Better to give thanks late than never

Pecan baked yams in syrup with a marshmallow crust

This year, my fam - 'hood fam not blood family - had our second ever thanksgiving meal. Our first was introduced to us by our fabulous American friends this time last year and we decided to carry on the tradition. I have been intrigued by the concept of sweet potato and marshmallow since last year so I researched the best recipes, swallowed my doubts and decided to make it myself. The recipe is simple, the result is extraordinary but I warn you, you may need to be drunk to eat it - or at least to eat as much as we did.

ingredients (for 10)

4 large sweet potatoes
300g muscavado sugar
1l boiling water
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
50g chopped pecans
50g marshmallows
1 lemon, sliced

Recipe:

Cube your sweet potato and par boil it for 5 minutes. Whilst you boil it, make your syrup by placing your sugar in a pan with the water, cinnnamon and nutmeg. Reduce until it until it's a thick syrup. Place your sweet potato in a roasting dish and pour the syrup over it. Bake for 45 minutes with the lemon pieces ontop - remove them after cooking. Then mash with a masher or puree with a blender. Mix in the pecans and then cover with your marshmallows. Turn the oven up to 220 degrees and once hot (after 10 minutes), place the dish back in the oven. Bake for a further 10 minutes on the higher heat until the top has a charred crust with liquid marshmallow underneath. Uh-may-zing.

My dish slotted into the overall meal like this. We got chickens from Waitrose rotisserie (shhh... don't tell). We had roasted vegetables, stuffing, cream-cheese mashed potato, pigs in blankets (to replace the traditional maple glazed hot dogs - one for next year). This was washed down with champagne, red wine and mulled wine to accompany Livvy's fantastic pumpkin pie.

    

The theme was Thanksgiving Western and by the time we had our costumes on everyone was needless to say more than merry.

...enough said.