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Corn Boats
Boil nicely shaped sweet potatoes until almost done. Cool, skin, halve them lengthwise and scoop out the inside of each. Rub inside and out with soft butter, dust with salt and pepper.
Fill with corn pulp, well seasoned, cover with a little cream sauce, then with buttered crumbs and bake in a moderate oven.
A stuffed sweet potato shell, filled with grated corn rather than the potato flesh itself. The original assumes you know what "corn pulp" is and gives no oven time at all.
- Corn pulpScore down each row of kernels on a raw ear and scrape the cob with the back of a knife; what comes off is the milky pulp, not whole kernels. Two or three ears fill four halves. Drained canned or thawed frozen corn, pulsed briefly, is a fair substitute but wetter, so cook it down a minute first.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. The filling is already edible and the potato nearly cooked, so you are only setting the corn and browning the crumbs -- about 20 to 25 minutes.
- Boil "almost done"This is the hinge. A fully cooked sweet potato collapses when you scoop it, and the shells will not hold sauce. Stop when a skewer meets resistance in the centre, which for a whole medium potato is likely to be somewhere around 20-30 minutes depending on size, then cool until you can handle it.
- Leave a wallScoop to about a quarter inch. The scooped flesh is not used here; mash it with butter and keep it for another meal rather than discarding it.
- Cream sauceA thin white sauce -- 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon flour, 1 cup milk, seasoned. Two or three tablespoons per half is enough; more and the crumb topping goes to paste.
- Buttered crumbsDry breadcrumbs tossed with melted butter, about 1 tablespoon butter to 1/2 cup crumbs. Panko browns faster and will need watching.
- YieldFour halves from two potatoes serves two as a light main or four alongside meat.
Vegetables hollowed and refilled under buttered crumbs were a standard trick of American domestic cookery: the shell supplies the container, the crumbs supply the browned top, and nothing is thrown out. The "boat" name is generally traced to the shape of a halved and scooped potato. Sweet potatoes and green corn were both cheap and, in the South especially, may well have been ready at the same time, which would be the practical logic behind pairing them.