This is also one of the recipes that I took from my mother’s house.  She makes it a bit different to us as we have made some adjustments to suit our own tastes.

In South Africa you can buy a “Potato Bake” mix which adds flavour to the potatoes.  Many times we are able to receive this from friends that visit us but when we run out we have to make a different plan.

This potato dish is one of Abigail’s favourite dishes and she is always so excited when we prepare it for shabbat.

What works best for us is if Jacques cuts the potatoes and onions and I pack the baking dishes.  He cuts the potatoes and onions in thin slices.  Jacques has such wonderful knife skills and has the ability to cut anything that it still looks good.

Pack a layer of potatoes at the bottom of your baking dish.  Sprinkle the spice of your choice on the potatoes, be careful not to use too much, just enough to make sure that your potatoes do not taste bland.

Next pack a layer of onions, it does not need to be a perfect layer, I just make sure that most of the potatoes are covered with a thin layer of the onions.  

If you are using mushrooms then this would be the time to make a thin layer of mushrooms.

After the first layers are packed, repeat the whole process again until you have reached the top of your baking dish.

I recommend that you stop about 1-2 cm before reaching the top of your baking dish otherwise you might find that you do not have enough space to pour over your cream and your shredded cheese

Mix your Potato Bake or Mushroom Soup powder with cream, making sure that the powder is mixed well with the cream.  Unfortunately like so many other occasions I cannot tell you exactly how much of what as I always guess, but for those of you who wish to mix it more accurately you can safely follow the instructions on the Potato Bake packaging or at least double the amount of soup powder that is suggested to making soup in ratio to the fluid.  

Once it is mixed pour it over all the potatoes making sure that you cover them well with the cream mixture.  Cover your baking dish with foil and then place it into a hot oven, 150-180°C, for about an hour to 90 minutes.  The time in the oven also depends on the thickness of your potatoes slices.  This is also why we recommend cutting them into thinner slices, this allows them to need less cooking time.

Once the potatoes are soft, stick a sharp knife into the middle of the dish to test, you can remove the foil.  At this point cover it with a nice amount of shredded cheese and then place it back into the oven.  If you are in a rush you can put your oven on grill which will allow your cheese to brown faster.  Most if the time we have something else in the oven as well and I prefer to give it a slower browning time. I keep the oven on its baking setting and with time the cheese browns.

When serving it is nice to add some green colour on top of the cheese.  We basically use any greens that we have in the fridge, from fresh parsley to spring onion, they all get the job done.

What is great about this recipe is, you bake a few dishes easily put one or two in the freezer and reheat it for another occasion.

This recipe is something I learned from my mother.  She used to make it often when we were growing up especially with a roast.  Today it has also become one of Miriam’s favourite dishes.  So I think it will continue for another generation.  The only difference is our sweet potatoes here in Israel are orange instead of a more yellow coloured one as in South Africa.

My mother used to make it in a pot on the stove and we started out doing it like this but due to the fact that we have to serve it on a large scale we started preparing it in the oven.

Peel the sweet potatoes and cut them into rings.  Make sure that the rings are not too thick but also not too thin, maybe 1.5-2 cm thick.  The idea is that they would be more or less the same size to help with an even cooking time.

In a pot

Place the raw sweet potatoes in a pot on a medium to high heat. Be careful not to over crowd the pot.  Cut your butter into smaller pieces and distribute it amongst the sweet potato pieces.  Grind enough salt over the sweet potatoes.  Pour your syrup or honey over all the pieces.  

Stir through and cover the pot with a lid.  

While the sweet potatoes are still hard you can stir it frequently to make sure all the pieces are covered with butter and syrup.  

Once they soften you have to be careful not to stir them too much to prevent it from becoming mash.  At this point we remove the lid of the pot to allow the syrup to caramelise.

In the oven

Heat your oven to 150 degrees Celsius.  Place the raw sweet potatoes in a baking dish, be careful not to over crowd the baking dish.  Cut your butter into smaller pieces and distribute it amongst the sweet potato pieces.  Grind enough salt over the sweet potatoes.  Pour your syrup or honey over all the pieces.

Once the butter and syrup starts to melt remove it from the oven and stir it to ensure that all of the sweet potatoes are coved with the butter and syrup and place it back into the oven.

You can repeat this a few times during the cooking process to make sure that the sweet potatoes remain covered with the butter and sugar.  Once they are soft and the syrup should have caramelised and it is ready to serve.

If you see that the syrup is runny, you can pour the syrup into a pot and reduce it on the stove and then pour it over the sweet potatoes again. This usually happens if they were overcrowded and the steam created couldn’t escape.

We found this recipe online a few years ago, unfortunately the link isn’t available anymore but this is more or less the recipe.

It is a Beit Chai favourite.  Although this is a side dish people often tell us that it could be a dessert.  We have yet to have a guest that did not fall in love with this dish.  

As per the name we have used both sweet potato or butternut to make this dish.  Unlike the South African sweet potato in Israel our sweet potatoes are orange.  We have never tried it with South African sweet potatoes. 

When preparing the butternut we find that it is better to wrap them in foil and roast it in the oven rather than to boil it in water. If you follow our foil method you need to allow at least an hour maybe more depending on the size for the butternut to become soft enough.  Once they are soft allow them to cool.  Remove the foil and then as easy as one, two, three you can remove the skin and seeds from the flesh of the butternut.  If you boil or steam it, you have to make sure that you drain all the water from the butternut before adding it to you batter.  

If you choose to use sweet potato, then boil or steam it. We cut it into pieces and put it in a strainer over a pot of boiling water.  This way we eliminate the danger of the sweet potato absorbing a whole lot of water.

Pre heat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Cream the sugar and butter together until it is are nice and fluffy.

Add the eggs and continue to beat together. 

At this point I exchange my whipping head to a batter head.

Add the sifted flour and salt to the mixture and mix it together making sure the flour doesn’t cause any lumps to form in your batter.

Add the vanilla essence and pumpkin to the mixture and mix it one last time.

Oil your baking dish and pour your batter into the baking dish.

Bake in the oven for at least 45 minutes.

Due to the fact that we very seldom only make the batter once we find that we have to keep it in the over for a bit longer than 45 minutes, so my advice is that you will test your pie before removing it from the oven to make sure it is fully cooked. Once the pie has finished baking you will be adding a sauce over the pie, so over baking it doesn’t cause too much of a problem. The sauce is poured over while the pie is still hot, making sure that every part of the pie absorbs the sauce.

While the pies are in the oven we melt all the ingredients for the sauce in a pot on the stove and allow it to simmer and reduce a bit.  It is almost the same method as what you would follow when making a Malva Pudding (we will add a recipe soon).  The only difference is that we do not reduce the sauce as much as when we make a Malva pudding.  The reason for this is because the dough is a much denser dough and we find that if the sauce is too thick the pie doesn’t absorb the sauce enough.  

Here we have discovered some tricks to help with the process.

We make sure that the pie is loosened from the edges of your backing dish before the sauce is poured over.

Jacques invented a nice tool for us to poke some holes into the pie.  He took a wine cork and inserted 4 toothpicks into the side of it.  Holding onto the cork, he pokes the toothpicks into the pie until there are enough holes to allow for maximum absorption.  A fork can also be used but we found the it sometimes makes ugly holes.

This pie is better served with a spoon to dish up with than trying to cut it into pieces.

This pie also does well in the freezer if you have left overs or extra pies that you want to use at a later date.