My
obsession with sweet potato isn’t exactly secret… yesterday’s breakfast was
porridge and sweet potato pancakes, today’s was porridge and a sweet potato
smoothie. Ok, so maybe I also have an oats obsession (my love for this
particular cereal grain may have been a critical determining factor when I
decided to make the healthy breakfast cookies from Sweet Potato Soul).
At the
same time I revealed my love of sweet potato, I told you that all attempts to
grow sweet potatoes at the community garden had been thwarted by the epic soil
they create there (this is the explanation my dad gives me anyway, true or otherwise).
Not wanting to ruin this trend for fear of exposing his inability to grow sweet
potatoes (of all the things not to be able to grow!!), Dad chose to ignore the
expression “third time lucky” and instead proudly came home the other day to
present me with these (placed next to a biro for the purpose of getting an idea of size):
The only
possible way to cook these without losing all the flesh with peeling was to dry
bake them. Fortunately, this is also my favourite method. Unfortunately, when I tried this the next morning, these pathetic little guys became even smaller…
Luckily I had
a couple of kilos of purple skin (white flesh) sweet potatoes from the fruit
and veg shop down the road which I baked at the same time. As much as I loved
the pancakes and the smoothies I made with these, nothing beats fresh out of
the oven with a dollop of nut butter. The white sweet potatoes are considerably
sweeter than their orange counterparts, which are probably more suited to
smoothies and baked goods where their flavours can be boosted with other
add-ins like milk and honey.
There is
also another variety that absolutely adore dry baked… the purple
sweet potatoes. Oh my goodness me!! One of my dear friends had a large area of
purple sweet potato plants in her backyard from which she brought me one to try:
it was absolutely glorious!! I was so
taken with this pretty purple root that I even instagram-ed it! Cos. That’s
what people do these days, right?
Although
there are quite a few different varieties of sweet potato with purple flesh,
they are commonly known as Okinawan sweet potatoes, or beni imo. Coincidentally, the biro to which I was comparing the white sweet potatoes is also from Okinawa (from when my parents visited the islands about 20 years ago)! Learning that one
of my favourite vegetables has its origins in Japan made me very excited but
what made me even MORE excited was realising that I will be visiting there at
the end of the year!! Inititally I was looking forward to trying the Okinawan cuisine
(which is very different from mainland Japan’s) but now I think I will spend my
time hunting down every possible sweet potato dish on the islands…
I thought
it would be nice to finish on that note and leave you with a chart of the
common names of different cultivars of sweet potatoes… because I’m such a nerd
and love displaying information in tables and whatnot :-)
Orange-fleshed
|
Purple-fleshed
|
White-fleshed
|
Beuregarde
|
Agena
|
Batas
|
California Gold
|
Japanese Purple
|
Brazilian
|
Carolina Ruby
|
Korean Purple
|
Dingess
|
Covington
|
Mokuau
|
Hayman
|
Evangeline
|
Okinawan
|
O'Henry
|
Gold Nugget
|
Purple
|
Uyentan
|
(Table from the George Mateljan Foundation
website)
- Matilda
Good luck growing the potato we gave you today! :-))
ReplyDeleteIn the ground... fingers crossed!! Thank you dear twins <3
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