[ERT: 10 min.] - Simple, Localized Approaches to Food Systems Resilience and Food Security in Southeast Asia --- Part Three: Staple food diversification – Cassava, Yams and various Wild Tubers
Hi David, are you familiar with the different cassava varieties? We have a few here but don't know the names. We also ferment them in a few ways to change the taste. Seems like cultures that eat cassava as a staple usually ferment them to reduce the anti nutritional compound. We try to eat cassava for breakfast everyday but it takes getting used to. Our stomachs are used to rice and bread and eating too much cassava sometimes give us a bloat.
Sweet potatoes are much harder to grow where I am at. We have the purple yam too and they definitely grow well in some shade.
yes, we know about three different varieties. There's the sweet one, a sweet one with yellow(ish) flesh, and then there is the bitter one (that contains high levels of cyanide and requires extensive processing). How many different cultivars do you grow?
Mostly, we just have the regular "sweet" variety, and a few plants of the yellow kind, which don't seem to thrive here. So far we don't grow the bitter kind because the processing would be a bit too much work compared with other staples. How does the fermentation process look like? Do you soak it in brine, or in lime/ash water?
We used to grow a lot more cassava when we were living in the South, but here there's just too many rodents, so we rely much more on yams and bananas. Cassava has become a special treat, and sometimes we make french fries with it.
How do you usually eat cassava? We like it best when it's steam-boiled, which tastes a lot better (and is more firm) than regular boiling.
In the past we ate cassava quite frequently, but we never had any problems with bloat or the like. But I'm German, so potatoes basically run through my veins.
Sweet potatoes are a minor crop as well for us, our soil is just not good enough yet. I think you need really fertile soil for them to thrive. But we plant them in almost every vegetable bed, mainly for the greens, which can be used like morning glory, and once we dig up vegetable beds we find a sweet potato here and there as an additional surprise.
The best of the tuber/potato category for us is yams. We have several different species, including a few wild ones. They have no problem with the soil, the rodents leave them alone for the most part, and they can very easily be included in a forest-like ecosystem with very little sunlight. But we leave them in the ground for two or three years, otherwise they'd be too small. We only replant the tiny bulbs that form along the vines.
What does your sweet variety look like? Is it really sweet like sweet potato?
We have a white with red skin (grey and thick stem), a white with white skin (brown and thinner stem), a yellow (the stems fall horizontal when tall), one with thin leaves for eating the shoots and we havent tasted the tuber. The red skin seems most able to produce in poor soil.
There are a few ways to ferment. The one they sell in shops is called tapai. The cassava is boiled then a yeast added and after a few days it is very soft and sweet, and a bit alcoholic. We havent been able to get consistent results with this.
The other ways to remove the cyanide is anaerobic fermentation. The peeled and raw cassava is soaked in water for days until soft, then pressed and dried into a flour-like thing. In africa it is called foo foo and in the americas puba.
We usually do a puba 2.0 taught by ernst gotsch who started syntropic agroforestry. We grate it, press, then pack tightly into glass containers so there is minimal air, then seal for a few days. The result is a flour that tastes like sourdough. We usually eat this for breakfast because we can keep the cassava longer.
We also boil cassva without fermenting. Yes some people say steaming is nicer but we seldom do so because it takes much longer?
We also bake the grated cassava mixed with coconut milk and sugar.
We eat cassava almost everyday for breakfast, but it feels thats the most our bodies can take. We could eat rice three meals a day but we grew up with rice so our stomachs are more used to that. Our kids definitely prefer rice though. I think adapting the gut and its microbes can take generations (are you familiar with fred provenza's work?) so too bad we and our ancestors didnt grow up with cassava. Over here, some of the older generation have cassava trauma because thats the only thing they ate when rice was scarce during the japanese occupation.
One thing though, the quality in cassava can vary a lot based on growing conditions. They taste best when is it starchy, kind of powdery and fluffy. We used to buy cassava when we first started. The grower uses chemical fertilizers and herbicide and harvests in 3 or 4 months. We took his cuttings and grew them at our place. We waited much longer to harvest but the taste was much better.
We only have one variety of the climbing yam, the purple one with mucous. Only harvested once but we are trying to grow more, letting them vine up trees.
Hi David, are you familiar with the different cassava varieties? We have a few here but don't know the names. We also ferment them in a few ways to change the taste. Seems like cultures that eat cassava as a staple usually ferment them to reduce the anti nutritional compound. We try to eat cassava for breakfast everyday but it takes getting used to. Our stomachs are used to rice and bread and eating too much cassava sometimes give us a bloat.
Sweet potatoes are much harder to grow where I am at. We have the purple yam too and they definitely grow well in some shade.
Hey Thomas,
yes, we know about three different varieties. There's the sweet one, a sweet one with yellow(ish) flesh, and then there is the bitter one (that contains high levels of cyanide and requires extensive processing). How many different cultivars do you grow?
Mostly, we just have the regular "sweet" variety, and a few plants of the yellow kind, which don't seem to thrive here. So far we don't grow the bitter kind because the processing would be a bit too much work compared with other staples. How does the fermentation process look like? Do you soak it in brine, or in lime/ash water?
We used to grow a lot more cassava when we were living in the South, but here there's just too many rodents, so we rely much more on yams and bananas. Cassava has become a special treat, and sometimes we make french fries with it.
How do you usually eat cassava? We like it best when it's steam-boiled, which tastes a lot better (and is more firm) than regular boiling.
In the past we ate cassava quite frequently, but we never had any problems with bloat or the like. But I'm German, so potatoes basically run through my veins.
Sweet potatoes are a minor crop as well for us, our soil is just not good enough yet. I think you need really fertile soil for them to thrive. But we plant them in almost every vegetable bed, mainly for the greens, which can be used like morning glory, and once we dig up vegetable beds we find a sweet potato here and there as an additional surprise.
The best of the tuber/potato category for us is yams. We have several different species, including a few wild ones. They have no problem with the soil, the rodents leave them alone for the most part, and they can very easily be included in a forest-like ecosystem with very little sunlight. But we leave them in the ground for two or three years, otherwise they'd be too small. We only replant the tiny bulbs that form along the vines.
What does your sweet variety look like? Is it really sweet like sweet potato?
We have a white with red skin (grey and thick stem), a white with white skin (brown and thinner stem), a yellow (the stems fall horizontal when tall), one with thin leaves for eating the shoots and we havent tasted the tuber. The red skin seems most able to produce in poor soil.
There are a few ways to ferment. The one they sell in shops is called tapai. The cassava is boiled then a yeast added and after a few days it is very soft and sweet, and a bit alcoholic. We havent been able to get consistent results with this.
The other ways to remove the cyanide is anaerobic fermentation. The peeled and raw cassava is soaked in water for days until soft, then pressed and dried into a flour-like thing. In africa it is called foo foo and in the americas puba.
We usually do a puba 2.0 taught by ernst gotsch who started syntropic agroforestry. We grate it, press, then pack tightly into glass containers so there is minimal air, then seal for a few days. The result is a flour that tastes like sourdough. We usually eat this for breakfast because we can keep the cassava longer.
We also boil cassva without fermenting. Yes some people say steaming is nicer but we seldom do so because it takes much longer?
We also bake the grated cassava mixed with coconut milk and sugar.
We eat cassava almost everyday for breakfast, but it feels thats the most our bodies can take. We could eat rice three meals a day but we grew up with rice so our stomachs are more used to that. Our kids definitely prefer rice though. I think adapting the gut and its microbes can take generations (are you familiar with fred provenza's work?) so too bad we and our ancestors didnt grow up with cassava. Over here, some of the older generation have cassava trauma because thats the only thing they ate when rice was scarce during the japanese occupation.
One thing though, the quality in cassava can vary a lot based on growing conditions. They taste best when is it starchy, kind of powdery and fluffy. We used to buy cassava when we first started. The grower uses chemical fertilizers and herbicide and harvests in 3 or 4 months. We took his cuttings and grew them at our place. We waited much longer to harvest but the taste was much better.
We only have one variety of the climbing yam, the purple one with mucous. Only harvested once but we are trying to grow more, letting them vine up trees.
Thank you David, golden info right here