My Beloved loves kamote (or camote) a.k.a. sweet potato. His favorite variety is the one with the yellow flesh. But nice fresh kamote with the yellow flesh is hard to come by. Sometimes he gets lucky and brings home his precious yellow kamote with glee. Last week only the purple-colored ones were available at his “Suki”. The type of kamote he brought home is sometimes used in halo-halo.
His purple kamote was not a hit with me and the kids. We had a lot of bread that week and ignored the kamote.
The thing with kamote is that if it’s not stored properly once cooked it will spoil quickly. This was what happened to the kamote he brought home. To save them, I decided to do a little experiment. I made kamote pudding! Now that was a hit!
I used a basic bread pudding recipe from Cooks.com and substituted kamote for the bread. For the rhum sauce, I only had an herbal liquer at home but that worked well, too, in place of the rhum.
I decided not to highlight the kamote because on they outside they didn’t look appealing anymore. In fact, while preparing the pudding, I started out with four sweet potatoes but had to throw one of them away because it had gone bad already.
Here is how it turned out…
The verdict? Yummmmmmyyyy!
If you want to know more about the kamote, here are a few quick facts (from Wikipedia.com):
1. In the Philippines, the leaves from the plant are called kamote tops or talbos ng kamote and is also eaten. I love to eat the leaves blanched or with sinigang. According to traditional/folk medicine, eating kamote tops will help you if you have anemia, and if you’re breast-feeding your baby (it helps with milk production).
2. It’s popular in the rural or provincial areas especially with farmers and families who cannot afford to either plant or buy rice. It’s cheaper to plant kamote than rice.
3. It’s packed with a lot of nutrients and vitamins, making it a healthy snack.
4. It’s sold as a popular street-food called “kamote-cue” (that’s fried kamote with caramalized sugar served on barbecue sticks).
5. It grows in many tropical and warm temperate countries in the world, so look out for it in your local market.
