The classic American-style sweet potato casserole is a Thanksgiving staple. It's also sweet enough to be dessert. With added sugar and a finishing layer of broiled marshmallows, it can be a cloying dish that obscures the natural flavor of sweet potatoes.
In this recipe from our cookbook “ Milk Street 365: The All-Purpose Cookbook for Every Day of the Year,” we use two Middle Eastern pantry staples to boost the flavor of sweet potatoes. First, we coat the potato wedges with nutty tahini, cornstarch and za’atar, a seed and spice blend known for its balance of tangy, savory, earthy and herbal notes.
The cornstarch helps bind the fatty tahini and gives the sweet potatoes a crisp exterior. We roast the wedges until golden brown and meltingly tender. For the finishing sauce, more tahini and za’atar are stirred into creamy yogurt, with lime juice for a refreshing tang. For garnishes, you have many options, including bright ground sumac, spicy-sweet Aleppo pepper, chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley or a combination of all three.
Start to finish: 50 minutes (20 minutes active)
Servings: 4
⅓ cup plus 3 tablespoons tahini, divided
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon za’atar, divided
Kosher salt and ground black pepper
2 pounds orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1- to 1½-inch wedges
¾ cup plain whole-milk yogurt
1 teaspoon grated lime zest OR lemon zest, plus 2 tablespoons lime juice OR lemon juice
Heat the oven to 450°F with a rack in the lower-middle position. Line a rimmed baking sheet with kitchen parchment. In a small bowl, whisk together the ⅓ cup tahini and oil; set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together the cornstarch, 1 tablespoon za’atar, 1 teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon pepper. Add the sweet potatoes and toss to coat. Pour in the tahini mixture and rub the mixture into the potatoes; reserve the small bowl. Distribute in an even layer on the prepared baking sheet.
Roast until the potatoes are lightly browned on the bottom, about 15 minutes, rotating the baking sheet about halfway through. Remove from the oven and, using a thin metal spatula, flip each wedge. Roast until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the potatoes meets no resistance, about another 15 minutes, once again flipping the wedges and rotating the sheet halfway through.
Meanwhile, in the reserved bowl, whisk together the yogurt, lime zest and juice, the remaining 3 tablespoons tahini, the remaining 1 teaspoon za’atar and ¼ teaspoon each salt and pepper. Transfer the potatoes to a platter. Serve with the yogurt-lime sauce.
Optional garnish: Ground sumac OR Aleppo pepper OR chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley OR a combination
EDITOR’S NOTE: For more recipes, go to Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street at 177milkstreet.com/ap
This image released by Milk Street shows a recipe for tahini-roasted sweet potatoes with za’atar (Milk Street via AP)
This image released by Milk Street shows a recipe for tahini-roasted sweet potatoes with za’atar (Milk Street via AP)
Russia's military captured a British national fighting with Ukrainian troops who have occupied part of Russia's Kursk region, according to reports Monday, as Moscow began daylight drone attacks on civilian areas of Ukraine and its ground forces accelerated gains along parts of the front line.
The Briton was identified by state news agency Tass and other media as James Scott Rhys Anderson. Tass quoted him as saying that he had served as a signalman in the British army for four years and then joined the International Legion of Ukraine, formed early on in Russia's nearly 3-year-old war against its neighbor.
On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces are straining to hold at bay a push by Russia's bigger army at places in the eastern Donetsk region. Russian forces recently have gained ground at “a significantly quicker rate” than they did in the whole of last year, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank.
The Russians have detected and are exploiting weaknesses in the Ukrainian defenses, it said in an analysis late Sunday.
The war surpassed 1,000 days last week, and the milestone coincided with a significant escalation in hostilities.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s air force said Russia is adapting its drone tactics, as it fired 145 Shahed drones at Ukraine.
Russia has started launching drones during the day, whereas in the past most drone attacks occurred during the night, the air force said.
Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the National Security Council’s Counter-disinformation Center, said earlier this month that the Russians were looking to conserve their stocks of more destructive but more expensive missiles and also terrorize civilians.
The air force said it stopped almost all the drones before they struck.
But a morning missile attack on downtown Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city in the northeast, injured at least 23 people, according to Mayor Ihor Terekhov. He said the attack on a densely populated residential area was carried out by a modified surface-to-air S-400 missile.
The captured Briton reportedly served as an instructor for Ukrainian troops and was deployed to the Kursk region against his will. Tass published a video of the man saying in English that he doesn’t want to be “here.”
The report couldn’t be independently verified, but if confirmed it could be one of the first publicly known case of a Western national captured on Russian soil while fighting for Ukraine.
The U.K. Embassy in Moscow said officials were "supporting the family of a British man following reports of his detention” but provided no further details.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The soldier’s father, Scott Anderson, told Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper that his son’s Ukrainian commander had informed him that the young man had been captured.
Scott Anderson said his son had served in the British military for four years, then briefly worked as a police custody officer before going to Ukraine to fight. He said he tried to convince his son not to join the Ukrainian military, and now he fears for his safety.
“I’m hoping he’ll be used as a bargaining chip, but my son told me they torture their prisoners and I’m so frightened he’ll be tortured," he told the newspaper.
The International Legion for Defense of Ukraine was created at the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The Legion is a unit of Ukraine’s Ground Forces that consists mostly of foreign volunteers. Apart from the Legion, Ukraine recruits foreigners to other units of its army, filling squads, companies, or even battalions.
Early on in the war, Ukraine’s authorities said over 20,000 people from 52 countries came to Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russia's aggression. Ever since, the numbers of foreign fighters in the ranks of the Ukrainian military have been classified.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
In this photo taken from a video released by Russian Defense Ministry press service on Monday, Nov. 25, 2024, Russian servicemen operate a Russian Uragan self-propelled multiple rocket launcher in an undisclosed location. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
