Their skins maintain the tiniest resistance to the teeth, and they taste like all the goodness of chicken skin, but really you’re just eating a roasted carrot!) I roast breast side down, always, to keep the white meat as juicy as possible. I’ve done this vegetable trick with our Thanksgiving turkey the last two years as well and I’m ridiculously pleased with the results.

But this isn’t about Bittman, is it? To go with this chicken, I decided to go with one of his chutney ingredient combinations:

“5. Apple Chutney: Cook big chunks of peeled, cored apple with a little apple cider, Dijon or whole-grain mustard and chopped sage until the chutney thickens. Don’t cook it until it becomes apple sauce unless you want to.”

Between that day and this moment, I lost the small square of paper onto which I scribble quantities. Alas. So what follows are approximations from memory, but I think this is really a “how you like it” sort of dish, so you’d be using my values only as approximations anyway.

3 crisp, tart apples, peeled, cored, and cut into large chunks (I had Fujis, but Granny Smith or similar would also be delicious)

¼- ½ cup Gravenstein apple juice

1 generous TB whole grain mustard

1 TB finely minced sage

I tumbled these together in a small saucepan and cooked it over medium heat for fifteen minutes or so, stirring infrequently and gently, until the apples became soft but still resistant, and the juice had somehow thickened into what was not quite chunky applesauce, but was securely on its way.

We ate this draped over juicy, moist hunks of chicken, and while not the same perfect pairing as I think it would be with a well breaded and deeply fried pork chop, it was pretty delicious. I liked the combination of apples and mustard: they added a tart sweetness that balanced well with the sharp spice and the deep earthy flavor of the sage.

With this, in what must be one of the more monochromatic plates ever made, we had parsnip “puree.” I place this descriptor in quotations because my results were less than smooth. I didn’t core the parsnips or roast them long enough to make them sufficiently tender for my immersion blender. Alas. They were delicious, however, and they are a commodity I plan to revisit. Once I get the specs correct, I will certainly share the recipe here. It involved butter, and heavy cream, and roasted garlic, all in embarrassingly large quantities. But once you swirl them together you can’t see how much there ever was, which means it doesn’t count, right?

 

 

Marshmallow Topping for Adults

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To me, there is no better title for this entry than Bittman’s designation.  Sometimes things don’t need to be complicated or alliterated or made cleverer.  Sometimes all they need is a little story to get them started.

For the past five years or so, my family has been driving up to Oregon to spend Thanksgiving at our house.  Since we discovered a recipe for Chipotle Mashed Sweet Potatoes, which melds the flavors of autumn with the heat of adobo sauce, we haven’t needed any additional fixings for our tubers.  This was not always true.  When we used to share Thanksgiving with a very dear set of family friends, L. inevitably made sweet potato casserole.  You know the one.  The sweet potato casserole.  Boiled sweet potatoes, mashed or beaten smooth.  Sweetened – as she was always proud to proclaim – only with orange juice.  Smoothed into a square glass baking dish and then topped until no hint of orange could be seen with a careful and meticulous layer of miniature marshmallows.  Thieving hands were scowled at.  Broil to perfect, swollen, golden-brown puff.

I liked this.  Well, I liked the idea of it.  Mashed sweet potatoes are delicious, and toasted marshmallows are my favorite part about a campfire.  But together, especially next to turkey and dressing and tart wonderful cranberries, it was never my favorite.  Bittman offers a grown-up alternative:

“60. Marshmallow topping for adults: Roast or boil chunks of sweet potato, put them in an oiled baking dish, top with dots of cream cheese, and sprinkle with a mixture of brown sugar, chopped pecans and chopped fresh sage. Broil until lightly browned.”

In my imaginary food dictionary, this would appear under “decadence.”  It just sounds so rich and so perfect, without the chalky powdered sugar edge of marshmallows.  Here’s how it happened:

1 ½ huge sweet potatoes cut into 1 inch chunks (I think I used the kind marked as “garnet yams”)

2/3 cup chopped pecans

Scant ½ cup brown sugar, or perhaps less.  It was a bit sweet.

1 TB finely chopped sage

4 oz. cream cheese

About an hour before you intend to broil this, stow an 8 oz. block of cream cheese in the freezer. This is just enough time to allow it to firm up enough to cut into chunks without mushing all over your hands.

Preheat the oven to 400F.

Toss the sweet potato chunks in olive oil, salt, and pepper, then roast them on a baking sheet for 35 minutes or until soft and slightly caramelized.  While they roast, combine the pecans, brown sugar, and sage in a small bowl and toss together well.

When the sweet potatoes are tender, transfer them to a lightly oiled 9×9 inch glass baking dish.  Remove the cream cheese from the freezer and cut it into small chunks.  Scatter the chunks of cheese evenly across the surface of the sweet potatoes, then crumble the pecan mixture evenly over the beautiful field of orange and white you’ve created.

Broil the whole delectable mess until the sugar caramelizes and begins to melt, and the cream cheese goes a little weak in the knees.  Don’t let it go too long or the sugar will burn.

Eat.

We did just that.  There was very little left over for repeat meals, so I had no excuse to repurpose the leftovers.  But in this case I wouldn’t have needed to, because it was stellar.  A bit on the overly sweet side, perhaps, but that’s what made it such an accurate modernization of the marshmallow madness it mimics.  The cream cheese, broiled to the edge of melting, was a tangier, softer version of the marshmallows from the original, and its form in small chunks just losing their shape made it look similar too.  Pecans and sweet potatoes are great friends, and with the addition of the brown sugar they became the equivalent of that couple on Valentine’s Day.  You know the one I mean.  Except you get to eat this, so it’s much better than intruding within a 20 foot radius of that couple.  The sage was an earthy, herby warmth that I wouldn’t suggest omitting.

My only suggestion about this, aside from perhaps cutting back a bit on the quantity of brown sugar, would be to add a little salt into the topping mix.  It would be a nice extra bite to bring out the pecan flavor, and salt with brown sugar is just so darn tasty.

This was delicious with Brussels sprouts seared in a cast iron pan, but it would be equally good with stuffed pork chops, or roast chicken, or the big Thanksgiving bird itself.  Or just in a big bowl, with a big spoon, and a private table.  And no one looking.  Fanciest take on sweet potato casserole I’ve seen in a while.

If that’s not fancy enough for you, I thought of a way of making it even fancier.  For appetizers, cut the sweet potatoes into rounds instead of chunks.  Roast and mix topping as directed.

Instead of freezing the cream cheese, let it come to room temperature and put it in a piping bag with a star tip.  When the sweet potatoes are roasted and have cooled a bit, pipe the cream cheese in a pretty little whirl atop the sweet potato round, then sprinkle with the topping and broil as before.  Presto!  Brilliance in two little bites.  No marshmallows required.