About two months ago my family lost our home in the Bastrop fires. While I can’t even begin to express the heartbreak and devastation such an event brings, I can say food basics became something I craved during this time. With the adrenalin rushing through my body during the first 72 hours, my body was constantly hungry. It’s interesting how your body handles stressed induced situations. My body was telling me to feed it, and not with just any food. I needed hearty soul warming comfort food. I sought out meatloaf and mashed potatoes, creamy tomato soup, and most surprisingly mugs of warm steamed milk- something I’ve always despised until this moment. With every bite of succulent gravy covered piece of meat, I was reassured that everything was going to be ok, and slowly it has.
One of my comfort food meals that I indulged in during the past two months was spicy meatballs with whipped sweet potatoes. I discovered this meatball recipe while I was in college and I must say it is always a crowd pleaser. Make them bite size for cocktail parties of larger for full entrée bliss. The original recipe calls for equal parts ground pork and ground beef, but I’m partial to using ground turkey in place of the ground beef. I promise it’s equally delicious! What makes this dish are the chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. Chipotle peppers are simply smoked or dried jalapeño peppers and they take these meatballs to the next level adding a smoky woodsy component and slow subtle burn.
Some might say meatballs and sweet potatoes are a strange combination, and honestly I was a bit worried myself, but I’m always looking for new and interesting dishes and therefore am always experimenting with ingredients. Carrying on with the spicy theme, I added red pepper flakes and about a tablespoon of the adobo sauce to the sweet potatoes. However, what I think made these whipped sweet potatoes just decadent was the fact that I used real heavy cream. Normally, when making mashed potatoes I try to err on the healthy side and use 2% milk, saving the heavy cream for special occasions only, but in the spirit of indulgence, I went full throttle and used heavy cream, making these exceptionally rich and creamy whipped potatoes.
While it’s easy to dwell on all the things lost, like I’ve always said, what’s most important are the memories one creates and the people with whom you share those memories with. My family is lucky in the fact that we still have all of us at our table, where we can continue to dine together and create new memories.
