Kamote Tops with Olive Oil and Garlic

A few months ago, I bought a bundle of Kamote Tops from the oriental market for an exorbitant amount. $2.99 for a bundle about 8 inches long, about as thick as my wrist. Probably just a little over a pound. By the time I took the leaves off the vine and blanched it, I had a bowls worth of leaves. Well, I just had a taste for kamote tops which always reminded me and the girls of our Lola Dora in L.A. who always fixes this for us when we visit. Anyway, since it was spring and we had just fixed our garden, I decided to stick the stems in the ground just to see if it would grow. My mom has been telling me to do this for a while now, I was just too lazy to do it. What do you know, that little plant has taken off, and we have had an abundance of kamote tops all summer! The good thing is, the bugs didn’t seem to have a taste for it. While most of the leafy vegetables we planted were pock marked with holes from the worms feasting on the leaves, the kamote leaves stayed pristine and unmolested.

Our usual treatment of kamote, as our Lola (grandmother) always fixed it, is to simply blanch it and dress it with patis (fish sauce), lemon, minced ginger, onion, and sliced tomatoes. Asienne likes this kamote salad cold, and usually Lola fixes this when we are eating something fried like fish or pork chops. Since I have been addicted to bloghopping, especially food sites, I noticed that people use the Kamote tops in different ways. Sauteeing in olive oil and garlic has always been my favorite way of cooking vegetables but I just never thought about kamote this way. So, just to try something different, I tried sauteeing it this way, and it wasn’t that bad. It was actually pretty good! But the consensus is, Asi still likes her fish sauce and onions.

Kamote tops
2 cloves of garlic, sliced thin
2 tablespoons of Olive Oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a sautee pan and add the garlic. Cook until fragrant, and add the washed kamote tops. I didn’t add any additional liquid, just the water on the leaves from being washed. Sautee until the leaves are wilted and tender, season with salt and pepper, and remove from the heat.

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