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SWEET POTATOES WITH MARSHMALLOWS

SWEET POTATOES WITH MARSHMALLOWS

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Serves: 8-10

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  • Nigella Recipe
  • Vegetarian

For many of us, this Thanksgiving stalwart is beyond untraditional. To a European reader, no doubt to any non-American reader, it is downright alienating. Although I’ve become an eater of sweet potatoes over the years, I’ve never quite taken the marshmallow element seriously, presuming it to be so obviously excessive, as unfathomable as a memory from someone else’s childhood.

But it always pays to keep an open mind. I love these babies now, find myself strangely compelled by the luscious, syrupy purée, just tangy enough with lime to find a workable partnership with the white dots of marshmallow, tortoiseshelled by the heat of the oven.

I do add quite a bit of lime juice, although I don’t think its inclusion is quite orthodox. But every person who cooks something has to make the recipe, the foodstuff, his or her own – not by effortful innovation but just by being true to your own taste.

Have a look at Nigella's other perfectly simple Christmas side dish recipes.

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Ingredients

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  • 3 kilograms sweet potatoes
  • 5 - 6 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 4 tablespoons lime juice
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 75 grams butter
  • 1 tablespoon Maldon salt
  • 1 x 280 grams packet mini marshmallows
FEAST

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FEAST

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 7/220°C/425ºF. Prick or puncture the sweet potatoes with a fork and put them each on to a piece of foil large enough to wrap them in. I find these cook best in individual parcels, so just be prepared to make a lot of them: I find the weight above means you’re dealing with 8 or 9 potatoes in one go.
  2. Divide the oil between the foil sheets and then rub or turn the sweet potatoes in it and wrap into baggy but well sealed parcels. Put them on to a baking sheet or two and roast until the potatoes are soft and cooked through, approximately 1–1½ hours. This way of cooking the potatoes, apart from being very easy, means that you get maximum, un-watered-down flavour.
  3. When the sweet potatoes are cool enough to handle, strip away the skin and fork or squeeze and pick the flesh into a large bowl. Pour in any syrupy juices from each of the foil parcels.
  4. Add all the other ingredients except for the marshmallows, and mix together to make the mash.
  5. Spoon the sweet potato mash into an ovenproof dish: I use an old rectangular one of 34 x 20cm and about 6cm deep / 13½ x 8 inches and 2½ inches deep, but any you have around that size would be fine.
  6. Smooth the top of the mash and cover with the mini marshmallows.
  7. Bake in the hot oven for 10–15 minutes by which time the marshmallows will have coloured on top and melted together, like a rippled, bronzed duvet.

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