Kissed by the Carolinas

By Becky Billingsley

Originally published in Coastal CarolinaDining magazine, Fall 2004

Whether they’re in a soufflé, pudding, pie, biscuits or even tiramisu, when you’re talking sweet potatoes in the Carolinas, the best experts can be found in Tabor City, N.C.The sandy soil around the town, population 2,500, is just right for producing spuds worth celebrating.

Avie Lee Huggins has about 30 blue-ribbon reasons to celebrate tubers. Her cooking is legendary across the geography between Loris and TaborCity, but her sweet potato dishes consistently win prizes at the culinary competition at the annual Tabor City Yam Festival.

“You can take any kind of a recipe and add sweet potatoes,” the 81-year-old said. “Like I took my Butterscotch Brownie recipe and added a cup a sweet potatoes.”

While technically yams are not sweet potatoes, time has tempered the terms and made them interchangeable around TaborCity. The festival started back in 1947, when more sweet potatoes were sold there than anywhere in the world – about a million bushels.

Always held the fourth weekend in October, this year marks the 34^th festival (there was a hiatus from 1961-1986). Anna C. Long, who is now 71, remembers riding on a railroad car in the 1950 Tabor City Yam Festival Parade. She never entered the culinary competition, but she has cooked many a sweet potato in her time.

Long has old cookbooks compiled from the competition recipes of 1950 and 1953, and says she likes “old timey” recipes, such as sweet potato pudding, plain without raisins or cinnamon.

Jim Smith, a chef who owns The Four Sisters Restaurant just outside TaborCity, has won his share of sweet potato prizes at the festival. Diners at Four Sisters look forward to his Sweet Potato Soufflé, Sweet Potato Rolls and Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes.

“I think they react well to both salt and sugar,” he said. “If you make it a vegetable type of dish, you think salt and pepper. If you make it a sweet, you go with cinnamon and sugar. Sweet potatoes just react well to everything.”

Sweet potatoes also react well in your body: They are extremely rich in essential nutrition.

“They’ve got about all the nutrients for your body,” Long said. “You could take pecans and potatoes and live off them.”

Avie Lee Huggins agrees.

“I could eat sweet potatoes all day long,” she says. “Can’t you?”