November 2004

Sweet Potato Gratin: Making Turds Edible
The Kitchen Samurai

So. How was your Thanksgiving? Did you roast a bird? Did you brine it first? Don't you just love turkey? Overrated? What? Screw you. The turkey's a noble animal. Be glad it's here for you to eat. Otherwise, you'd have to have Peking Duck on Christmas like that family in A Christmas Story. Then you'd be sorry. Fa ra ra indeed. Crazyhead.

Me, it's not the turkey I mind. I'm not big on sweet potatoes; really, I hate the damned things. They can't decide whether they're squashes or tubers proper, and that mild, baby food sweetness is just off-putting. Yeah, I know. I've gone the bourbon and marshmallows route, which is still worse, if you ask me, and I've spiked them with oranges, and I've eaten sweet potato fries. I've even made sweet potato fries, which, I should point out, is the second best way ever to properly grease up your kitchen floor, only just behind cramming the back pockets of your jeans with butter and scooting around the floor on your ass. It's all crap, buckos.

In a nutshell, sweet potatoes are the Devil's earwax. Don't eat them.

However, if you find you must eat them or prepare them --your mother commands you to bring sweet potatoes to Thanksgiving dinner, say, because she hates the things as much as you do and can't be buggered to make them for another gawdforsaken year-try making a sweet potato gratin.

A gratin is a marvelous thing anyway, and something you can improvise in a nanosecond. At its most basic, a gratin is nothing more than a bit of vegetable matter arranged in a pan in layers brushed with cream. To this, you can add salt, spices, cheese, shallots, bacon, or shards of glass, if you wish (adding glass decreases the cries for seconds, mind). The most common gratins involve potatoes, cream, and cheese, but there's no reason not to use celery root, squashes, beets, or whatever your heart desires.

But let's start with a simple potato gratin. With a paring knife or a potato peeler, peel your potatoes. (Keep any de-skinned bits of potato in a bowl of water to keep them from turning brown.) With a chef's knife or a mandoline, slice your potatoes into thin rounds. Arrange the potato slices in a single layer in the bottom of a buttered or oiled heat-proof casserole, gratin dish, or skillet, and season them well with salt and pepper. Do not skimp on the salt; under-seasoned gratins are dullsville. Using a pastry brush, brush the potato layer with cream, or use a measuring cup to carefully pour cream onto the potatoes. Try not to drown the potatoes, but don't sweat it if you add a little too much cream. Atop the potatoes and cream, add another layer of potato slices, salt them, and add cream. Continue in this manner until you either run out of baking dish or run out of potatoes. Do not build above the top of the dish.

A couple layers from the top of your gratin, use your hands to press the potatoes gently but firmly down into the dish and the cream. If you have a higher cream-to-potato ratio than you think is warranted (if you can cause the cream level to rise more than a quarter inch or so above the potatoes by pressing), start adding potato-layers without adding more cream, then pressing the new potato layers down into the cream to absorb the excess. You want a cohesive gratin, but not a soggy one.

Once your potato structure is complete, you can, if you wish, add a layer of sharp cheese to coat the top. Cheddar, a strong blue, parmesan, or gruyere will all work, and you'll want to choose your cheese based on your own tastes, and what else you're serving.

Cover your gratin dish with a lid or aluminum foil, then place it in a pre-heated, 350 degree oven. After 20 minutes or so, begin checking for doneness by sticking a sharp, thin knife into the center of the gratin. When the knife goes in and comes out without resistance, your gratin is cooked. At this point, you can cool the gratin for traveling and finishing later, or finish it by putting it uncovered beneath a broiler to brown and crisp the top layer. You can cook a gratin up to this point one day, and reheat it and crisp it a day later - they keep beautifully

My sweet potato gratin was very much the same thing, but with more bells and whistles. First, I diced two slices of good bacon, and cooked them slowly in 9" cast-iron skillet. Cooking them slowly let the meat crisp without burning, and allowed the bacon fat to render, to melt into the pan. When this was done, I collected the crunchy bits of bacon, and held them in a cup off to the side.

Second, I poured some of the bacon fat into a saucepan, and cooked a minced shallot until golden. (No browning, now, you just want them cooked through and translucent with a *hint* of color.) At this point, I added just a dash of bourbon to the shallots in the pan, and cooked the mixture until the bourbon had all but evaporated.

Third, I poured cream into the saucepan, still over the heat, and added a dollop of molasses. I left this to reduce by about a third.

Fourth, while the cream reduced, I sliced my sweet potatoes.

At this point, I was ready to start assembly. I arranged the sliced sweet potato rounds in the bottom of my skillet atop the remaining bacon fat. When the first layer was complete, I seasoned them with a touch of salt and a small sprinkling of bacon bits, and brushed the layer of sweet potatoes with the reduced cream mixture. I added a second layer of sweet potato rounds, more bacon, a tiny bit more salt (I was adjusting for the salt in the bacon), and brushed on more cream. I kept adding layers of sweet potato for a while (about 9 layers of sweet potato in all), then pressed the whole mess into the pan to ensure I hadn't saturated my gratin in cream. The cream that welled up over the top of my uppermost sweet potato layer told me I could add another layer of sweet potatoes or so without adding more cream, to sop up some of that extra liquid.

From here, the rest was easy. I put foil over the gratin, and placed it back in the fridge while I went to shower. When I emerged from my bath all pink and clean, all that was left was to transport the gratin to my parents' house for cooking. I should note here that, if you plan to take your gratin for a car ride, wrap it tightly. I was wearing some of mine by the time I arrived in my mom's kitchen. While the cats love you if you show up wearing cream and bacon fat, it is disconcerting, as a human, to know your crotch smells of charcuterie and dairy.

Finally, wearing a pair of jeans I had borrowed from my father, and as my own pants dried in my mother's new, way-too-high-tech-for-dumb-ol'-me dryer, I baked the gratin in a 350 degree oven for about half an hour, then crisped it in my mother's new, lust-worthy oven.

To say the gratin was an unequivocal hit would be a lie. The folks who wanted their marshmallows complained bitterly - my dish was smokey from bacon and savory, a disappointment to the candied yammerers. I was happy, though. I'm not entirely reconciled to these sweet potato things, but I've found they don't have to taste like baby food.