Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes with Citrus and Mascarpone

Serves 10–12 / From Sarah Stegner, dining room chef, The Ritz-Carlton, Chicago. Stegner, a Chicago native, promotes a seasonally driven menu featuring top-quality produce from small, local farmers. She also helped develop Chicago’s Green City Market, the city’s only venue featuring regional, sustainable produce. For the harvest holiday, her natural pick is sweet potatoes. “Almost everybody has some form of sweet potato on Thanksgiving,” she says. “This is a way of dressing it up and making it something special.” The consistency of the purée should be very light, “not thick like mashed potatoes.”

4 pounds small or medium sweet potatoes (to yield 2 pounds cooked sweet potato pulp), or 6–8 medium-large sweet potatoes
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
8 ounces mascarpone
Salt and freshly ground white pepper
1 whole orange
1 tablespoon roughly chopped fresh chervil

1. Preheat oven to 375º. Bake sweet potatoes until a fork can be inserted easily, about 1 hour. Cut potatoes in half lengthwise and carefully scrape pulp out of skins, leaving about 1/8 inch of potato lining the skin.

2. In a food processor, combine cooked pulp, orange juice, and 4 ounces mascarpone. Purée just until mixed. Add salt and white pepper to taste.

3. Refill sweet potato skins with purée. Heat through for 15 minutes at 375º. Preheat broiler. Dollop remaining mascarpone on top of each potato. Place underneath broiler just until mascarpone begins to brown. Watch carefully to avoid burning.

4. Using a fine zester, grate zest from one orange over potato halves and garnish with chopped chervil. Serve immediately.