Until the last few years, I had always roasted sweet potatoes—just the way my mother taught me. But then the world of sweet potatoes opened up, first via Deborah Madison’s idea of steaming them whole and eating them as a main dish with a good sauce (which we’ll do here), and then through a particular enlightening breakfast with my friend Heather Braaten, who likes to slice up sweet potatoes and fry them in a skillet for breakfast.
When you cook sweet potatoes whole, they make such a good and filling main dish. Add a bright-green zingy sauce, and the meal gets even better. This tangy scallion and watercress sauce is also a great salad dressing or dipper for Swiss Chard Rolls. It uses only scallion greens, which are milder than the punchy whites. Look for hearty bunches of watercress with thick stems, not the delicate hydroponic stuff, which will just disappear in the blender. These sweet potatoes are also wonderful with the sauce from Eggplant Dengaku, spicy peanut sauce from Gado Gado, or Yummy Sauce.
Ingredients
- 2 medium sweet potatoes (about 1½ pounds)
- ½ cup (packed) coarsely chopped scallion greens (from 1 bunch)
- 1 cup coarsely chopped watercress stems and leaves (from ½ bunch)
- ½ cup olive oil
- 3 tablespoons umeboshi vinegar or rice vinegar
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- Ghee (store-bought or homemade), peanut oil, or coconut oil, for frying
- ½ cup toasted pecans, roughly chopped
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Cook the Sweet Potatoes
- Separate the levels of your steamer. Fill the lower level with a few inches of water and set the pot over high heat to bring the water to a boil. Tuck your sweet potatoes into the upper level of the steamer pot. (If your sweet potatoes are too large for the steamer, put the sweet potatoes in a large pot and fill the bottom with at least an inch of water.) Steam the sweet potatoes until tender all the way through when pricked with a fork, 30 to 40 minutes, depending on their size. Check the water a few times throughout the cooking process to make sure the pot doesn’t dry out. Remove the sweet potatoes from the steamer and cut them in half lengthwise, taking care not to burn yourself as the steam escapes from each sweet potato. Meanwhile, Make the Sauce
- Combine the scallion greens, watercress, olive oil, vinegar, and salt in a blender and blend until smooth.
- Heat a large skillet set over medium heat. Put just enough ghee in the skillet to lightly cover the bottom. Add as many sweet potato halves as will fit, cut-side down. Cook undisturbed until the flesh becomes golden on the edges, 3 to 4 minutes. Serve 2 halves side by side for small sweet potatoes, or a single half for large ones, smothered in scallion sauce and sprinkled with toasted pecans. Store any leftover sauce in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.
