one potato, sweet potato, miso soup and more.

japanese sweet potato conquered, time to keep on keepin on the sweet potato trail...next stop golden sweet and beauregard yams. well, here we go again, both of these vegetables are called "yams" but are actually sweet potatoes. technically all "yams" grown in the united states are sweet potatoes. and yet we call them yams. because we can do whatever we want, right? this is america. freedom of speech. i'd rather just call a spade a spade, you know? but this yam misnomer tradition is far older and widespread than me, so i'm going to have to suck it up at some point and just accept that although i may buy and cook a lot of yams, i have still never actually bought or cooked a yam.

okay, let's be honest, i'm a bird on a budget trying to be green. reduce, reuse, recycle, my friends. a great place to do this is in the kitchen. so i decided my next adventure in yamville needed to make use of the large amount of leftover scallion and miso that i had from my first adventure in the land of sweet potato. so i decided to make a variation on a miso soup. i chose two very different types of sweet potato: the golden sweet and the beauregard. the golden sweet has light skin and light flesh. the beauregard has dark copper skin and bright orange flesh. the golden sweet yam is much milder and much starchier, acting & tasting a little bit like a potato and a turnip, while the beauregard is much sweeter, like a very sweet carrot. they worked in nice conjunction together in a soup. and again, paired well with the mild white miso.

sweet potato seaweed miso soup with rice

garlic (we used no less than 6 cloves in 1 pot of soup, but we also have a slight garlic addiction here, quantity is up to you), chopped finely

a handful of kombu seaweed (dried)

1/4 cup thai jasmine rice

1/2 cup hijiki seaweed (dried)

1 golden sweet yam, peeled & diced

1 beauregard yam, peeled & diced

1 small crown of broccoli, chopped

1 small head of choy sum, chopped

4 scallions, chopped

sea salt

1/2-3/4 cup white miso (again, depends on your taste. add 1/2 cup to start, add more if flavor isn't strong enough for you)

fill a large pot with 4 cups (or so) of water. add garlic & kombu seaweed. bring to a boil.

add rice. cover & simmer.

after 5 minutes, add sweet potatoes & hijiki.

when sweet potatoes are almost done, add the broccoli & choy sum. allow to simmer another 5 minutes or so.

add scallions, season with sea salt. simmer for a minute or two.

add miso, 1 tablespoon at a time, let it dissolve. allow this soup to simmer for just a couple of minutes.*

remove from heat.

enjoy.

*the key to miso soup is not allowing the miso to boil, hence adding it last, it will destroy the flavor and compromises the nutritional value and healing properties of the miso.

even your mama says you're ugly.

well, they sure as heck aren't pretty to look at on their own, but the sweet potato, full of vitamins a, c & b6, packs a delicious punch of good old fashioned nutrition, giving it an inner beauty. and it's what's on the inside that matters after all, isn't it? at least that's what everyone always tells me. wait...they mean it, right? it's not like they're just saying that to make me feel better about something else, are they? ??

ah, the sweet potato. which is different than a yam. which is not actually what we think is a yam. yams as we think of them are just varieties of the sweet potato. which have nothing to do with potatoes. yes, they are all indeed root vegetables, tubers, but these tubers, though they look mighty darn similar, originate from different botanical families. confused? why wouldn't you be. but, alas, "what's in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" - right, juliet? well, i intend to find out. or try to find out. or just eat a lot of sweet potatoes. i mean yams. i mean sweet potatoes. i mean, well, i don't know what i mean. but it's root and tuber time of year and root-toot-tuber season seems like as good a time as any to dive headfirst into learning about these sweet ugly guys.

so there are something like 400 varieties of sweet potatoes out there. and sweet potatoes are not necessarily sweet, nor are they potatoes. the true sweet potato actually has a flavor closer to a chestnut, with white flesh, not the orange flesh we think of. the satsuma-imo version of these is quite popular in japan. and so in my investigation into the sweet potato and yam world, this is where i shall begin, and tonight i dove right in with the japanese sweet potato, a variety i had never tried before. the tiger and i both enjoyed it. like my research promised, it did have a chestnut-ty flavor to it, not the sweet, carrot-ty flavor that garnet yams, for instance, have. it was really super scrumptious and delicious with a salty, tangy miso-based spread, a surprisingly mostly savory and just a little bit sweet take on the tuber of a thousand names and mistake monikers.


miso garlic scallion japanese sweet potato
preheat oven to 400 degrees
wash & scrub a japanese sweet potato (pictured above, purple skin with white flesh)
prick sweet potato with a fork & roast in oven (about 1 hour or until soft)

miso garlic scallion spread:
3 tbs white miso
2 cloves garlic minced
1 green scallion chopped finally
in small bowl or ramekin, mash the miso, garlic and scallions until well mixed into a paste

remove sweet potato from oven
slice down the middle
spread the miso paste on the potato
fold the potato halves back together to allow the paste to melt into the flesh a little bit
enjoy.