Herbfest.net » elephant ear http://herbfest.net/blog Herbs, fun, education - bring the family! Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:17:06 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Taro – The Coco Yam http://herbfest.net/blog/taro-the-coco-yam/ http://herbfest.net/blog/taro-the-coco-yam/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:54:22 +0000 Herbanite http://herbfest.net/blog/taro-the-coco-yam/ When is a Bulb a Vegetable?
Elephant Ear! Which is also called Taro, has been used as a vegetable for 6,000 years in Asia, where it is sometimes called Dasheen, and in Egypt and then Rome. It is considered to be our oldest cultivated vegetable. Taro leaves are rich in vitamins and minerals. They are a good source of thiamin, riboflavin, iron, phosphorus, and zinc, and a very good source of vitamin B6, vitamin C, niacin, potassium, copper, and manganese. Taro is slightly toxic due to the natural presence of calcium oxalate, although the toxin is easily destroyed by cooking or by steeping in cold water overnight. Apicius had several delicious recipes using Taro. When the leaves are as big as they will get, it’s time to harvest. When you dig it up there are large potato or yam like “corms.” Instead of having a thin skin, Taro has a rather thick pinkish skin, looking like a soft coconut skin. One of its names is cocoyam (coco yam). The corms can be as large as cantaloupes or as small as large potatoes. Usually, the Taro root is boiled, but sometimes baked, and many cultures have eaten it for thousands of years. It is then peeled. It is slightly pink with a grainy consistency rather than smooth like potatoes. Taro has been an important “food” to many cultures for it can be used in stews, alone as a “starch,” chips, flour, leafy vegetable, wraps, dessert. A famous Hawaiian staple poi is made by mashing steamed taro roots with water, and then fermenting. The leaves are also eaten or used as “wraps,” stuffed and then eaten or boiled in stews. The leaves can also be used as wraps for steamed or baked fish or chunks of meat. Before people thought about “health food,” Taro was known to be good for the immune system, particularly as a preventative against malaria, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, Lyme disease, West Nile fever, South African tick-bite fever, and dengue fever. It was also mashed raw and used as a plaster in the treatment of boils and inflammation. When a hole is dug in the ground, it is lined with Taro leaves and when the fire burns down another layer of leaves is placed on top of the hot ashes, the food wrapped in Taro leaves, and then another layer is placed on top. When serving the food, fresh Taro leaves are used like doilies on the platters. In fact, in Hawaiian luau means Taro. In these villages, every herbologist, grocer, etc., would have a supply of slightly dry Taro leaves to wrap purchases. Smaller leaves folded like an envelope for powdered purchases, larger leaves as sacks. Left over leaves would be used for siding and roofing material for their huts. Anything left over, peels, stems, leaves, etc., would be used in the compost pile. You cannot ask more of a plant that that! When you look at Taro you see an ornamental plant. When I look at Taro I see an entire lifestyle and wonder how many other plants are here to “serve” us to this extent? I am sure there are many more, if we only knew. I became familiar with Taro growing up on my Grandparents farm. Later, I would find it on the Azore Islands, where they had been born, and people still used it for almost all of the things itemized above.

Claudette of A Magnet A Day

]]> http://herbfest.net/blog/taro-the-coco-yam/feed/ 0