A Twist on Thanksgiving

Since my mother will be hosting Thanksgiving this year, and I'll only be making a couple of dishes, I thought it would be fun to make a Thanksgiving inspired dish for potluck this week.

Why yes, this was delicious.

While browsing through the archives of Food Network (a favorite place to waste time), I came across this recipe for scalloped spicy sweet potatoes from Bobby Flay. I was on board immediately. Not only was I able to whip out and use one of my favorite kitchen gadgets (my mandolin) but I always enjoy a good spicy/sweet flavor combo - as long as it's not too spicy.

I bought some lovely looking Japanese yams, which I was assured were just like sweet potatoes.

Of course, when I cut into them, I noticed that they were an off white color, rather than the colorful orange you're used to with regular sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes...or are they?

Crossing my fingers that this wasn't going to be a problem, I continued on. Knowing that I'd mostly likely shy away from the dish if it was too spicy, I decided to slowly add the spice to the cream. 

That cream looks a bit jaunty, no?

Because it seemed like a smart idea at the time, I dipped my finger in to the chipotle peppers and tasted it to see exactly how spicy it was. 

Yikes. 

I immediately followed that up by dipping those same fingers into the bowl of cream. I added the chipotle puree bit by bit until the cream took on a light pink color and the entire kitchen smelled deliciously smokey. 

I placed one layer of sweet potato on the bottom of the pan (I used a 9 x 13 glass dish) and then decided that 2 cups of heavy cream just wasn't enough dairy and sprinkled a little bit of shredded cheddar cheese in between each layer of potato.

I popped the dish in to bake as directed and by the time it was done it had caramelized on the top and had a lovely looking crispy edge. In the end it was the perfect combination of sweet, savory and spicy. While it was certainly a heavy dish with all of the cheese and cream, you only needed a small slice to be satisfied. By the end of the night it was all gone, even the extra crispy bits around the edge. 

I'll definitely be making this dish in the future when I'm feeling the urge for a little twist on sweet potatoes.