Sweet Potatoes - (Savor the South Cookbooks) by April McGreger (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In this paean to the brightly colored root, April McGreger tells the multifaceted history of a fundamental southern food, praising its rich and diverse savory-to-sweet flavor profile, botanical varieties, and shockingly high nutritional value. Along with instructions for selection and storage, McGreger shares the fifty best sweet potato recipes in the world. Embracing but going well beyond the classics -- from Sweet Potato Pone and Candied Sweet Potatoes to Sweet Potato Chiles Rellenos and Sweet Potato-Ginger Crèmes Caramels -- McGreger's creations will delight and satisfy with their deliciousness and versatility.

McGreger relates a tale from a traveler in 1940s Mississippi who said he ate "sweet potatoes with wild turkeys and various other meats, had a potato pie for dessert and roasted potatoes offered to him as a side dish, drank sweet potato coffee and sweet potato home brew, had his horse fed on sweet potatoes and sweet potato vines, and when he retired he slept on a mattress stuffed with sweet potato vines and dreamed he was a sweet potato someone was digging up." The sweet potato is no less important to McGreger, the daughter and sister of Mississippi sweet potato farmers.

Review Quotes

"[A] splendid series." -- Los Angeles Times

"Contains some pretty amazing and fascinating history, as well as 50 recipes." -- Salisbury Post

"Demonstrates . . . intriguing ways to let sweet potatoes shine." -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Hailing from a sweet potato farm family, April McGreger weaves her personal story into the history of the southern roots of the sweet potato. The recipe sections encompass all the meals of the day and all courses of a meal. As a baker, April shares, with warm and homey notes, her famous recipes, beloved by her farmer's market following." -- Cynthia Graubart, co-author with Nathalie Dupree of Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking

"I love this book. From the first sentence, I was engaged and thrilled. Invoking her childhood, the South, and food traditions, April McGreger made me want to eat a sweet potato immediately -- I wanted one for lunch and dinner, perhaps rubbed with bacon fat and salt and rosemary. And that hash and those grits!" -- Miriam Rubin, author of Tomatoes: a Savor the South(R) cookbook

"McGreger artfully mixes into the best of different cuisines the ingredient she and nutritionists call a superfood." -- Booklist

"SAVOR THE SOUTH -- designed to give Dixie's most time-honored ingredients their due." -- Garden & Gun