One of the exciting things I like about going to markets is discovering new ingredients or unfamiliar varieties of familiar fruits, vegetables, herbs etc. In the past I have found Methi leaves (the herb of the spice fenugreek), kohlrabi (vegetable), and green-skin baingan (eggplant) among other things. Last week, I found purple sweet potatoes. The skin and the flesh are purple!
Most of the sweet potatoes we get are white and orange-flesh, rare is the occasion that you see the cream/yellow-flesh sweet potatoes. And even more rare is the purple-flesh sweet potatoes.
Farmers plant certain things for a variety of reasons, among them is to introduce new products to the market, to test and see how people respond to them. This was the case of the farmer from whom I bought the purple sweet potatoes. His stall had 2 large trays of sweet potatoes with different prices. One set was selling for $5 per pound (BDS$5 = US$2.50) and the other for BDS$3 per pound. I saw that most people were purchasing from the tray that had the $5 price tag. A woman just ahead of me stopped in front of the stand, looked at the $3 sweet potatoes, and asked knowingly (for confirmation) if they were the purple ones, when the farmer nodded, she turned up her nose and moved to the other tray. I was curious so I asked her what was wrong with the purple sweet potatoes. She explained that she did not like them because they cooked up too quickly and she did not like the texture when cooked. I guess that’s the reason more people were opting for the more expensive sweet potatoes – familiarity and taste preference.
Most of the time when I cook sweet potatoes, I bake them like fries or cut them into chunks and roast them for breakfast sweet potatoes. The cream/yellow-flesh ones I like to bake whole like jacket potatoes. The other thing I like to do with sweet potatoes, particularly the orange-flesh ones, is to use them in making breads and rolls. Seeing the purple sweet potatoes got me excited to bake them as fries and to use them to make bread/rolls.
There are 5 basic types of sweet potatoes based on the colour of the skin, but they come in 16 shades with the colour of the flesh having various hues and textures when cooked.
Purple sweet potatoes contain two times the daily value of vitamin A, half the daily value of vitamin C, as well as vitamin B6, iron, dietary fibre, and potassium. While purple sweet potatoes offer a bonanza of nutrients, the standout health quality is the powerful antioxidant content linked to reducing inflammation. They are rich in anthocyanin, the type of flavonoid (a class of compounds with antioxidant effects) that provides many plants, such as cherries, grapes, and strawberries, with their natural red, purple, and blue colouring.
Working with the purple-flesh sweet potatoes, I found the following.
Just as the woman at the market said, they cook up quickly. When I roasted them to make fries, they were done in 15 minutes at 400 degrees F. I usually have to roast the white-flesh ones for 20 – 25 minutes.
The texture when cooked is somewhere between the dry starchiness of the white sweet potato and the creaminess of the orange sweet potato. It has its own unique texture; hence it would be a matter of preference depending on your taste and how you want to prepare it.
When cooked – boiled or steamed – it is not as dry as the white sweet potatoes but it is not as moist as the orange sweet potatoes. I found that when I kneaded the dough for the bread rolls I made, I had to add more water to form the dough. When I made the same rolls using the orange sweet potatoes, I used less water.
I am sharing with you the bread rolls I made. I use the same recipe when using the orange-flesh sweet potatoes. If you have never made bread with sweet potatoes, I encourage you to give it a try. The bread is not only nutritional, but tender and a delight to eat. However, I am not done experimenting with purple sweet potatoes. This weekend I am planning to make a sweet bread (a quick bread) with dried fruits and nuts. I’m hoping that it will be good to serve with tea on its own and/or with cheese. I’ll share the results with you next week.
Cynthia
