Sweet Potato Pone (New England Style?)

My poor neglected food blog! It's been so long!!

There are always reasons to neglect any habit. Mine have included being too lazy to buy a USB cord for my camera (which means all pictures of food are downloaded to my husband's computer and forgotten) and being so damn happy that I don't have homework any more that I couldn't possibly stand to write ANYTHING.

But dear food blog, don't think that I don't have anything to write about! There have been so many great adventures this year, with fish, with greens, with taro root, with chicken, with cordials, with tomatoes, with sweet potatoes... the list goes on. If anything, I've been so focused on cooking, and been lucky to try good recipes that don't need tweaking, that I haven't been taking time out to write.

It's getting colder now, though, which means it's time to go back to the blog to look up lemon chicken and apple butter and Cayo Romanos... and the truth is that I miss having a good chronicle of all the great food that we experience. So here we go again.

I have a lot of great things from this summer, but it's Thanksgiving and we're all craving that harvest food. I've never been to New Orleans and I've never had pone, but this take on a NOLA favorite reminds me of pumpkin pie and warm treats on cold days. Maybe that's just how I make it - someday I'll have to try the real thing! I've made it as a side, for dessert, and for breakfast, all good, and it's easy to scale up or down depending on how many sweet potatoes you have available.

Sweet Potato Pone
Adapted from Waverly's Sweet Potato Pone

4 cups peeled, grated sweet potatoes (2 to 3 large)
1/2 orange, zested

1/2 cup light brown sugar
4 tbsps. unsalted butter
2 eggs, room temperature and beaten

1/2 cup milk (original recipe calls for whole, I use 2%)
1/4 cup molasses
2 tbps. brandy
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. allspice
1/4 tsp. salt

NOTE: How you choose to grate the sweet potato will change the texture. I liked it better when I used the "shred" size part of grater rather than grating it too finely. That said, I believe it's more traditional to grate the potato as finely as possible - really up to your preference.

- Preheat oven to 350. Butter glass baking dish (if I'm scaling up or down, I usually wait to see how much mixture I end up with - you'll want it to be a couple inches thick but still relatively shallow).
- Grate potato and zest orange (keep separate).
- Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl.
- Add the eggs and beat to combine.
- Add grated potatoes, milk, brandy, molasses, spices, salt, and orange zest.
- Pour mixture into buttered dish and bake 1 hour.