Hearty Sweet Potato, Arugula & Wild Rice Salad with Ginger Dressing

The library is hosting an author visit this week — a Southern food writer who has published three cookbooks and whose approach to recipe writing is the opposite of mine: she measures everything, tests everything three times, photographs everything. I attended her talk on Thursday evening and took notes like a student, which I have not been in twenty-three years but which I became again the moment she started talking about the relationship between food writing and memory.

"A recipe," she said, "is an argument for a particular version of a dish. It says: this is how it should taste. And every cook who follows it will produce something slightly different, because cooking is not replication. It is interpretation." I wrote this down and underlined it, because it is the most useful thing anyone has said to me about the project I am slowly building — the cookbook that exists in my head and on my index cards and nowhere else yet.

James has been studying for the SAT with the intensity of someone who has discovered that the test is both important and absurd, a combination that offends his sense of fairness. "It's not testing what I know," he said over dinner. "It's testing how well I take tests." I told him that much of adult life consists of performing well in formats that don't accurately measure your abilities, and that the skill of navigating unjust systems is, unfortunately, one worth having. He looked at me with an expression I recognized as my father's: the preacher's gaze, assessing whether the sermon applies to the preacher as much as the congregation.

Carrie has started a book club at Ashley Hall — three girls who meet after school on Wednesdays to discuss whatever they're reading. This week it was "Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami, which Carrie chose because it is Japanese literature and because it is about loss and desire and the way young people construct identities out of the wreckage of their emotions. She is fourteen. She is reading Murakami. I am forty-six and I am still processing Murakami. The generational gap between us is narrowing, and I am not sure whether to be proud or unnerved.

I made Mama's sweet potato biscuits this week — a variation on her buttermilk biscuits that uses mashed sweet potato in the dough, producing a biscuit that is slightly sweeter, slightly denser, and deeply orange. They are a fall recipe that I make in spring because the sweet potatoes at the market were beautiful and because biscuit-making is its own kind of meditation, the repetition of cutting and folding and turning producing a rhythm that quiets the mind and fills the kitchen with warmth.

The sweet potatoes at the market were too beautiful to pass up — and while Mama’s biscuits claimed most of them, there was enough left over to build something else entirely, something that felt right for a week spent taking notes and thinking hard about interpretation and memory. This salad carries the same spirit as those biscuits: grounding, slightly sweet, deeply satisfying — but lighter, and bright with ginger in a way that matches the particular alertness I felt walking home from the library Thursday night. It’s the kind of dish that rewards attention without demanding it, which is exactly what the week called for.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed (about 3 cups)
1 cup wild rice, uncooked
2 1/2 cups water or vegetable broth
4 cups baby arugula
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup toasted pecans or walnuts, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil (for roasting)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Ginger Dressing:
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, finely grated
1 tablespoon honey or maple syrup
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 small garlic clove, minced
Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Cook the wild rice. Combine wild rice and water or broth in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 40–45 minutes until the rice is tender and most of the liquid is absorbed. Fluff with a fork and let cool slightly.
Roast the sweet potatoes. Preheat oven to 400°F. Toss sweet potato cubes with olive oil, salt, and pepper and spread in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet. Roast for 25–30 minutes, flipping halfway, until golden at the edges and fork-tender. Let cool for 10 minutes.
Make the ginger dressing. Whisk together olive oil, apple cider vinegar, grated ginger, honey, Dijon mustard, and garlic in a small bowl until emulsified. Taste and adjust salt and pepper as needed.
Assemble the salad. In a large bowl, combine arugula, cooked wild rice, and roasted sweet potatoes. Scatter dried cranberries and toasted nuts over the top.
Dress and serve. Drizzle ginger dressing over the salad just before serving and toss gently to coat. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Nutrition (per serving)

Hearty Sweet Potato, Arugula & Wild Rice Salad with Ginger Dressing — A Southern Kitchen’s Answer to a Meditative Week