Power-ful good doughnuts are made from sweet potatoes
For anyone traumatized by Thanksgiving sweet potatoes, put off by all that gooey sweetness under a layer of browned marshmallows, they have never met executive chef Jeff Mauro and his Powerhouse Restaurant's signature sweet potato doughnuts.
During a recent visit to Powerhouse, 215 N. Clinton, a group of lunching ladies said they didn't need to see the dessert menu. They'd be sharing the doughnuts.
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A few minutes later out came the quartet of minidoughnuts: two rolled in confectioners' sugar, another two in cinnamon, served atop an egg yolk mousse known as Cinnamon Sabayon and accompanied by a dice of slightly tart green apple and pepitos (pumpkin seeds).
Mauro explains that sweet potato puree serves as the doughnut base, providing a nice moistness while the flour and other ingredients cut some of the tuber's intensity. They're fried in regular vegetable oil, Mauro says.
On that first bite, you might expect some hints of nutmeg, which go so nicely with sweet potatoes -- again, the Thanksgiving thing -- but, refreshingly, they never come. Instead the cinnamon in the mix lends a light sweetness to this unexpected treat, priced at $9.
Now all of this sounds like a nice fall treat, and Mauro is definitely a chef who likes to cook with seasonal ingredients. But the doughnuts have been on the menu since the restaurant opened last year in the renovated Chicago & North Western Ry. power plant and they've been in great demand ever since.
For now, Mauro is getting his potatoes, apples and all manner of in-season fruits and vegetables at Green City Market.
He has no idea how many sweet potatoes the restaurant might go through each week, but he knows the dessert is so good it can get servers out of the toughest of situations.
"Say we take a little too long to get the entree out" to some diners, "we just give them some doughnuts and that seems to make it OK," Mauro says with a laugh.
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