Sweet Potato Braised in Ginger Syrup

My husband's family lives in the North of Taiwan. Every special holiday, we travel to visit his Grandparents. Each time Grand Mom makes something to feed us and send us home with lots of goodies. The sweet potato dish is in every Taiwanese childhood memory.  It's also Grand Mom's favorite dish, too.

Preparation time: 5 minutes.

Cooking time:  1 hour. 

Serve:  6 people.
Ingredients:

1.  3 large Japanese sweet potatoes.  Skin peeled, cut it all finger size, so it will cook evenly. ( You can find this in Whole Food or any Asian supermarket,  it has more starch than an American sweet potato, so it will hold its form better during the long time cooking.)

2.  Sweet peanut powder.

a.    1/2 cup unsalted roast peanut.

b.    2 tablespoon powder sugar.

Grind peanut and powder sugar, in the food process or crush and mix wit roller in a zip bag. ( Do not grind it too long, it will turn to peanut butter!)

3. Red cayenne pepper.

Flavor:

1.  3 cups light brown sugar.

2.  1/4 cup honey.

3.  5 thin slices of ginger.

4.  1/2 teaspoon salt.

5. water

Use a wider, stainless saute pan, place in salt, ginger, sweet potato, add water to soak the sweet potato, but not completely cover it, cover with lid, turn the heat high to bring to a boil, then turn down the heat right away, simmer about 15 minutes. 

(Sweet potato should be soft enough that a chopstick can go through.  Now, Sprinkle in brown sugar and drizzle honey. (Do not stir the sweet potato during the cooking process, but you can shift the pan to give even heat. Once you add in the sugar, sweet potato are not going to soften further.) Bring it to a boil again then turn the heat low, keep uncovered, braise in syrup about 1 hour or a 10 minutes more. Ginger syrupy flavor will all get into the sweet potato. You can serve it hot or cold.  To serve, jazz up with the sweet ground peanut powder, and a touch of red cayenne pepper, or keep it original just like Grand Mom.