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‘In the Kitchen with Eartha & Angeles’ is a series on what I imagine it would be like to cook with my Black and Filipino grandmothers, neither of whom I actually knew.
My family always has some kind of sweet potato dish on our holiday table. We love a starchy side in general, so there are usually a few different potato options. My sister-in-law and I tag team on the spuds; sometimes it’s whipped sweet potatoes or a cheesy gratin, and we always have my stepdad’s favorite sweet potato casserole with crunchy brown sugar pecans. For me, nothing beats a side of candied yams. I love them hot out of the oven or at room temperature and especially with a little chill on ’em because that’s when they taste most like a cold slice of pie.
Did you know 99.8 percent of all “candied yam” recipes actually use sweet potatoes? Thanks to an Instagram info-meme, I learned that sweet potatoes and yams are not the same thing, even though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably in recipes. I won’t go into the details of yam versus sweet potato, but it’s a worthy Wikipedia rabbit hole if you enjoy root-veggie trivia. This candied yams recipe uses actual yams — purple yams known as ube. It’s a staple in Filipino desserts, from cakes and cookies to doughnuts and flan. The color is intense, but the flavor is subtle, kind of like a touch of vanilla with a sprankle of pistachio. It’s like ube is the new matcha, popping up everywhere as ube waffles and ube lattes and ube churros; Trader Joe’s even made ice cream out of it.
Ube is actually the ingredient that inspired the whole “In the Kitchen with Eartha & Angeles” series. I thought about what would happen if my Black grandma from Philly, Eartha, went to the Philippines to see my maternal grandma, Angeles. What local delicacies would Angeles try to get Eartha to eat? Would she be adventurous? How would my grandmothers make my favorite holiday dish? Eartha would use the locally available ube instead of the usual sweet potatoes…
