Sweet Potato, Miso, Coconut, Ginger

…w. citric coconut yoghurt, and also my new book

Hello, sweet friends. 

Please: split-open, oven-charred sticky sweet potatoes, bursting at the seam, blackened at the edges with crispy skin and fluffy autumn-coloured neon-orange flesh forked over and beaten-in with rich miso-coconut butter,  flecked with sticky ginger. And then a huge dollop of coconut yoghurt, spiked with garlic and salt and– oh yes– citric acid. Big fistful of crispy onions. Zero hassle. Gorgeous. With a salad, you’re sorted. With a salad and, for example, thin slices of rare steak, you might as well give up and fly to heaven immediately.

So crispy onions and citric acid you can buy at most corner shops near us, but also online.

Both are so good I don’t know why we don’t all use them every day (maybe you do). Citric acid, particularly, was something I used a LOT when I was first cooking; and then ran out of, and just never bought again for absolutely no good reason. But then I was in the corner shop, and there it was, and my God what a miracle substance it is. It just adds a sharp tang to literally anything, while also tasting if you dip a finger in to the bag like forbidden sherbet. It’s the stuff they put on Tangfastics, something I have just now realised as I’m typing is supposed to be a pun on…fantastic. Why am I 31 and just now realising this? Why am I so slow? Anyway, it is: it’s tangfastic. And very useful. 

OK, so, you know how dairy-free yoghurts have that weird insubstantial sweetness to them? Like there’s a faintly no-good edge? I don’t know how to describe it except that I am more allergic to yoghurt than any other dairy product, go figure, and yoghurt is also a top-ten all-time favourite food for me; and I resent every dairy free yoghurt so much. 

This is the only good dairy free yoghurt and absolutely nowhere near me sells it, which means (much like this kimchi I love so much) I have to wait for our monthly Waitrose jaunt. Do not yell at me because that kimchi is inauthentic. I find it to be delicious for my purposes, i.e. eating kimchi on toast because it seems to make me less depressed. (When I wrote about this before someone told me there is actually some nascent evidence to back up the idea that fermented foods make a person less depressed, but like… does that seem legit to you? It doesn’t seem that legit to me, but it does indubitably work on me. Fermented foods are my life. Possibly this is just because I love them, so they make me happy? 

This is, of course, one reason I am so annoyed about my inability to digest yoghurt. The Alpro stuff they sell simply will not cut it for me in any capacity, and I can just about tolerate the CoYo coconut stuff so long as I have whisked a bunch of spices into it. Or so I thought! It turns out that if I whisk a big pinch of citric acid and a pinch of salt into the CoYo coconut yoghurt, it is outrageously tangy and delicious; and if I then let it sit a little while in a cloth, it drips out the drippy water, and thickens up nicely to become something I actively seek to eat. I know! For this dinner I added garlic too, for vibes. 

You will love this dinner and I know you will because I had it last night and I would have it tonight except: we are launching our new book tonight! Yes! Our new book is out in the world! The event launching it is both sold out, and by the time you read this letter, in the past– but what I can say is that lovely Tom at lovely Backstory will be able to sell you a signed copy if you ask him because he has my email address. We are going to exclusively do signed, dedicated copies at our events— and through Tom at Backstory! He can post them to you too, so if you’d like a signed copy to someone specific (maybe you!) but can’t make it to an event, get in touch with Tom and we will see what we can do. I am doing this because Backstory is one of the very few independent bookshops I don’t feel horribly intimidated by (BookBar in East London is another one) and actually feel nice and cosy in, and never feel judged for what I’m buying or not buying. Also, because how nice!

Actually, if you buy a copy, and are a Substack subscriber and would like it signed– maybe also your old books you already own?— I will try and figure out if there’s a way to make this happen. Please hold. I wonder whether we can do some kind of pre-Christmas Substack signing bonanza in a nice bookshop somewhere? Potentially Backstory? There is a nice bar that sells good coffee there, and I could set up there with a Sharpie and my laptop, and you could come find me and I would sign your Christmas presents and existing treats? This is a good thought that is occurring to me as I type this. 

Anyway, the new book. So when I am not writing, I am editing; and what I love to edit is anthologies. Actually I hate to edit anthologies, but somehow I keep on doing it, and aren’t they beautiful? That’s three links for my three anthologies– two of poetry, and one of food writing (which includes a surprising amount of poetry.  And, to be fair, the poetry anthologies both contain a surprising amount of food writing. I am always me, whatever else I would rather be.)

I have edited this one with my dear friend Kate, who spends half the time living in our guest room because we truly cannot bear her ever to go back to her own (exquisite, delicious, Cotswolds) house. The two of us have been talking about food and writing and hunger every day for many years, and this is the book we have made out of all that thinking and chatting. Anyway, to celebrate we are going to eat some bagels on the sofa; and then do the pub quiz; and then we are going to go on a little tour round the UK to meet some nice people (possibly some of you?). We are going to Scotland! We are going to Wales! We are not going to Ireland but we would go if someone asked us! We are going to Durham and Corbridge and London and Lewes! We hope to get to Manchester and Leeds and Bath and Bristol (dates TBD)! We are going to think out loud and chat out loud and teach (!) people how to write too. The Welsh residential course is I think fully booked now, but I hope there will be other masterclasses because it has been so, so nice to work on. I am excited. 

I am excited, but also a little stressed about being away from home for so long. It’s not that long? It’s two weeks, plus bits, with the odd night at home in the middle. I am such a homebody it’s ridiculous. I love to travel, in theory, and I love to leave London, in practice, but I hate to leave my lovely cat and lovely boyfriend and lovely blankets and lovely candles and all my own precious bits. I am a collector of lovely bits. I am consoling myself with the idea that I will be able to collect lots of lovely bits to bring home. Anyway, I have been soaking up all our hometime to carry with me; and what that has meant is I have not beaten myself up about not making the most of London (a perennial problem); we have played a lot of Dishonored 2 (oh it’s so good); and we have had some spectacularly delicious dinners.  

Including this one, which I will trade you for (for example) you buying my new book and/or telling a friend to buy it for you for Christmas. 

Anyway, so Rich actually did this dinner, and he says he used this recipe here as inspiration. Thank you, Sylvia Fontaine, you are an artist.

We split two big sweet potatoes down the middle, brushed them with a little sesame oil, and roasted them flesh side down, skin side up, at 200 C for 45 minutes. You will know when they are done because a fork will slide easily through the skin into the flesh. I was baking a banana bread at the time (recipe in Miracles) and roasting a huge pan of last week’s cauliflower for lunches; so I kept interfering with the oven temperature— it worked fine, and I know it will work fine for you. (This, btw, is the thing we are doing a lot of at the moment: oven on, multiple dinners. I recommend it! I grew up with an AGA with only a Hot Oven or a Warm Oven, so I truly believe most things can be cooked on Hot or Warm. You have something that needs a Hot Oven? Find two other things that also need a Hot Oven that you can eat across the week. This is double good because it obviously saves money and electric and the planet, but also means you have a fridge full of bonus cauliflower.)

Then he warmed 2 tbsp of coconut oil in a little pan, and cooked half a little white onion (shallot would be better but ££), and 2 tsp of grated ginger in the coconut oil until it started to catch on the bottom and sort of…privately deep fry itself? Resist the temptation to stir too much. Let it get really properly golden and slightly crispy. (If it burns a bit, it’s not a problem at all. It will add depth! But still, maybe try not to.) It will smell amazing amazing amazing because of the coconut. This takes between 5 and 10 minutes, depending on how hot your hob goes.

(In secondary testing, I did this on a medium flame on my medium hob for 7 minutes, and it was slightly burned-er than expected because I turned my back and got distracted. It was beyond delicious! Still, officially, let’s call it 6 minutes for golden crispy joy.)

Then he added 2 tbsp of white miso, and just stirred it all in until it incorporated together. It was a little grainy and sticky but that’s the vibe!

Then I made the yoghurt: 3 tbsp of coconut yoghurt, .5 tsp citric acid, .5 tsp fine sea salt, 2 grated (small) garlic cloves. Don’t add it all at once. Add a shimmy of acid, a shimmy of salt, a little grate of garlic, and taste. I don’t bother straining it for this as it’s nice and chunky with the salt and garlic anyway.

Chop a little handful of chives or an ancient fridge-bound spring onion (on the diagonal). Maybe you could fry little bits of chorizo if you wanted a meat component, or you could fry butterbeans in the miso pan (!), having removed the miso dressing to another pan. Rich griddled a steak here, which he had marinated in soy, but I think if I had been on my own I could have just had the sweet potato. We also boiled some broccoli (! it’s coming back, I think? Boiled veg?), steamed it dry in the empty pan; and poured over a lime juice/sesame seeds/sesame oil/thinly sliced red chilli vibe. I really recommend the broccoli bit for a side to this.

And then the sweet potatoes were done! We flipped them over and stuck them back in the oven for 10 minutes to char the top, but it’s not necessary. Then we forked up the flesh, divided the miso coconut butter between them, and forked that through too. Big dollop of yoghurt; scatter of spring onions; scatter of sesame seeds; scatter of crispy onions if you have it.

Unreal. So easy. So good.

Anyway, I hope this helps your thoughts on dinner tonight. It looks so nice on the plate too, all autumnal and cute. (Update: I just made it again now at 9am, to take the photos, and I am so likely just to crack and eat it for breakfast.) Publication day special! Tell me if you make it! I love to hear from you! Comments are open for paid subscribers, emails are open for everybody on this one.

As usual, thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has paid subscribed to this newsletter. I love you all. You make my life work the only way I know how to stay alive. When you are a person with Mental Health (although I’ve given up naming my diagnoses and mostly now just think of it as: wired up all weird) you have to find a way for life to make sense or you will just collapse into a heap and never function again. This is the best way I have ever known how to function: writing, making, thinking, talking.

There are a couple of big pieces in the works, which I’m hoping to work on over the next couple of weeks while I’m away from my own kitchen. One is about New York in the eighties, motherhood and money; one is about candles and nail polish and darkness. I’m very excited about both of these essays and I cannot believe I don’t have to try and sell them and edit them and tweak them for an audience that doesn’t know me and doesn’t get it. The first one, especially, I know could belong nowhere but here. Please consider subscribing, if you don’t already! It’s really fun and the big comments chats are so nice.

OK, I just saw the time, I am half an hour late. LOVE YOU, BYE. xxx