Daigaku Imo (caramelized sweet potato) & NY restaurants I want to go

I had one Japanese sweet potato which I bought in a Japanese supermarket. Japanese sweet potato is different from the ones I find in a local super market. It taste different and also the texture is different.
I wanted to make this Japanese traditional sweet called "Daigaku imo"(translation will be "College potato") According to Wikipedia, it seems like this kind of potato was sold near Tokyo university and was very popular among the university students. Well, I am not sure if this is true or not but I just wanted to try making this dessert myself.

Traditionally, you have to fry the sweet potatoes before you mix with sugar and soy sauce but I did not want to fry so I searched for easier and healthier way of making this.

In this recipe, instead of frying them, it was sauteed in butter and mixed with honey later. This is the site for the recipe. Click here. (It is in Japanese but you can may be use google translate and translate this site if you would like)

The result was pretty good but it was different form what I expected. The flavor of butter and honey was very strong so it was something different from Daigaku imo but still it tasted really good.

You have to use Japanese sweet potato for this because it has less water in it.

Today, I would like to talk little bit about restaurants in NYC. There are so many restaurants in NYC and it is difficult to pick which one I would go. There are lots of restaurants which I haven't been yet and would love to go.

I realized that there are many famous restaurants which publish their own cook book showing recipe from their restaurant's menu.

I went to library and looked for some of the recipe books from those famous restaurant in NYC.

The first one is "Momofuku". It seems like this restaurant started as a ramen noodle place. The owner/chef is a Korean American who fell in love with ramen noodle soup and lived in Japan in order to learn some ramen cooking technique. Now, he has a few restaurants in NYC which provide different kind of creative food. Since I am a Japanese, I love ramen noodle and I would love to try his ramen noodle. The book was very interesting, lots of different kind of recipes, lots of stories. It seemed little bit difficult to make some of the dishes but they all looked really good!

Next one is Balthazar. This is a French bistro type of restaurant and Bobby Flay mentioned in a TV show called "Best thing I ever ate" that the best french fry he had eaten was from this restaurant. I love french fry to I must go this restaurant and try their french fry :-) This book is really cute and I also liked the cover of the book. There are many casual French recipes in this book. 

Next one is "Magnolia Bakery". In previous post, I have talked about their Banana pudding. Please click here for that particular post.  My husband and I love their Banana Pudding. I think everybody know them from their famous cupcake which was featured in "Sex in the City" but their Banana pudding is definitely worth trying if you are there. I thought it will be great if I can make this Banana Pudding at home so I checked that the book has this Banana Pudding recipe and then borrowed it from the library. 

I love library. You can enjoy all these book for free! Normally, I borrow from the library and see if I like it or not. Then, if I really like it, I would buy it and keep it. I always liked library even when I was a little. (I was a bookworm) 

I remember this mobile library coming near our apartment when I was little and I was really looking forward to going there to borrow some books :-) Good Memory.