Food and color – purple sweet potatoes

A couple of weeks ago I bought a couple of sweet potatoes for a carrot and sweet potato soup (the recipe is the same as for the cauliflower chestnut soup I discussed here, except replace the chestnuts and cauliflower with carrots and sweet potatoes).  The pairing tastes fabulous but the pairing comes from their color.  That they taste good together means I’ll keep making it.

At any rate, the cashier at the checkout asked me if they were purple sweet potatoes. I looked at her with amazement but on doing a little research, apparently purple sweet potatoes are a thing.  I just did a google search for “purple sweet potatoes” and got dozens of hits.  They are also known as Okinawan sweet potatoes or Stokes sweet potatoes and they’ve been called superfoods by many.  I had to try one.

So I cooked it the way I cook regular sweet potatoes.  Peel, cut into smallish pieces, boil until soft (about 20 minutes), let cool, puree, add mace (because I’m on a mace kick), butter, salt, and pepper, and serve.  They really are purple.  A rich, deep purple.  A royal purple, if you will.

And they made for the most unusual looking plate.  I’d already planned on a slow-roasted hake and green beans, so 1/3 of the plate is white, 1/3 green, and 1/3 purple.  That’s not a color combination you see very often.  For the record, I found three flags on google that use white, green, and purple – the Genderqueer flag, the Suffragette flag in the U.K., and the flag for the Republic of Novegard in the Russian Federation.  But I digress.

Purple sweet potatoes taste pretty much like regular sweet potatoes, although the texture is a little thicker. On the other hand, it’s really hard to not focus on their purpleness.  How many other foods are purple (and eggplant doesn’t count because only the skin is purple and you don’t eat that)?  At first, it was a little unsettling to lift a fork of something purple to my mouth, but after a couple of bites, it just felt weird.  Good tasting, but weird.

Now because a single potato makes about four servings, I’ll be testing it out with other color combinations this week to see if there are any aesthetic, non-culinary differences.  Tonight, it’s skirt steak with mushrooms and sweet onions and I haven’t figured out tomorrow yet.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 Purple sweet potato, diced

2 tbl butter

milk or cream to taste (optional)

1/4 tsp mace (or nutmeg)

salt and pepper

Directions

Put the sweet potatoes in a large sauce pan and over with cold water.  Turn the heat to high until the water boils, then turn it to low.  Cook until sweet potatoes are soft, about 20 minutes.  Let cool slightly.

Puree the sweet potatoes.  I use a food processor, but food mills, ricers, and potato mashers work as well.  Add the butter, mace, salt, and pepper while you are pureeing.  If you want a thinner consistency, add some milk or cream.  Be cautious about how much milk/cream you are adding, as you can’t take it out if it gets too thin.