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When we think of Dorie Greenspan, cookies come to mind (who wouldn’t to pull a batch of world peace cookies out of the oven about now?). Her very name conjures up flaky pastries and lavish layer cakes. She definitely swings sweet, but that’s not all she eats. For her newest cookbook Everday Dorie: The Way I Cook($35), Greenspan tackles the recipes she makes at home on the regular. Yes, there’s a cookie in there (she concedes that she can’t help tinkering with chocolate chip cookies), but this book is chock-full of meal ideas that are weeknight-easy.
It’s quite possible that you’ll have a hard time figuring out which recipe to make first. The cover photo showcases her brunch tart, stuffed with cream cheese, smoked salmon, capers, and red onion that brings a bit of New York to your table. She offers up her own takes on classic dishes like a French potato tourte (imagine thin slices of herb buttered potatoes inside puff pastry with cream poured in before baking). For her roast chicken with pan-vinaigrette sauce, she claims she tastes “France in every bite.”
Apart from living in New York, Connecticut, and Paris, travel inspires her everyday cooking. Many of the recipes in Everyday with Dorie lean on Asian spices and sauces like the citrusy Japanese ponzu sauce. She even makes use of yuzu kosho, a citrus-chile paste. Korean chile sauce gochujang is a regular seasoning, appearing in recipes like umami burgers. Miso corn takes her back to Tokyo and a revelation that miso is the secret ingredient of a street corn she ate there.
Miso also shows up also in a jam for sweet potatoes that will have you rethinking the marshmallow-topped yams this Thanksgiving. This recipe is easy, and the payoff is big. You roast sweet potatoes, and while they’re doing their thing, you whisk together the jam (that’s umami-rich from the miso, hot from sriracha, sweet with maple, zesty from the ponzu, and has a supple texture thanks to the butter). We have a hunch these will become your new side-dish sidekick.
MISO-MAPLE-JAMMED SWEET POTATOES
(Serves 4)
You could probably just lick this miso-maple jam off a spoon and be happy, but happiness is multiplied manyfold when you spread it generously over steaming-hot sweet potatoes. The jam, a mix of melted butter, miso, maple syrup, sriracha and ready-made ponzu sauce, is just a touch sweet; mainly it’s spicy, salty and, because of the miso, hard to describe, as so many umami-rich foods are. If you like the jam as much as I do, keep some in the fridge to use on roasted carrots or squash, steamed cauliflower or seared salmon, halibut, or scallops. A word on the potatoes: The jam will be luscious on any type of sweet potato — it’s not bad on white potatoes either — but my preference is for Garnet sweet potatoes. You could use Japanese yams — the ones with white flesh — but they’re so inherently sweet that they tend to mute the complexity of the jam. The jam can be made up to three days ahead and kept tightly covered in the refrigerator. The potatoes are meant to be served as soon as they’re roasted. However, if you have leftovers, you can remove them from their skins, mash them with some miso jam and reheat them in a 350°F oven.
Ingredients:
- 4 medium sweet potatoes or yams (see headnote), scrubbed
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 2 tablespoons light (white or yellow) miso
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 1 tablespoon ponzu sauce
- sriracha
- fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper
Directions:
1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat it to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with foil.
2. Using a paring knife, poke a few holes in each potato. Place the potatoes on the baking sheet and roast for about 1 hour, until they give when prodded or squeezed.
3. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Turn off the heat and gently whisk in the miso until fully incorporated. Whisk in the maple syrup, ponzu, 1/4 teaspoon sriracha, a big pinch of salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Even though the miso and ponzu are salty, you need more salt to counterbalance the syrup and enliven the jam. Taste and add more sriracha, salt and/or pepper, if you’d like. (You can pack the jam airtight and keep it in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.)
4. The simplest way to serve this dish is to let everyone split their potatoes and slather on some of the miso jam.
5. Alternatively, line the two baking sheets with clean foil and lightly butter or oil it. Cut the potatoes into chunks and place them flesh side up on the sheets. Press them down with a fork — don’t overdo it, you just want to create a few grooves — and spread some jam over each chunk. Return the potatoes to the oven for another 10 minutes.
5. Pass the rest of the maple-miso jam at the table, so that everyone can have a little more.
Stay in tonight and find more cozy recipe ideas on Pinterest @BritandCo.
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(Excerpted from Everyday Dorie © 2018 by Dorie Greenspan. Photography © 2018 by Ellen Silverman. Reproduced by permission of Rux Martin Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.)
(Photo of potatoes via Annelies Zijderveld/Brit + Co)
