Topic: Oca aka NZ yam

[Obelixx]

OH harvested our first oca from the polytunnel this morning.   It looks good and I love the colour but can only fined one recipe for cooking it - baked whole with some duck fat, orange and honey.

Anyone else grown this?  Will you grow it again?  How did you cook it?

[ACE]

Tried them a couple of years ago, didn't rate them much. I don't do raw so cannot comment on the fresh taste but cooked they were very bland. My wife roasted them and added them to her roast veg soups which is another thing I don't eat. They did not take up a lot of room but I never wasted the poly space, They were planted outside as you can crop them early in the new year. The bigger the size of the seed tuber the bigger the crop.

[saddad]

I grew them for a couple of years... but they didn't stay the course... good in stir fries as I remember

[pumkinlover]

To be fair I don't think I put much effort in but I wasn't impressed with the size and found it too fiddly.
However yours might do much better.
I used them as any other root veg so sorry can't help much with recipies.

[Obelixx]

Ours are a decent size and easy to scrub, top and tail as needed.  Tried our first batch last night baked in the oven with a spoonful of olive oil, zest and juice of an orange, a spoonful of honey and a good sprinkling of salt.  The resulting sauce was yummy but the oca very bland.   Maybe needed roasting a bit longer ?

Going to try stir fry next and then sliced raw in a salad mix but I think I'd rather us the space for more chilies.

[Jayb]

You may find that the tubers taste better a couple of weeks from harvesting, particularly if on a sunny windowsill. They don't go green as potatoes do.

[Obelixx]

OK.  We can try that too.  Thanks.

[Vinlander]

You can use Oca any way that you would use potatoes - except they are too small to bake like a potato.

True baked potatoes rely on their size to achieve browned skin AND avoid drying out the delicious chestnut flavours inside - even they are still nothing like as good as biggish potatoes baked naked in ashy embers (don't start me on people who "bake" them entirely in foil - that's basically steaming and the flavour is totally different - far inferior in my opinion. Microwaved potatoes served as "baked" are even worse  - I will actually need to leave the table and headbutt the wall the next time they appear).

I enjoy Oca's taste of new potato with a hint of lemon - but what I enjoy most is that they can't get blight. it's a comforting feeling of food security.

However they can suffer from many pests that burrow in potatoes etc. - so you need to be ready to give them a new bed that hasn't been used exclusively for roots...

Cheers.

[galina]

Yes growing them and eating them every year. 

But the recommendation is to grow them for as long as possible in the autumn for larger tubers.  To make this possible I put a cloche on them.  Protected under that cloche my voles had all the tubers and most of the plants too.  In the end when I came to harvest them, I found mangled bits of half frozen plants, all strewn all over and no tubers.  I rescued plant material where I could and planted up in the conservatory.  Fortunately they root very easily.  But as nothing was in its place any more and the labels were displaced too where the voles had their party, I am still struggling to put names to my varieties.

This year I have dug them up as smaller tubers, but at least I got some.   

We eat them stir fried or in rice mainly.

[Vinlander]

Yes growing them and eating them every year. 

But the recommendation is to grow them for as long as possible in the autumn for larger tubers.  To make this possible I put a cloche on them.  Protected under that cloche my voles had all the tubers and most of the plants too.  In the end when I came to harvest them, I found mangled bits of half frozen plants, all strewn all over and no tubers.  I rescued plant material where I could and planted up in the conservatory.  Fortunately they root very easily.  But as nothing was in its place any more and the labels were displaced too where the voles had their party, I am still struggling to put names to my varieties.

This year I have dug them up as smaller tubers, but at least I got some.   

We eat them stir fried or in rice mainly.

I've also had problems with cloches attracting pests - curiosity is a big thing in mammals (in one case a fox trashed my fleece cloche - I think largely because it couldn't see that mice weren't in there).

Its worth a try to just draw soil over them before the first likely frost (BFLF?) - the stems will continue to put their energy into the tubers without light, as by late September that wilting process becomes more important than photosynthesis.

However in this case I'd say bite the bullet and do your whole clamping process early - BFLF dig the plants up, but try to keep the stems in one piece with the tubers in place - each stem and tuber should continue to develop in your clamp - probably get a better crop - much more reliably at least. I suppose the clamp you use for this might benefit from being just a bit damp to keep the roots working.

I intend to do this next year - because at present my experience of this is partial (but enough to convince me at least) - I routinely take the best tubers in late September - this is so I can fork carefully in soil that isn't sodden yet - but also to pre-empt pest damage (the biggest tubers always seem to suffer most otherwise) and then push the soil back over the whole plant. The remaining smaller tubers have definitely got bigger by the time I dig them - after I've run out of the first crop.

Another advantage of oca is that they are nice raw - in fact you can slice them finely and use them as a chinese cabbage substitute in coleslaw - a deep-winter mix with shredded raw pumpkin/squash instead of my precious carrots (they are too good to suffer the distraction of mayo. and pumpkin is a better match for the tenderness of cabbage anyway).

Cheers.

PS. Needless to say that thing about "tricky to clean" is total bo!!ocks - they are so shiny that 90% will come clean after a soak and a spray in a colander. The other 10% just have grit in the folds - plainly visible against the smooth tuber - it's easier to hold the scrubbing brush upwards and give the tuber a single stroke (sideways) across it.  The same applies even more so to chinese artichokes (crosnes) - which I actually prefer for my deep-winter slaw (more tender and crunchy but a lower yield).

[Obelixx]

I've had no problems cleaning ours tho some have been chewed at the ends.  The second batch we cooked were much better than the first, presumably cos they'd been sitting around a few days by then.

The rest are still in the ground in the polytunnel because the people who sold us the plants said they did best under cover.   Might try putting some in my next red cabbage salad which has all sorts of red stuff in it - red pepper, beetroot, kidney beans, radishes - and no mayo.  Just a mix of soy sauce and balsamic vinegar.

[saddad]

That salad sounds good enough as it is...

[Tiny Clanger]

I have roasted - very successful.  Boiled - never again.  Eaten raw in salads - nice.  Not sure if I will be growing again as the season is very long, and unless you grow them in tyres, they sprawl about all over the place.  I have some left and I think I will try a stir fry with some paprika based spice mix that I buy in Antwerp. (Paprika, garlic, black pepper, cumin, and a dash of cayenne.)

[Obelixx]

Saddad - it is a great salad.  I've been doing it for years and like to vary it a bit.   Dried cranberries and red apple sometimes find their way in there too.

We'll have some roast oca with our hake this evening.  Might add some Tiny Clanger type spices too.

[Obelixx]

Cookes some oca I'd had sitting in a windowsill for a few days and it had a noticeable lemony flavour this time.  Interesting.

[lin]

I have been growing oca here in Manchester UK for over ten years and absolutely love it. I have just planted some tubers in containers so they can come back to life and be replanted when the weather has improved. Have to admit it gets harder at the beginning of each season, especially as I am older and more achy... a reasonably fit 70 now but doing the hard work is tricky, I have to pace myself getting back into the digging but have started some seeds off and bought loads of varieties of different spuds and looking forward to getting them in.

The earth is incredibly wet at the moment, so am finding it difficult to get over there and start clearing the winter weeds, but hopefully it will dry up soon. Meanwhile my oca can fatten up and start sprouting in my greenhouse at home.

To be quite honest, I don't do recipes, just prefer to put them in everything, mostly stir fries or just boiled up with herbs added... or raw, it is such a nutty, tasty tuber. I am a veggie anyway but when they are fried up with mushrooms and other tasty things, they do it for me! Just got to wait till the next bounty which will be after I have done a lot of digging, planted them, and then harvested in December, just a shame they take so long to get to that stage each year. I have already dug up and eaten nearly all of them, though I have some for dinner tonight and will enjoy, Linda

[saddad]

Good quarter century to look forward to if you are careful... our next plot neighbour (Betty) was still planting and digging out potatoes at 95... sorely missed as the new plot holders have let the couch invade and spread into our common border.