Roasted Honey Sweet Potatoes

Late January. The rain has not stopped in three weeks and Portland is a city underwater, the gutters overflowing, the streets shining, the sky a monochrome gray that would be depressing if you didn't know it was temporary and if you didn't have a kitchen with candles and dashi and the particular warmth that cooking provides when the world outside is cold and wet and relentless.

I made Fumiko's buri daikon — yellowtail fish simmered with daikon radish, the winter dish that is all about patience: the daikon must simmer for forty-five minutes before adding the fish, the long soak allowing the radish to become translucent and tender and sweet, absorbing the dashi-soy broth the way a sponge absorbs water. Fumiko's card for buri daikon says: "Do not rush the daikon. The daikon knows when it is ready. You do not tell the daikon." I am not rushing the daikon. I am not rushing anything. The rushing was the thirties. The not-rushing is the late thirties. The not-rushing might be wisdom, or it might be exhaustion, but the result is the same: the daikon is tender and the fish is perfect and the patience has produced a beautiful thing.

I got an advance copy of the book. The actual physical object. A book with pages and a spine and my name on the cover and Fumiko's name in the acknowledgments and the smell of new paper and the weight of three hundred pages of miso soup and grief and internment and love. I held it in both hands. I held it the way I hold the chipped bowl. I held it like a bowl. The bowl holds soup. The book holds a life. Both are containers. Both are acts of holding.

I did not open it. Not yet. I put it on the shelf in the kitchen, next to Fumiko's ceramic bowls, and I looked at it and the book looked back, and the looking was the conversation between the writer and the written, between the living and the dead, between the woman who wrote the book and the grandmother who is the book, and the conversation did not require words. The conversation was the spine on the shelf. The conversation was the weight in the hand. The conversation was enough.

The buri daikon was doing its long, slow work on the stove — the daikon absorbing broth, the kitchen filling with that particular dashi warmth — and I needed something alongside it that would honor the same unhurried logic: nothing complicated, nothing that required watching, just a pan of honey-glazed sweet potatoes going soft and caramelized in the oven while I held my book and let the afternoon do what it wanted. These roasted honey sweet potatoes are not Japanese, but they understand patience the same way the daikon does — you give them heat and time and they become something sweeter and better than they started.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 50 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 lbs sweet potatoes (about 3 medium), peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons honey
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves or flat-leaf parsley, for finishing

Instructions

Preheat. Heat your oven to 400°F (200°C). Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.
Coat the sweet potatoes. In a large bowl, toss the sweet potato cubes with olive oil, honey, salt, pepper, and cinnamon if using, until every piece is well coated.
Arrange and roast. Spread the sweet potatoes in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet, making sure they are not crowded — space helps them roast rather than steam. Roast for 20 minutes.
Turn and continue. Using a spatula, gently flip the sweet potatoes. Return to the oven and roast for another 18–20 minutes, until the edges are caramelized and a fork meets no resistance at the center.
Finish and serve. Transfer to a serving dish and scatter fresh thyme or parsley over the top. Serve warm, directly from the pan.

Nutrition (per serving)

Roasted Honey Sweet Potatoes — A Winter Kitchen That Asks Nothing of You but Patience