In search of Ube....or so I thought! Demystifying the confusion between the Purple Yam and the Purple Sweet Potato

This is an update from the original post way back in February of 2012. If you read the comments below, I was clearly incorrect and I've decided to edit this post so it clears up the confusion now that I have a better understanding.

R

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A few weeks back, I found these wonderful tubers that reminded me of my homeland at a local Asian market. At first glance, I immediately thought I had found "Ube" (pronounced OO-beh) AKA the "purple yam". I instantly raved, mentioned it to my family and immediately blogged about it.

But to my disappointment (and slight embarrassment), what I actually bought, which was actually labelled as "PURPLE YAM" is actually a PURPLE SWEET POTATO!

(L) Fresh roots of Ipomoea batatas 'Okinawan Purple' aka Purple Sweet Potato sliced to expose the purple flesh and (R) the cooked potatoes.

Much like the confusion between SWEET POTATOES VS. YAMS during the holiday cooking seasons at the grocery stores, I basically fell for the same thing not truly knowing the difference between the two. THEY ARE NOT TECHNICALLY THE SAME!  Here's a link that clears it up and explains where the confusion began!


First off, true "UBE" is rarely available fresh here in the temperate climate:

UBE or purple yam is A TRUE YAM and botanically known as Dioscorea alata

This beautiful root crop is a very popular starch in the Philippines and I often craved it as it was the main ingredient in many of my favorite childhood snacks and desserts.

It has a lovely smooth texture, a stunningly beautiful flesh that's deep violet when cut into raw and turns a smokey deep purple and has a wonderfully sweet, starchy flavor that's baked or roasted like a baked potato. It is also made into a sweet paste that's used to flavor cakes, sweet porridge, and added to make the famous Halo-halo: a super sweet dessert consisting of fresh and preserved tropical fruits topped with shaved ice, ice cream, a dollop of ube, and condensed milk with sugar.

Now what I have pictured above is Ipomoea batatas, the true Sweet Potato we all know and love and is sometimes incorrectly referred to as a yam. So, of course, when I saw the PURPLE VARIETY OF SWEET POTATO, I immediately thought it was the tubers of the Ube because the market labelled it as "PURPLE YAM".

So here's where the lightbulb really clicked on:  Both the true Ube Yam and Purple Sweet Potato produce the same colored/textured cooked flesh and they're both sweet!!  I'm sure there are more obvious differences in terms of intensity of flavor and such, but it's very easy to assume and call one thing the other. And I'm sure Purple Sweet Potato is often substituted for true Purple Yam

While it's kind of cold to have Halo-halo during the winter, I played around in the kitchen with the tasty PURPLE SWEET POTATO and came up with this pretty presentation:

Roasted Purple Yam topped with jackfruit and vanilla ice cream garnished with mint and sweet violet blossoms.

So, to the gardeners out there. The same "Sweet Potato Vine" that we love to use for annual bedding, window-boxes, hanging baskets and containers is the SAME SPECIES of sweet potato that I bought and the same species many people eat! If you ever take apart an annual planting, you'll often find the fleshy tubers that the vines have formed! These are perfectly edible (organically grown ideally), but just more ornamental in foliage than the sweet potatoes actually farmed for their sweet tubers!

Both Dioscorea alata and Ipomoea batatas are both warm weather plants we can't really grow very well here in the Pacific Northwest (for the tubers) due to our lack of heat, humidity and a lack of a long growing season. However, I've heard of several gardeners in different parts of WA State and also in the Portland, OR region that have had success growing great sweet potato TUBERS from easy season "slips" or young rooted cuttings that are planted as soon as the soil warms up. The true YAM, however, I've never really seen growing outside of greenhouse facilities and it's usually a different species.

I hope this clears up the confusion. Now we all know what we're actually buying and EATING!

Cheers,



R

Love, Eat, Garden!

The first weekend of the new year was quite a treat as I spent it with close friends and family.

One of the highlights of last summer was watching my high school friend, Carol, get married and this weekend was the first time I had seen her since their wedding.

She invited me to their new home as she prepared for a hot pot dinner, which I couldn't attend because I had dinner plans with family (potential blog post, but there wasn't much plant/veggies involved and I was too lazy to take pictures). With her younger sister, we helped prepare for the evening meal and as a token of her appreciation, she prepared a light breakfast and lunch that was so simple, yet so comfy and delicious.






Carol utilized a green that I've just started to become fond of last year when I had so much of it when I was in England. There, it's known as rocket, but in the US, we call it arugula. As a uber plant geek, it's Eruca sativa.A native of the Mediterranean regions where it kind of grows as a weedy annual, the peppery foliage is often used in salads and lightly cooked as a vegetable.

Here, Carol lightly sautes the arugula with a bit of bacon jam she was given as a gift and in the same pan, she lightly toasts a half of an English muffin that's topped with the greens and finished off with a seasoned fried egg, sunny-side up!

In the garden, it's an easy plant to raise as even young seedlings can be sheared and used as needed and it flushes out new foliage each time it's cut. You can also plant the seeds in succession so you have a regular harvest throughout the spring and summer. Provide a full sun location and water regularly. It is a type of plant that can be very quick to bolt (produce flowers instead of the desired leaves) so they like it fairly cool, but the flowers can also be eaten and the seeds saved for future sowings.

After a second helping of this simple, but scrumptious dish, we helped Carol prepare for her hot pot dinner. Slicing assorted vegetables, fungi, and other ingredients, Carol arrange a forest of greens and enoki mushrooms for an easy and effective presentation.

Greens consisted of sliced banana petioles (Musa sp.), napa cabbage (Brassica rapa ssp. pekinensis), baby bok choi (Brassica rapa ssp. chinensis), choi sum (Brassica rapa var. parachinensis) (chrysanthemum greens (Chrysanthemum coronarium), and garlic chives (Allium tuberosum), which she used for our lunch!

Lunch time rolled around and her husband came home to join us for another meal! This time it was a bowl of noodles in a broth of left over turkey drippings splashed with fish sauce, a few fish balls, sliced giant oyster mushrooms and a bundle of garlic chives left over from the hot pot veggie arrangements.

We reminisced about high school, the summer, the holidays, and the upcoming year and Carol suddenly remembered that she had orchids that were given as wedding/house-warming gifts and wanted to inquire about their care. On top of inviting her to attend my talk at Molbak's (that I just posted), we discussed their care and she seemed genuinely interested in caring for them even though I've admitted that orchids these days have become as disposable as Poinsettias after Christmas.



Next generation gardener? You betcha! As her friend, you bet I'm going to encourage her to pick my brain and introduce her and her husband to some garden basics as they settle in and feel more compelled to enhance their living spaces.

First, I need to convince them to talk to their landlord about taking out a hideous "boxed" Photinia up against their window. hehe

An often overlooked vegetable; the sunchoke

Spending time with family and friends right how has been so crucial and important for me as I try and move forward and also try to get into the holiday season.

I recently came over to visit my friend, Audi, who works in produce at Central Market, here in Shoreline at his home in Everett. He and his wife, Marian and 7 year old son, Aumar (cool combo of their names, eh) were recently blessed with another healthy little boy a few months ago and it was my first time seeing the precious one.



After a fabulous pasta dinner, a game of Parcheesi, and Marian, being a proud, no-shame Filipino, insisting we do karaoke, Audi dug me up something from his garden:


Shared by a friend of his starting out with just four pieces tubers, which quickly multiplied, I had my own stash of the so-called "sunchoke" or Jerusalem artichokes (which don't really look like artichokes we're accustomed to, but they're actually in the same family ASTERACEAE).

He recommend that I try them 1) roasted like you would potatoes or 2) slice them thinly and add the to salads.

SO I DID BOTH!

I prepared a meal for my friend, Sandhya, and invited her over for a stuffed pork dish I had prepared before. I served it with grilled leek (like last time), fennel and I took the sunchokes and some beets and roasted those in the oven to have on the side. I sliced up a few tubers and put them on our starter salad.



They have a wonderfully firm and crisp texture to them. It almost looks like a translucent potato and it has a nutty flavor much like water chestnuts and jicama combined.

The plant, where these tubers come from, is quite tall and large. It's actually the same genus as sunflowers (Helianthus) and the full scientific name is H. tuberosus. It is native to eastern North America. It's essentially a herbaceous perennial that can tower up to 10 feet in height and produced simple yellow, daisy-like flowers. It's the roots, however, that's the main draw.

I don't know of too many people that grow them because they can take up so much space, but I've heard that they're easily cultivated in well-prepared soil with ample moisture. I don't think I'll devote space to growing them. Even though they were tasty, I think I'd only consume a large handful like the batch Audi gave me. I'll just ask him to hook me up next fall and use that as an excuse to play with the kids and see them grow up!

Market Finds: Beets, leeks, and purple artichokes

My recent trip to the Pike Place Market yielded some wonderful finds and produced one of the most intense salads I've ever tasted. The more I visit and gather this wonderful bounty, I always tell myself, "Next year, I gotta grow these next year!!!" But, it never happens.



Beets, for example, I've grown to really like as they are naturally sweet, flavorful and wonderful simply roasted with a little garlic, olive oil and salt and pepper. I like to purchase a bundle with the tops still intact as they're great green sauteed in a little butter and oil. They're easy enough to grow and since they're root crops, I could be enjoying beets from my garden during the summer all the way through winter provided that I mulch them after the first main freeze. I'm particularly fond of yellow beets as they have a milder flavor and don't "bleed" like the typical deep red variety.


Now leeks are quite new to me even though I've learned how to grow them, but I've never really cooked them before so for two large stalks for $2, I thought I'd give them a try. Think of these as giant scallions or green onions and the main part you want to grow and develop is the thick white base. That's why they're usually grown in deep trenches and soil is slowly back-filled as the stalks grow to get the whitest base possible.


The highlight of my finds were these adorable little purple chokes that were so beautiful, I was curious to learn more about how to cook and prepare them. I actually tried growing this in a container planting at work, but it didn't really do much besides sprout a few leaves. So, I was taught to peel off a few of the outer bracts and trim them like you would the typical green globe artichokes by snipping off the spiny tips of the bracts and basically slicing off the top 1/3 of the entire head. Then slice in half and cook.

Having some tender greens I had to use up, I decided to make a salad. I roasted both kinds of beets, and grilled up the leeks, purple artichokes, and the ultra flavorful and expensive (I had to splurge; they're freakin' amazing) matsutaki mushrooms.

The result was a cornucopia of color and various flavors and I just went all out on this one:


I drizzled the green first with a light white balsamic vinaigrette, threw in the roasted and grilled veggies and topped it off with spiced roasted pecans, dried cranberries and goji berries. I call it my "Autumn Antioxidant Salad"!! =P