Green Chile Sweet Potatoes

There are some new sweet potatoes at the Whole Foods this last week. I'm really not sure what they are, as the store just called them 'japanese sweet potato.' However, they have dark pink skins and white insides, which is unlike any japanese sweet potato I've seen - I usually see ones listed that way with red insides. I did a bit of digging (okay, I went to this one site) and it turns out these were Murasaki sweet potatoes.

These are awesome. Mild sweetness, lacks some of that dark, earthy kind of sweet flavor that you find in redder sweet potatoes, and which I rather dislike. So these were good.

But the kids hate 'em. So I started looking around my fridge and thought: I've got green chile and sweet potato - would that go together, maybe?



Turns out, according to our friend Mr. Internet, some people have indeed made recipes starring green chile and sweet potato. So I went off to experiment.

Green Chile Sweet Potato:
Ingredients:
One baked Murasaki sweet potato
1 roasted and peeled green chile (I used big Jim, I think)
fat (I used beef fat, rendered nice so there's no beef flavor. Olive oil would have worked too, or shortening, or butter, if you can use it)
Salt

Directions:
1. Peel the sweet potatoes and add 1-2 Tb of fat. Add salt.
2. Mash it to oblivion, until it's nice and smooth looking.
3. Mince the green chile and add to the potato. Mix. Taste and add salt if needed.

Done! I was inspired by this recipe, for using the green chiles.

Results:
I liked them. It was sweet with a bit of a chile bite to it. I ate it with grilled, salted Salmon, and eating a bit of salty salmon with a bit of the sweet potato was a nice combination. The extra salt added something.

However, it wasn't quite right. And after looking back at the original recipe I was inspired by, I realized what it was. That recipe had added sour cream. I hadn't added anything sour at all. And I can see where it would have changed the flavor just enough to make it brighter and tastier.

So next time, I'm going to be making this and seeing if a little added lemon juice might do the trick. Because this was definitely something that I'd like to try to make again.

EDIT 2/16/13
On the adding of lemon juice to this dish: don't. That did not turn out nicely at ALL. It added a bit of tartness to the sweet potato, but the sweet was still there, as was the spice from the chile. It ended up as this bizarre clash of sweet, sour, and spicy that didn't blend but rather duked it out inside your mouth and made you want to cry. So, yeah, going to have to find another solution to the sour issue if you can't have dairy!