Camotes (Baked Sweet Potatoes)

Central Mexican highlands, with particularly deep roots in Puebla and Tlaxcala, where Ipomoea batatas cultivation predates the colonial period and street vendors — camoteros — have worked the same routes for generations. The push-cart tradition radiating out of Puebla city is the clearest surviving expression of the form.

A traditional Mexican preparation of sweet potatoes rooted in patience rather than technique. Diana Kennedy's method draws on rural practice: freshly dug camotes are sun-dried for five days before baking, a step that concentrates their sugars and transforms the flesh into something almost confectionery. The overnight rest in a covered earthenware casserole — while the potatoes are still hot — allows internal steam and syrup to redistribute, producing a result that is soft, sticky, and intensely sweet. You eat the skin. There is nothing to peel away.

The flesh is dense and almost molasses-dark in sweetness, carrying a faint earthiness that keeps the sugar honest rather than cloying. The skin, lacquered by its own released syrups, delivers a papery chew with a slightly bitter edge that punctuates every soft mouthful. The smell as the casserole is lifted — caramel, wet clay, a whisper of vanilla from the potato's own esters — is as much the dish as the eating.