- Ooo, potatoey.
I had no idea that something this good
could exist in the world.
I love potatoes.
This is such a fun episode.
Hi, I'm Beryl.
And the theme of this week's episode is
(imitates drumroll rumbling) potatoes.
This is a theme that so, so many of you asked for
and here I am delivering.
In this one, I have chosen five different preparations
that I thought were, first of all, very potato forward,
and made me think a little bit differently
about just what a potato can do.
(sneezes) Sorry.
And with that, let the potato episode begin.
(Beryl laughing)
These are Pounded Potatoes from Yunnan province in China.
For this I'm using Red Bliss potatoes.
These potatoes have red skin
and are cream colored on the inside.
And they're very waxy, which means
that they have a low starch content
and they're gonna hold their shape well after cooking.
Traditionally this dish uses a Yunnan potato,
but I couldn't get one here so this is my substitute.
China is actually the world's biggest potato producer.
Farming of this tuber can be found
in every single region of the country.
The majority, however, are grown
in the Northern, mountainous regions of China.
Yunnan province, where this dish is from,
is actually in the Southwest of the country.
It's a Han dish that uses a mortar and pestle
to pound the potatoes until they stretch.
The recipe doesn't use any butter or additional fats.
The creaminess comes from the waxiness of the potatoes.
It's a dish that is typical of home cooking
and, surprisingly, not so difficult to recreate.
(upbeat music)
I cannot believe that this worked.
I mean, you saw those potatoes got stretchy.
This is wild!
Whoa.
So this is a potato dish from Yunnan province in China.
And really what it's doing is working with the waxiness
of the potatoes to make them kind of mochi-like.
It is not like a mashed potato
because it's like, it's almost dough-like in my mouth.
There's a lot of texture happening here, huh.
It's, I'm struggling a little bit
cause I've never had anything like this.
It's.
I like it.
Okay, this is definitely mashed potato adjacent.
But if you were to serve this to me and say,
"Hey, I made you mashed potatoes," and I ate it,
I would be like, "What did you just serve me?"
I can see how maybe some people might not love
this immediately because there is this expectation
that this is kind of like a mashed potato, but it's not.
So if you go into it expecting that,
I think that you would really like it.
Yum.
This next dish is called Causa Rellena and it's from Peru.
If you didn't know, the potato is actually from Peru.
Over 7,000 years ago, historians believe
that the Incas cultivated potatoes
on the shores of Lake Titicaca,
all the way up in the Andes mountain range.
Since then, the potato has remained an important part
of not only Peruvian culture, but the cuisine as well.
There are over 4,000 types
of native potatoes grown in the Highlands of Peru.
While the potato has been in Peru for thousands of years,
it didn't make its way out of the country
until Spanish conquistadors is invaded Peru
in the 1500s looking for gold.
Instead they found the potato.
As for the dish itself, rellena means stuffed,
but causa has its own story.
The dish in its modern form seems to have been created
during the Pacific war in 1879,
where Peru and Bolivia fought Chile.
Supplies were in demand and Peruvian women
went door to door, taking food donations,
telling people it was for the cause.
They concocted this sandwich-like dish using
the donated ingredients like potatoes, carrots, and onion.
Today the dish is served as a starter,
and something that you share with friends,
and obviously use to impress them
because it looks so beautiful.
(upbeat music)
I was very nervous when I was lifting that can up
but za za, it's so pretty.
This is a Causa Rellena from Peru
and I'm impressed with myself.
Yum.
It's interesting because this definitely has the vibes
of a tuna sandwich, but it's not,
because it's mashed potatoes instead of bread.
The thing was, for this,
I could not actually find all
of the ingredients, especially the pepper.
So in order to get the yellow color I used turmeric.
You know, is this then the most authentic version of Causa?
No, it's not.
But all of us are not going to be able to find all of
the ingredients to make these dishes the most authentic way.
So if there are workarounds, you know,
I might be wrong in saying this,
but I think it's okay because, I mean, this tastes amazing.
And it's what I could do.
The potatoes are so creamy, and smooth,
and the lime juice in it is a really interesting,
I never put lime juice in mashed potatoes.
So there's like a really nice zing to them.
I made mine with tuna because that's what I had in my house.
But also traditionally this is made with chicken.
But I did check and tuna was okay.
This is definitely a potato-forward dish,
the mashed potatoes are the star, sorry, tuna salad.
This is kind of definitely a dish
that I think impresses people if you serve it to them.
I'm impressed and I'm serving it to myself, so.
(Beryl laughs)
This is called Kumpir and it comes from Turkey.
For this dish, I'm using a yellow Creamer potato.
These are small in size and waxy
which makes them really good for roasting.
This is a popular street food in Istanbul
but it can be found in other parts of Turkey as well.
Interestingly potatoes arrived in Turkey by way of Croatia
which may be where the dish got its name.
Because the Croatian word for potato is krumpir.
This is definitely the simplest recipe of the bunch
as Kumpir is basically a loaded baked potato.
I chose it, however, because of what it is loaded with.
Where a jacket, or baked potato might have butter,
sour cream, beans, and cheese, the Turks take it up a notch.
They load this dish with sausage,
all sorts of pickled vegetables, cheese,
and what you end up with is a savory
and tangy, hot roasted potato
with flavors that give your mouth a wake-up call.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so this is Turkish Kumpir, which is pretty much
the best looking baked potato I have ever seen.
Mm.
I really like this because it made me think differently
about what a baked potato could be.
Yum.
Adding all the different pickled sides is so good
and something that I have actually never done.
I recently just went to the Polish grocery store
and bought a ton of pickled vegetables
so this was a pretty ideal dish for me to make
because I had everything at home.
Oh my God.
So this is a very typical street food in Istanbul.
And I think it's really interesting to think
about a baked potato loaded up like this as street food.
I don't really know how you would eat it on the street.
Wow, I'm gonna eat this whole potato.
In relation to some of the other potato dishes
that I've done, this one might seem a little bit basic.
But I think that this is a really great example
of using another culture's technique
to spice up something that you might do normally.
I don't know, make it, honestly, 10 times better.
This potato dish is called Goguma Mattang
and it comes from South Korea.
I'm using a Korean sweet potato for this dish.
It has a brownish purple skin
and is kind of yellow on the inside.
And they're kind of oblong in shape.
Goguma means sweet potato in Korean
and Mattang is caramelization process.
So these are candied sweet potatoes.
Sweet potatoes first arrived in Japan
via the Portuguese in the 1600s.
And they then went from Japan to Korea in the 1700s
where they have become a winter food staple,
where you'll often find them roasted over an open fire.
In general, Korean sweet potatoes are much sweeter
than North American varieties,
which is why candying them works,
actually, really, really well.
(upbeat music)
So this is a dessert.
It's a candied sweet potato.
It's from Korea called Goguma Mattang,
and I'm not gonna lie, I messed this up like three times.
This is the best version of what it's supposed to be.
Use my fingers.
This is good.
Ooo, I don't know if you guys have noticed this,
but I haven't really cooked many sweet things.
I am not a baker.
I am not really good
with measurements and really taking my time.
I like cooking
because you can kind of keep fixing things as you mess up.
When you're making a candy coating,
a lot of things can go wrong,
and they all went wrong for me.
I burned the sugar.
At the end, I do think I got close to it
because there's a really nice sheen.
You can kind of hear this.
(spoon tapping)
That's like the crispiness on the outside.
I've never thought about a potato as a dessert,
even with sweet potatoes.
But this is really fun.
Soft on the inside, crunchy on the outside.
It is like popping candy though.
Hmm. Okay, yeah.
I mean, I guess I can show
that I did kind of do it right
because they're all stuck together from the sugar coating.
Okay, yum, this is really good.
Next one.
The final dish is Ube Halaya from the Philippines.
For this I am using an ube potato,
also known as a sweet purple yam.
The potatoes are bright purple in color,
both outside and inside,
and a bit longer and thinner in shape.
Ube is actually native to the Philippines and a staple
in the country's most famous dessert, halo-halo.
The potato itself is sweet, not as sweet as an orange yam,
but it also has this nutty and vanilla-like flavor
which is why it lends itself perfectly
to desserts over savory dishes.
You'll find that it's commonly used in the Philippines
in cakes, flan, ice cream, cookies, and so much more.
This Ube Halaya is a sort of sweet jam
that can be eaten on its own or acts as the base
for all of the other dishes I mentioned above.
And oh my gosh, this purple color is so beautiful.
(upbeat music)
I'm ending on a sweet note
with Ube Halaya from the Philippines.
And,
I've tasted this already.
It's really, really good.
I haven't tasted it on bread though.
Oh my God.
I feel all of the years of my life wasted,
having never had this until right now.
It's potatoey, so don't think that all the other ingredients
make the potatoey-ness go away, because it doesn't.
Obviously the condensed milk, and evaporated milk,
the sweetness comes through.
It is not overpoweringly sweet
but gives me everything that I crave if I am craving sweets.
Also, the color,
it's absolutely gorgeous.
There's no food coloring.
This is just the natural color of the purple potato.
I topped it with toasted coconut.
It's nice.
So I found this Ube potato at the Asian grocery store
in Chinatown here in New York City.
If you don't have access to something like that,
you can also buy this grated and frozen.
So maybe online, maybe like a whole foods,
or a more kind of specialty type of grocery store in the US.
My mouth is so happy.
It's easy to think about all potatoes being the same
because I'm sorry, potato, but,
like, you're not the sexiest vegetable out there.
You're just a potato.
Definitely something that I have learned
about this is that potatoes are so versatile.
Like potatoes can do anything
and I barely scratched the surface
of what potatoes are capable of.
I mean, I didn't even do French fries.
I think that a French fry episode could
be really interesting,
because I imagine that people put different things
on their French fries around the world.
You guys let me know, I eat my French fries with ketchup.
So lame. (laughing)
But, like, if you do something else that's really cool
tell me in the comments and maybe I can make
an episode out of it, I don't know.
And that completes the potato episode.
I'm gonna leave the recipes,
per usual, in the description box.
And that's it.
I will see you guys in my next episode.
Bye.
(footsteps echoing)