In spite of the hungry voles that ravaged our sweet potato patch we still have at least 40 lbs in storage.
So I started looking through my cookbooks and was reminded about this latke recipe that I used to make
several years ago from the book "Vegetarian Planet" by Didi Emmons, published in 1997. It's interesting
how you cycle through recipes and then forget about them for a while.
Anyway, if you think you don't care for sweet potatoes because they can sometimes be 'too sweet' you
may like these onion studded latkes. The onions, coupled with the savory chile cream topping, tone down the
sweetness making these a quite delicious treat. Serve them with a nice green salad. While sweet
potatoes are not high in protein they are extremely nutritious in vitamins and fiber.
Chile-Lime Sour Cream
2 T. sour cream
3 T. plain yogurt
1 small chile pepper, seeded and chopped fine (serrano, jalapeno or ?)
2 T. lime juice (about 1 lime)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Latkes
1 pound (about 1 large or 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and grated
2/3 cup minced onion
1/2 tsp. salt
Freshly-ground black pepper to taste
2 eggs, beaten
5 T. flour
2 T. olive oil
2 scallions or cilantro or something green, chopped
1. Make the chile-lime sour cream: In a small bowl, combine all of the ingredients, and stir well. Set the
bowl aside.
2. Make the latke mixture: In a large bowl, combine the grated sweet potato with the onion, salt,
pepper, and eggs. Mix well. Add the flour, and mix again.
3. In a large cast iron skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Make latkes using a 1/2 cup
measurer. Flatten them with your spatula to about 1/2" to 3/4" thick and fry about to 4-5 minutes,
until they are deep brown on the underside, then flip them, and cook them for 3-4 minutes more.
Serve immediately topped with the chile-lime sour cream and your chosen garnish.
*As your frying pan gets hotter turn the heat down gradually to medium low. Sweet potatoes do get
darker as they cook and can almost burn if the pan stays too hot. I suspect it's the sugars in the potatoes
that tend to caramelize.
**Makes about eight 4" latkes. The original recipe was for 2 large latkes but the bigger ones are too
unwieldy and are very hard to turn over in one piece.
***I keep a bag of frozen serrano peppers in the freezer. They are fine in the sour cream sauce and it's
easy to cut them perpendicular and scrape out the seeds.