Sweet Potatoes, Mashed Potatoes and Yams
Use honey, butter and cinnamon on sweet potatoes. Simply mix the ingredients together and bake sweet potatoes for 35-45 minutes in an open oven on the racks @450. Be sure to place a pan under them while cooking! Once cooked, either serve them whole with the honey butter mixture or slice them and pour the honey butter mix on top. For great mashed potatoes, add horseradish, parsley, mix with heavy cream (add a little at a time) and top with pan fried shallots. For yams, being from the south, I make a yam casserole, which is candied yams with marshmallows, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and a 1/2 cup of really good egg nog, then topped with candied pecans. Decadent? Yes! Mix the yams with the egg, and seasonings and egg nog, then top with marshmallows and bake for 30 minutes. Top with crushed candied pecans. This is really Dessert!!
Add Ethnic Dishes
to your holiday table
During the holidays, I often worked in the Bahamas, Caribbean and the Pacific. Some of the side dishes were fried plantains, pigeon peas and rice, bread pudding (which is similar to mashed potatoes) and spiced rice with curry and coconut milk, covered with a plantain leaf and baked. Do something that might make your guests happy! Find out what country they are from, or their favorite dish and make that dish for them at Thanksgiving! I have had dishes inspired from Middle Eastern cuisine, Latin cuisine, Philippine/South East Asian cuisine, Pacific rim cuisine, Indian cuisine, Italian cuisine…just to name a few… grace my Thanksgiving table!