Yacón and oca: like potatoes, but not

IN the weeks to come, you may find yourself sitting by the fire with a glass of something relaxing, mulling over a few plant and seed catalogues, anticipating spring. It is one of my favourite winter activities.

- Mark Diacono

IN the weeks to come, you may find yourself sitting by the fire with a glass of something relaxing, mulling over a few plant and seed catalogues, anticipating spring. It is one of my favourite winter activities. You may—as I will—have allowed yourself conveniently to forget the tedium (and the stench) of potato blight, various scabs and rots and the slug damage, and start to consider which varieties of potato to sink into the ground next Easter. This is exactly as it should be. That said, let me encourage you to take out a little edible insurance by also growing two other delicious South American tubers, both unaffected by the familiar potato pests and diseases.

I first grew yacón a dozen or more years ago and, although it has been cultivated in the Andes for centuries, I knew only a couple of people who grew it here. Thankfully, it is increasingly popular and hence more widely available. Above ground, yacón is all solid stems, a flurry of large furry leaves, and—in warm summers—small sunflowers; below, it grows two sets of tubers, one larger than the other. The larger tubers—similar to baking potatoes visually—are the main harvest. Lift them out of the ground before winter really hits and they taste like a cross between early apples, watermelon and celery, with a touch of pear. Allow them a day or two in the sun and the tubers become sweeter and the pear flavour more apparent.