One of the most popular and easiest ways of cooking chicken in our family goes by various names.
The dish was originally known as Chicken Tangiers, when I cooked it first in Snaffles in Dublin in the early seventies.
The version which I still cook today I more often call Chicken Honey and Ginger.
Then it was a roast chicken with honey, ground ginger and orange juice poured over and then carved to order.
Now it is a jointed chicken with grated orange zest and juice, grated fresh stem ginger and honey rubbed into the joints before roasting.
This gives a crisp and aromatic sweet and sharp chicken which is not only a staple in our house but also in the houses of many of our friends and relations.
One problem with it is that it produces copious amounts of thin but delicious sauce, delicious when you are serving it with rice but a bit redundant otherwise.
I have tried thickening these juices up in various ways, using beurre manié and even arrowroot but it seems more trouble than it is worth. Boiled strongly and thickened in the traditional French way by beating in cold butter it is absolutely delicious but incredibly high in cholesterol.

Last Saturday in Waterford market I bought some Sweet Potatoes, not a tremendously exciting veg but at this time of the year it is at least local and in season.

Tonight I was cooking the old familiar chicken for dinner.
It was just about ready, as were the fried poppies I was oven roasting when I suddenly realised that I hadn’t totally forgotten to do any vegetables.
I put the chicken on hold, in fact I took it out of the oven with the notion of putting it back for a reheat later and then found the sweet potatoes in the cupboard.
Left with these and a few little shallots I decided that their moment had come.
I cut them into one inch chunks , peeled some of the shallots and put them on to fry them quite hard in some oil in a covered frying pan.
However hard as I fried them they remained hard in the centre.
I needed some liquid to speed up the process.
Serendipity moment happened.
There was my chicken with its copious juices standing by on the counter.
I tipped these into the sweet potato, boiled hard and after about five minutes was left with a delicious dish of sweet and spicy
glazed Sweet Potato.
Delicious, and a perfect dish with the chicken.

However they are so good that they could be cooked on their own without the chicken.
(Unless you want to be like Bo-Bo in Lamb’s Dissertation upon Roast Pig and burn down the house to roast the pig)
Cooked like this they would be a delicious foil to the Turkey on the 25th.
The Americans do something similar with Yams at Thanksgiving which must have been on my mind when I threw the sauce into the Sweet Potatoes.

Glazed Sweet Potatoes

2 Medium Sweet Potatoes
1 tablespoon Olive Oil
Grated Zest and juice of 1 Large Orange
1 Thumb of Ginger, peeled and grated
1 Tablespoon Honey

Peel the Potatoes and cut into one inch cubes.
Fry these in a covered pan until the brown on the outside.
Throw in the orange ginger and honey and put the lid back on.
Check them and when nearly cooked take off the lid and put up the heat until the juices are reduced to a shiny glaze.
Eat with chicken or Turkey… or pork chops.. or even on their own.