Yams

[Druckenbrodt]

Sorry for the ridiculously late reply ; have just re-emerged from a hellish week. Thanks so much for the replies - I particularly wanted to thank Anzu for the really informative post. I'm still not sure what my yams are/were... They look a bit like a cross between arbi and cassava. And still remain uncooked. My excuse is 'I've been too busy'. Anyway, maybe I shall go and buy some fresh ones and experiment.

There are quite a few African and Indian grocers in my neighbourhood, and walking past one the other day I noticed about five different types of yam/cassava/arbi type things. Which presumably are all cooked differently. They look so unprepossessing that they have to be good. Otherwise why stock so many of them?

What if you cooked your yam with rice - does anyone do that? I once came across a delicious Persian dish that involved baking potatoes with partly cooked rice in a dish lined with filo pastry. If you partly boiled your arbi/cassava thing & then peeled it & then finished it off with the rice could that be good? Can you stick it in stews? Does it absorb flavour well? Or add any interesting flavour to things? Or is it mainly just another form of starch I wonder... My cooking references are so narrow and European.

I came across quite a good caribbean recipe the other day for a sweet potato and watercress soup; boil a grated sweet potato and chopped onion until cooked, strain through a sieve, squish the pulp through the sieve & put everything back in the pan again. Chuck in a generous amount of finely chopped watercress. That's about it although you can stir in cream & you can also choose to cook the sweet potato and onion in a vegetable stock. It tastes extremely 'clean'.

[miladyinsanity]

Taro has a very delicate flavor, and are not sweet. Try to keep it as simple as possible, because you won't taste it much otherwise.

There are many kinds of yam. Purple ones, small ones (like the one 5-6 cm ones), big ones with white flesh and purple markings... The latter are great for frying.

[eje]

The term yams gets used to refer to so many different plants that  I suspect there is still some confusion going on here.

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I've never heard of Tapioca (Cassava) or Taro (Colocasia) referred to as "yam"; but, true african yams are Dioscorea species. There are also native Chinese and Japanese species in the Discorea genus.

This Webpage has useful information about Yams vs. Sweet Potatoes.

This wiki webpage has info on true Yams and appears fairly accurate.

I've never seen true yams except at Japanese markets, and have never cooked with them.

[miladyinsanity]

I always assumed what some people call taro was yam?

[eje]

I always assumed what some people call taro was yam?

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Being a gardener, I've not had a problem with confusing Taro (Colocasia esculenta) with true Yams (Dioscorea oppositifolia, the most commonly used Asian species). Neither the plants nor tubers really look much alike.

In America, the main confusion is from the marketing strategy of the sweet potato growers, who, to differentiate orange fleshed sweet potatoes from yellow fleshed sweet potatoes started calling the orange fleshed ones "yams".

If you want confusing, try to tell Taro (Colocasia sp.) from Malanga (Xanthosoma sp.).

Edited January 30, 2006 by eje (log)