Sweet Potato Purée with Pecan Streusel: A Little Something On the Side
As you might have gathered, we’re big fans of Thanksgiving here at P&C. Last year, Shiv even live-blogged her fabulous Thanksgiving fête. While I’ve helped put on a huge Fakesgiving celebration a few times before and after the actual holiday, I hadn’t cooked a full Thanksgiving menu by myself until recently. Luckily, I received a review copy of Diane Morgan’s The New Thanksgiving Table, so I had a good source for inspiration.
Many of the recipes in this book aren’t really limited to Thanksgiving. I’m sure your guests at any dinner party wouldn’t mind being served Vermont farmhouse cheddar cheese straws or crostini with gulf shrimp, jalapeno and lime, and a parsnip-potato soup topped with crispy bacon would make a delicious meal for any time.
If you’re feeling Thanksgiving ennui and looking for something new, this is also the place for updated classics. There’s turkey glazed with maple syrup, and instructions for spatchcocked turkey roasted with lemon. There’s a riff on stuffing with Linguiça sausage and a sweet potato dish basted with chipotle and lime.
I cooked up Morgan’s sweet potato purée topped with a sweet pecan streusel. I tweaked the quantities slightly, reducing the butter a bit and cutting down the brown sugar—my sweet potatoes were pretty sweet to begin with.
Roasting the sweet potatoes concentrates their flavor nicely, but an equivalent amount of canned unsweetened sweet potato purée is not a huge compromise in this recipe. Just check the ingredients on the can first, or you might hit sugar overload before you even get to the pie.
