Saturday, March 15, 2008

A Sweet Saturday Night or "Today I Watched I, Robot"



I didn't really watch I, Robot today. I do own it, but I don't think it's very good. Go read the book, it's actually very good and has nothing to do with the movie, which was another movie entirely that they decided to slap the I, Robot name on. That's like three sentences without talking about food, isn't it?

So why do I bring up, I, Robot? Well, the beginning of the movie features a sweet potato pie, and I would argue the pie is the most interesting thing about that movie. Tonight I tried my hand at making a sweet potato pie for the first time. A few weeks ago we ordered from Ruthie's and had their amazing version, so I wanted to try it for myself.

If you've never had it, sweet potato pie is really similar in taste and texture to pumpkin pie, which everyone should love. Really, I mean come on - who doesn't love pumpkin pie? Sweet potato pie is just made with, you guessed it, sweet potatoes instead of pumpkins. Now, I don't know about you, but I live in Brooklyn, and there are a Hell of a lot more sweet potatoes for sale than there are pumpkins, so as much as I love pumpkin pie, I'm all about the SPP. That's what I'm calling it from now on: SPP. Sounds like a 90's rap song or something.

SPP

Say it with me.

Here's my recipe.

Ingredients




2 large sweet potatoes - note, in the US sweet potatoes and yams are often onterchanged with each other - in fact, they're completely different plants, but around here, when you buy one, you're pretty much getting a sweet potato.
1 stick of butter, softened
2 cups sugar
5 oz (1 small can) evaporated milk
3 eggs, beaten
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
2 9 inch frozen pie crusts - or just make them yourself, but I'm not nearly that sexy. I bet Jen would make them herself. I'm contractually obligated to note that my stepmother Pat would as well, and that they would be fantastic.

Directions

Preheat oven to 350





Peel the potatoes and cut them into cubes about an inch and a half wide. Drop them in a pot of boiling water for about twenty minutes or until soft. I just pretended I was making mashed potatoes. You're going for about 2 cups worth of sweet potatoes. I ended up making way too much and having to throw some sweet potato away. It wasn't sweet. A little sad, really.

In a stand mixer (white people love these), combine the potatoes, butter, evaporated milk, and sugar and mix until blended. Add the nutmeg, cinnamon, eggs, and vanilla and mix well.



Poor mixture into pie shells and bake at 350 for an hour. That's it, really. It seems so simple when you write it out, doesn't it?

I haven't actually tried these yet - they're sitting over there cooling. I hope they're good. I promise that if they suck I'll amend this post with "seriously, don't make these, they suck."

Stay tuned.

Oh, I'm also going to make some whipped cream for them, but I can't even bring myself to write out that recipe. Seriously, it's just heavy cream, a teaspoon of sugar, and a teaspoon of vanilla - whipped to Hell. One time at a dinner party I made the mistake of explaining that if I kept whipping, we'd end up with butter, so of course all the drunk people wanted to see me make butter.

We had a bowl of stupid butter in our fridge for six months.

Update!

So I brought one pie to a poker game and it went over well. You can rest assured this recipe will not kill your children.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

That sweet potato pie looks amazing! I'm a HUGE fan of the Pumpkin Pie too!

Anonymous said...

I don't know where you people find the time to make your own pies, but I am friggin impressed. This looks delish - also, you're making me hungry. Being on a British ship, the only thing these bastards know how to do is cook fish and chips. I could murder a SPP this second. Hope you & Mickey are well!