Skillet Hasselback Sweet Potatoes

May, and the spring is in full bloom — every garden, every street, every corner of the historic district participating in the annual Charleston performance of beauty. The performance is for me now, not for tourists (though the tourists benefit) — the beauty is the retirement's daily gift, the freedom to walk slowly and see clearly and notice the jasmine and the wisteria and the azaleas that I rushed past for thirty-one years on my way to the library.

I have been exploring RecipeSpinoff more seriously — reading the blog, studying the format, considering what I might contribute. The blog is a community of food writers, each with their own voice, each with their own kitchen, each writing about food and the life that surrounds it. The surrounding-life is what interests me: not the recipes alone (I have a cookbook for recipes) but the weekly life, the ordinary Tuesday, the slow Saturday, the way food marks the days and the days mark the life and the life marks the food.

The Librarian's Table is growing — Chapter Twelve now, pairing Mama's Hoppin' John with Alice Walker's "The Color Purple," the connection being the Southern Black woman's relationship with food as sustenance and salvation, the cooking as the survival, the survival as the story. The chapter is the book's best chapter, and the best-ness is the truthfulness, and the truthfulness is the love.

I visited Joy on Saturday. She is sixty-one, painting, happy, eating cobbler with her fingers sometimes (I do not correct her, because the cobbler tastes the same regardless of the delivery system, and the delivery system that Joy has chosen is the most direct route from the cobbler to the joy, and the direct route is the honest route). Joy remembers the cobbler. Joy remembers what matters.

I made she-crab soup on Sunday. The ninth year of Sundays. The nine-hundredth soup (approximately). The soup is perfect. The perfect is the practice. The practice is the life.

The soup was perfect on Sunday — as it has been, more or less, for nine years of Sundays — but what I made alongside it was this: skillet Hasselback sweet potatoes, a dish I have been returning to since I first tested it for Chapter Seven of The Librarian’s Table, the chapter about the Southern table as a whole cloth, not a single thread. Joy and the cobbler reminded me that the direct route is the honest route, and the sweet potato is nothing if not honest — it does not pretend to be anything other than what it is, which is the thing that sustains you, which is the thing you come back to, which is the thing that tastes like Sunday.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 50 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

4 medium sweet potatoes (about 8 oz each), scrubbed
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons pure maple syrup
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
Flaky sea salt, for finishing

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Preheat your oven to 425°F. Place a 12-inch cast iron or oven-safe skillet in the oven as it heats.
Slice the potatoes. Place each sweet potato between two chopsticks or wooden spoon handles on a cutting board — these act as guides. Make crosswise cuts every 1/4 inch along the length of each potato, cutting down until your knife meets the chopsticks. The potato should fan slightly but remain intact at the base.
Make the glaze. In a small bowl, whisk together the melted butter, olive oil, maple syrup, smoked paprika, cinnamon, cayenne, salt, and black pepper until fully combined.
Coat the potatoes. Brush the glaze generously over each potato, working it down into the cuts with the brush or your fingers. Reserve about a third of the glaze for basting.
Roast in the skillet. Carefully remove the hot skillet from the oven. Add a thin film of olive oil to the pan, then set the potatoes cut-side up. Roast for 30 minutes.
Baste and finish. Remove the skillet, brush the potatoes with the reserved glaze, and return to the oven for another 18—20 minutes, until the edges are deeply caramelized and the centers are completely tender when pierced with a paring knife.
Garnish and serve. Remove from the oven, scatter fresh thyme leaves over the potatoes, and finish with a pinch of flaky sea salt. Serve directly from the skillet while hot.

Nutrition (per serving)

Skillet Hasselback Sweet Potatoes — The Nine-Hundredth Sunday