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SHIRLEY O. CORRIHER

Shirley Corriher was The Best Cooking Teacher of the Year In Bon Appétit's "Best of the Best" Annual Food and Entertaining Awards, 2001. In March, 2004, Shirley received the prestigious Research Chefs’ Holleman Award for outstanding achievement in technical communication. She is also in Who's Who of American Women, 2002 through 2005 and Who’s Who.

Shirley has long been a leading food writer and syndicated columnist. Her book, CookWise was the James Beard Awards winner of Best Reference and Technique Book of 1997. and has sold over 180,000 copies. Shirley was a contributing editor and wrote a regular column for Fine Cooking for 10 years, 1994 thru 2004, and she continues to write a regular syndicated column in The Los Angeles Time Syndicate's Great Chefs Series (1998-present), now owned by the Chicago Tribune.

Shirley can’t walk through an airport without being recognized by a number of people: "Aren't you the cook on TV?" She has appeared on: Good Eats, Smart Solutions, Sara Moulton Cooking Live, Calling All Cooks, Homecooking, Nathalie Dupree, and Home Plate, to name a few, and once on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live with Snoop Dogg as her fry chef!

Articles about Shirley: Self magazine,14 Food Influentials Whose Vision, Research, and Creativity Drive What, Why, and How We Eat (Feb 1999); Gourmet (Gourmet At Large, Aug 1997); Art Culinaire (Industry Spotlight, Fall 1999); US News & World Report (News You Can Use, Mar 1998); Woman's Day (Great American Cooks, Feb 22, 1994); Bon Appétit (Cooking Class, March, 1989); Southern Living (Georgia Living, People and Places, Aug 2001), New York Times (Science Section, Dec 28, 2004)

Shirley has been: a research biochemist, a working chef who fed 140 teen-age boys three meals/day for 10 years, and a consultant across the whole spectrum of the food industry from large companies on. She teaches everyone from beginning cooks to top professionals and keeps audiences spellbound with her explanations of how food and recipes work.

SHIRLEY CORRIHER’S OLD FASHIONED GRATED SWEET POTATO PUDDING

This is very different from modern sweet potato casseroles. It is my grandmother's recipe and was a traditional way of preparing sweet potatoes from her mother's time. One of my students prepares this every Christmas and took a dish to a near-by nursing home. She said that tears rolled down the cheeks of one of the patients as she ate these sweet potatoes. The elderly lady said, "I haven't had sweet potatoes like this since I was a girl." The sweet potatoes are grated raw and baked as a custard with ginger as the predominant flavoring.

Cook's Tip

Deep orange carotenoid-containing fruits and vegetables can be cooked for longer times without loss of color or nutrients than can green vegetables.

Makes 8 servings

1 pound sweet potatoes, 2 large or
3 small, peeled and cut into chunks
1/2 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
1/2 cup (packed) light brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground ginger
3 tablespoons cornmeal
1 egg
2 egg yolks
1 1/2 cups heavy or whipping cream
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F (163°C). Spray a 9 x 6 x 3-inch casserole with nonstick cooking spray.

2. Finely chop the sweet potatoes to the texture of large rice in several batches in a food processor with the steel knife using on/off pulses. Mix together the sweet potatoes, brown sugars, salt, ginger, and cornmeal in a large mixing bowl. Stir the egg, egg yolks, cream, and vanilla into the sweet potato mixture.

3. Pour into the casserole and bake for 15 minutes. Stir from the outside to the middle. Continue baking and stir again after 10 minutes. Cook until lightly browned and just set, about 40 minutes in all. Can be served hot or at room temperature.

Note: The typical problems of a baked casserole are that the edges tend to overcook and get dry before the center is done. My grandmother minimized the problem by stirring twice during cooking before the custard set firmly. Another solution is to use Magi-Cake Strips, which are strips soaked in water that evaporates during cooking to cool the sides of the pan.