I love everything about "yam".
"Yam" in Asia are often used mixed with different type of flours,
and made into cakes or small ball-like food.
Something like this:
Chinese Steam "Yam" cake 芋头糕
Chinese Fried "Yam" Balls 算盘子
Chinese Grill "Yam" Cake 煎芋头糕
Chinese Sweet "Yam" Balls
"Yam" Cake 芋头蛋糕
"Yam" Paste 芋泥
But, today, I was corrected by my lecturer, Dr Chris,
that all the while the "yam" I've been eating for the past 20 years,
It's called "COCOYAM", and not "yam" !!!!
Dr Chris is my lecturer from the Nigeria, West Africa. He grew up in a place where all the yams are cultivated. Yams was farmed over 8,000 year; first in Africa, then Asia and the yam made its way around the World during the slave trade. The yam was introduced to Europe in the 1800s to supplement the diminishing potato crop which was being devastated by disease. So in another words, he is the Yam specialist!! =D
He knows about yam much better than me!!
Okay I know it might sounds confusing to you. Let me explain to you.
Basically, Yam is an underground tuber like potato, but much bigger, richer and more flavorful. Yam is a tropical vine tuber with a bark-like exterior; the inside “meat” ranges in color form every shade of white to yellow and pink. This highly prized edible fibrous root vary in taste from sweet, sour, bitter, to bland. Texture varies as well—creamy, grainy, fibrous, and chewy. Yams are any number of mainly the perennial tropical vines belonging to the botanical named Dioscorea family.
Yam is something that look like this
Cocoyam is a tropical starchy tuberous root crop. There are many varieties of cocoyam but the most common are the soft variety used mainly as soup thickeners and the yam-like variety that can be boiled in a short time and eaten with pepper sauce.The cocoyam is used mainly as a thickener in some Nigerian soup recipes which include the Bitterleaf Soup, a very traditional soup recipe, native to the eastern part of Nigeri, and Ora (Oha) Soup, similar to Bitterleaf soup but uses different vegetable in the soup recipe. Other recipes that are prepared with the cocoyam are:
- Cocoyam Flakes Porridge – The cocoyam is cooked, cut into thin chips and dried in the sun.The resulting flakes are later soaked in water and cooked with vegetables.
- Ekpang Nkwukwo – In this recipe, both the corms and the leaves of the cocoyam are used as ingredients.
Cocoyam looks like this:
Now you understand the difference between a cocoyam and a yam?
Stop calling the cocoyam as yam! hehe!
