This is a wonderful dip to serve while you're watching weekend football games at home or for a tailgate party before the game at the stadium.
While I was working on this delicious and truly unusual dip, I had lots of fun asking people what they thought the ingredients were - and very few guessed correctly. If you're in a hurry you can substitute baby-food pureed sweet potatoes for the baked sweet potatoes and have an almost-instant dip. Just use four jars, four ounces each, and follow the rest of the recipe exactly.You can serve this dip with nonfat chips as a very low-fat appetizer or as a side dish with dinner. You can also thin leftover dip with a little nonfat milk for a wonderful sauce over pasta or rice, or thin it a little more for a soup.
There are about 40 different varieties of sweet potatoes raised in this country, and they fall roughly into two categories: moist-fleshed and dry-fleshed. The ones that convert most of their starches to sugar during cooking and become sweet and soft are called moist-fleshed, or yam, varieties. Those that convert less starch and are therefore less sweet are called dry-fleshed.
Although the sweeter varieties are often referred to as yams, they are not. True yams are starchy tropical vegetables rarely found in our markets. No one seems to know when or where this practice of calling sweet potatoes "yams" started, but it certainly is widespread and leads to lots of confusion.
SWEET POTATO DIP
2 medium sweet potatoes (1 1/2 pounds)
1 tablespoon dried marjoram, crushed
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
Preheat oven to 400 F. Wash and dry sweet potatoes, and poke holes in them with tines of a fork. Place them in a pan or on a baking sheet and bake in preheated oven 1 hour or until soft. Allow to cool until safe to handle. Remove and discard skins.
Put peeled sweet potatoes into a food processor. Add all other ingredients, except oil, and blend until satin-smooth. Slowly add olive oil while processor is running.
Makes 1 3/4 cups.
Each 1/4-cup serving contains approximately 69 calories; no cholesterol; 2 gm fat; 90 mg sodium; 1 gm protein; 12 gm carbohydrates.