Spicy Ginger Holiday Sweet Potatoes by Sarah Henning. by Richard Gwin

Note: This recipe is part of a monthly Go! column called Delicious/Nutritious. See the full post on Lawrence.com.

I truly look forward to sweet potato season all year. In fact, I could probably eat them every meal of every day until my skin turned so orange you’d think I was an Oompa Loompa.

A fictional character I’m not, but I’d like to think I make some tasty taters.

Not that sweet potatoes need much help. They’re called “sweet” for a reason, of course.

When Columbus brought the tubers to Europe from the New World, he just called them potatoes (well, “batatas”), but later, when what we consider plain old potatoes were discovered, they started calling the orange, New World variety “sweet potatoes” (or “boniatos,” if you’re a Spaniard). It seems kind of backwards — you know, the sweet ones being renamed and all — but that’s how things went down, according to Aliza Green’s excellent “Field Guide to Produce.”

All told, I don’t think sweet potatoes need much help being sweet. And believe me, I’m a sugar seeker. I much prefer sweet to savory in pretty much any instance under the sun. But, when it comes to my sweet potatoes, I don’t like to suffocate their delicate flavor with an avalanche of marshmallows, layer of pineapple rings or mound of brown sugar. Rather, I like to bring out their flavor with spice.

And, for the holidays, there’s nothing better or more elegant to achieve that goal than ginger.

Warming and full of flavor, ginger is extremely comforting on days when the temperatures tank and the heater just doesn’t seem up to snuff. And beyond taste, ginger has been heralded for its healing properties. The root contains gingerols, which are so powerful they’ve been studied for their effects on patients suffering from various ailments, including muscle pain, osteoarthritis and even colorectal cancer.

Though the jury’s still out just how great of a natural healer ginger is, there’s no clinical studies needed to prove it’s one of this country’s most festive winter flavors — fitting snugly in the holiday culinary canon next to sugar plums, roasted chestnuts and items made with “nog.”

Therefore, ginger’s festive and healthful properties added to the great nutritious aspects of sweet potatoes (one 5-inch sweet potato has 369 percent of your daily Vitamin A) and enhanced by a bit of fat (to help you absorb all that Vitamin A) can be quite the winning combination for both flavor and health.

To up the ante, I also threw in a bit of extra seasoning and a minimal amount of additional sugar to satisfy the wide variety of taste buds bound to round out a holiday table. Because, you know, I wouldn’t mind if several other people had a boniato-induced, orange-ish cast, too.

Spicy Ginger Holiday Sweet Potatoes

2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled, and cut into 1/2-inch chunks

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon maple syrup

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 teaspoon powdered ginger

2 tablespoons brown sugar

Set oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 3-quart glass Pyrex pan with olive oil cooking spray. Put sweet potatoes into a large bowl.

Whisk together all other ingredients except for the brown sugar in a small dish. Pour the mixture over the sweet potatoes and stir with a wooden spoon to evenly coat the potatoes.

Pour the coated potatoes into the glass dish and use a spoon to spread into an even layer. It’s OK if the pieces touch.

Cook 25 minutes. Stir with your wooden spoon. Put in for another 25-30 minutes.

During the last 5 minutes (or thereabouts), pull out of the oven, sprinkle on the brown sugar and then put back into the oven.

Serves 4-6.