Harmony Valley Farm: October 28, 2021 - This Week's Box Contents, Featuring Sweet Potatoes!

It’s finally time to send sweet potatoes your way! This year’s Burgundy sweet potatoes are quite sweet and tasty, as well as unique in appearance. These may be the most interestingly shaped sweet potatoes we’ve ever grown! Nonetheless, I’m excited to share this recipe for Sweet Potato Muffins with Pecan Streusel (See Below). I discovered this recipe last winter and I’ve made them countless times. They never get old! One thing I really like about this recipe is its versatility. The original recipe is vegan, but it works well with dairy items (milk and butter) as well, so I often use whatever I have on hand. You can also change up the nuts you use. I often use almonds, but walnuts, hazelnuts, etc. would work too. Now this week we’re focusing on sweet potatoes, so you really should make your first batch using them. That being said, I’ve made this same recipe using winter squash puree in place of the sweet potatoes. Butternut squash, Orange Kuri, Kabocha, or the Tetsukabuto squash we’ll send your way in December are all good varieties to cook, puree and use to make these muffins. I’ve also made this recipe using bananas and applesauce as well---you guessed it, equally as delicious! Ok, two more modifications I want to share. I like to substitute ½ cup of almond flour for the spelt flour. It makes a light, very tender muffin. The last time I made this recipe I realized I didn’t have any muffin liner papers. Yes, you can grease the muffin tins, but honestly I’d really recommend using the papers for this recipe as they are much easier to extract without falling apart. Instead of making muffins, I used a small Bundt pan (6 cup capacity) and made a cake! I poured the batter in the pan and then put the streusel topping on top. After it was baked I turned it out onto a plate so the streusel was then on the bottom. With this cake strategy, you can turn this recipe into a nice dessert or coffee cake! If you haven’t picked up on it yet, I really like this recipe!

Photo from Brussels Sprouts Hash and Eggs

Time to move on as there are a lot of other great recipes to try this week! I know we’re going to be eating these Sheet Pan Sweet Potato, Poblano and Black Bean Quesadillas for lunch later this week. Quesadillas are a quick and easy item to make and then reheat in a toaster oven. Perfect for a quick lunch or keep them in the fridge for the kids to heat up after school! The other fun recipe I came across this week was for these Garlic Pizza Sliders Dip. They are ooey-gooey, cheesy delicious! Great for the kids, great for game night, or movie night.

Brussels sprouts are another exciting crop this week! I love vegetables for breakfast, so I’m going to make this Brussels Sprouts Hash and Eggs. My other breakfast dish idea for this week is this Chickpea and Kale Shakshuka.

This week we’re sending Russet potatoes, one of the few drier, starchy potatoes we grow. This is the variety traditionally used to make baked potatoes. My favorite way to eat this is baked with a salt crust. If this interests you, check out this article, How To Make Salty, Crispy Skinned Baked Potatoes.

Ok, that’s all I’m going to comment on today. Take a look at this week’s recipe suggestions and see for yourself if anything looks good! Have a great week and I’ll see you next week to celebrate the first week of November and ginger harvest! –Chef Andrea

Vegetable Feature: Sweet Potatoes

By: Richard deWilde

Most Midwest farmers would not even consider growing a tropical plant like sweet potatoes or ginger (spoiler alert…coming in next week’s box!). But we’ve never fit the profile for a typical Midwest farm and we’ve attempted many unconventional challenges and new crops. Learning how to grow sweet potatoes has been one of our more favorable attempts. Still, every year presents a new set of challenges to overcome and we continue to learn from each experience.

Sweet Potatoes starting out this spring

Of the many varieties of sweet potatoes from around the southern parts of the world, only a handful stand a chance of producing in Wisconsin. We have tried them all and will continue to try any new ones available. For now we have settled on two varieties that consistently produce a yield in our unconventional system. We start our sweet potato crop from plants called “slips.” We depend on slips grown in outdoor beds by two organic growers in North Carolina. Time is of the essence for us as we need to maximize the growing season. Thus, we want to plant as soon as possible after the last frost date in May. When we order, we hedge our bets and divide our order between the two suppliers. They are affected by weather too and in years past they’ve been hit by tropical storms, cold weather snaps, etc. which affects the timing and quality of the slips they are harvesting. But, if all goes as planned, we get the slips by the end of May. We transplant them into raised beds covered with dark green plastic which helps hold heat to make the plants think they’re in their preferred tropical environment!

Jose Luis & Oscar showing getting ready to
start picking up the sweet potatoes

I mentioned we have two favorite varieties and those are Burgundy and Covington. Covington is a dependable producer of nice banana-bunch like clusters of four to six potatoes. They typically have nice shape and size, but generally fall slightly below in “brix,” which is a measure of sweetness. Burgundy has moved to the top of the list with its deep orange color and sweetness for several years. It tends to lag behind in yield, only producing two to three nice tubers in a cluster, but we love their rich taste and sweetness so are willing to compromise a bit on yield.

Every year is different and this year defies these typical descriptions in many ways! It was very dry and hot when we planted them, just what sweet potatoes like! We have a water line under the plastic cover to deliver water and nutrients, but sweet potatoes do not require much fertility and we know that excess water produces thin, stringy potatoes and few tubers. So we refrained from too much water based on the readings we took from our moisture sensors. The vines were very prolific, vines on top of vines that were knee high! In September when we cut them back to dig a test cluster, it was disappointing. We only found one to three potatoes on each plant. So in early October, we put a cover on them to trap in heat and prevent frost damage. No frost came, but fearing wet and cold weather, we removed the cover, chopped the vines and dug them! It took most of three days with a crew of ten to carefully lift and crate them. Approximately 30,000 pounds went into the greenhouse where we “cured” them for about ten days. This means we held them in an environment with temperatures around 85°F with very high humidity for 8-10 days which helps set the skins so they are more stable for storage and the starches in the tubers are converted to sugars enhancing their sweetness.

Digging a few samples and digging the whole crop are pretty different. The covers and waiting definitely produced more size to tubers, but it did not change the number of tubers in a cluster. The Burgundy that is in this week’s box was a mystery to watch come out of the ground as I followed behind the digger. The initial clusters remained at only 1 or 2 nice tubers, but below, very deep, about 18 inches was another crop of sweet potatoes that were long, skinny and beautifully twisted. Needless to say, they are less than perfect in shape, but they still taste delicious! So while they may not look like the standard graded sweet potato you may see on a store shelf, we chose to include them in your boxes and hope you’ll embrace the unique individuality expressed in each one!

This year the Covington and Burgundy both came out of the field with a Brix of 8-10 where we usually see 4-6. After the curing process they both measured fairly equal at 11-12. These two varieties do have different natural sugar profiles, so even if they measure similarly with a Brix reading, they can be two very different flavor and tasting experiences. So, you be the judge! Let us know what you think about the flavor of the Burgundy and compare it to the Covington variety we’ll be sending to you in several weeks.

It’s best to store sweet potatoes at room temperature. We do not recommend storing them in the refrigerator as they are susceptible to chill injury. And that’s this year’s sweet potato story. We hope you enjoy this year’s unique crop as you use them in soups, casseroles, tacos, desserts, baked goods and so much more over the next few weeks.

Sweet Potato Muffins with Pecan Streusel

photo from thefirstmess.com

Yield: 10-12 muffins

Streusel Topping:

½ cup pecan halves, chopped

5 Tbsp coconut sugar or brown sugar

½ tsp ground cinnamon

Pinch fine sea salt

2 ½ Tbsp cold butter or vegan substitute

Muffins:

2 cups light spelt flour*

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

¾ tsp fine sea salt

1 ½ cups mashed, cooked sweet potato flesh

½ cup maple syrup

⅓ cup melted coconut oil or butter, at room temperature

2 Tbsp milk or non-dairy alternative

1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Lightly grease 10 cups of a standard size muffin tin and set aside. Alternatively, line the muffin tin with muffin papers.
Make the streusel topping. In a small bowl, mix together the chopped pecans, coconut sugar, salt and cinnamon. Add the butter to the bowl and mix it in with your fingers, or use a pastry cutter. Break up the bits of butter and cut them into the sugar and pecans. Once you have a sandy, crumbly texture, and the streusel sticks together when you pinch it with your fingers, set aside in the refrigerator.
In a large bowl, combine the spelt flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and sea salt. Stir with a spatula to evenly mix.
In an upright blender, combine the mashed and cooked sweet potato, maple syrup, coconut oil, milk and vanilla. Blend on high until totally smooth and creamy. Alternatively, whisk these ingredients by hand in a medium mixing bowl.
Pour the sweet potato mixture into the large bowl with the flour mixture. Use your spatula to get all of the sweet potato mixture you can out of the blender. Gently stir and fold everything together until JUST combined.
Divide the muffin batter evenly among the 10 prepared muffin cups. Remove the pecan streusel from the fridge and divide it evenly amongst the tops of the muffins. Press it in a bit with your fingers.
Bake the sweet potato muffins for 18-20 minutes, or until the tops are domed, slightly golden and a pairing knife or cake tester inserted into the middle of one comes out clean. Let the muffins cool completely before enjoying!

*Note Regarding Spelt flour: If you do not have this type of flour available, you may substitute standard all-purpose flour, whole wheat pastry flower or gluten free flour of your choosing.

Recipe adapted slightly from TheFirstMess.com.

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

October 28, 2021 - This Week's Box Contents, Featuring Sweet Potatoes!

Cooking With This Week's Box

Vegetable Feature: Sweet Potatoes

Sweet Potato Muffins with Pecan Streusel

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