I get them from an Asian friend, and they are quite good- sweeter, firmer, and an astonishing purple color, especially after you cook them. I told you you all that to tell you this- I made a purple sweet potato pie yesterday. Before you say "I hate sweet potatoes", read on; this pie is nothing like an ordinary sweet potato pie!

The recipe calls for Okinawa purple sweet potatoes. These are white on the outside, but purple inside. It is said there is no substitute, and I believe it. The purple sweet potato is very high in antioxidants, so there's a good reason to make this decadent dessert.

First, you want to prep your sweet potatoes. Cut them in chunks and peel them. Boil the pieces until fork tender. Mash them up, and cool. Now we can get on with the rest of the recipe:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Crust-
3/4 cups cold butter
2 Tbsp sugar
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup chopped macadamia nuts (These are so expensive that I used 1/3 macadamias and 2/3 cashews, and I think it's better!)
Chop the nuts in the food processor. Add the flour and sugar, and combine. Add the butter in chunks, and process until well mixed. I made the crust in a 9X13 baking dish. Just dump it in and spread it out, pushing it up the sides of the dish and patting to firm it up. Doesn't need to be fancy.

Filling:

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups Okinawan Purple Sweet Potatoes, mashed
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt

Mix the sugar and butter until smooth. Add in the eggs, and mix well. Add the sweet potatoes and mix. Finally. add the evaporated milk and vanilla, and mix until fully blended. Spread the filling evenly into the crust. Make sure to leave 1/2" space for the topping. Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes, until set. Let cool completely.

Haupia topping

Do NOT try to make this ahead of time- it sets up fast!

1 can coconut milk (13.5 oz)
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup corn starch, sifted.

Put the coconut milk and water in a saucepan. Combine the sugar and corn starch, then add to the saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly. It will thicken rather suddenly- DON'T stop stirring! When thick, immediately spread over the cooled filling in your pie. Chill the pie thoroughly before serving.

This is nothing like sweet potato pie; I'm at a loss to describe it. It's definitely on my list of favorites, though!

The color is actually more vivid than my picture:

I know that the sweet potatos grow well in my garden, so having them here will be a blessing for me and my parrots. And my DH who loves to grow veggies will have bragging rights with all his yankee friends next year.

I will do a search online to see if they are available and what season to plant the sets. I imagine they culture like the other taters, from eyes?

Thank you for the information. The pie looks delicious.

Evidently the leaves are edible, too, but I haven't tried them yet. I guess they are similar to collards. My friend who gave me a purple sweet potato to sprout is growing them also, and they eat the leaves. Note- white (Irish) potato leaves are poisonous!

I guess Haupia is traditional in Hawaii. and I saw a recipe for a chocolate pie with the same Haupia topping(!) The three elements of the pie- crust, filling, and topping really work together. I think the chocolate would be amazing.

I would look in the flea market or in Asian markets for purple sweet potatoes. I'm sure the regular orange ones would work, but it wouldn't be the same.

The white potatos you call Irish potatos come from the deadly nightshade family. I THINK tomatos are also in that family, unlikely as it sounds. But I will have to do some checking on that.

What is amazing to me is that the tomato is a new world plant, so not discovered until 1492 when Columbus found it on his trips. That means the Italian use of tomato sauce had to be 16th century at its earliest, I wonder what they did before tomatos came along. Cheese? Basil? And the same with corn. Wasn't it a new world plant too? What equivalent did they have before hand?

This thread about the sweet potato is worthy of a lot of attention. Besides being tasty to eat, they are gorgeous in the flower beds. It sort of blurs the lines between veggie gardens and ornamental flower beds. My DH and I have disagreements about my habit of planting them together.

I have to say that I've never cared for sweet potatoes, sweet potato pie, or even pumpkin pie, but I remember my late MIL's description of sweet potato pie--"It tastes like candy!" She loved it.

The purple sweet potatoes would be fun to grow. I also have a memory of my grandmother putting a sweet potato in a glass of water on the window-sill. The vine would run all around the window frame.

I am going to try this recipe with a chocolate pie instead. I was also thinking about making parfaits, putting the chocolate and haupia in separate piping bags and making multiple layers, maybe even sprinkling chopped nuts on the layers. Kind of an Almond Joy parfait, if you will.

moccasinlanding, I was curious, too, about Italian cuisine before the tomato. My uncle, who was in Italy during WW2, said that their pizza was not like what we know today--it was mostly sliced tomatoes and other vegetables on crust. Just like here in the US, different regions may have had their own versions.

I found the following on Wikipedia:

The oldest Italian book on cuisine is the 13th century Liber de coquina written in Naples. Dishes include "Roman-style" cabbage (ad usum romanorum), ad usum campanie which were "small leaves" prepared in the "Campanian manner", a bean dish from the Marca di Trevisio, a torta, compositum londardicum which are similar to dishes prepared today. Two other books from the 14th century include recipes for Roman pastello, Lavagna pie, and call for the use of salt from Sardinia or Chioggia.[14]
Saffron

In the 15th century, Maestro Martino was chef to the Patriarch of Aquileia at the Vatican. His Libro de arte coquinaria describes a more refined and elegant cuisine. His book contains a recipe for Maccaroni Siciliani, made by wrapping dough around a thin iron rod to dry in the sun. The macaroni was cooked in capon stock flavored with saffron, showing Arab influence. Of particular note is Martino's avoidance of excessive spices in favor of fresh herbs.[11] The Roman recipes include coppiette and cabbage dishes. His Florentine dishes include eggs with Bolognese torta, Sienese torta and Genoese recipes such as piperata, macaroni, squash, mushrooms, and spinach pie with onions.[15]

Martino's text was included in a 1475 book by Bartolomeo Platina printed in Venice entitled De honesta voluptate et valetudine ("On Honest Pleasure and Good Health"). Platina puts Martino's "Libro" in regional context, writing about perch from Lake Maggiore, sardines from Lake Garda, grayling from Adda, hens from Padua, olives from Bologna and Piceno, turbot from Ravenna, rudd from Lake Trasimeno, carrots from Viterbo, bass from the Tiber, roviglioni and shad from Lake Albano, snails from Rieti, figs from Tuscolo, grapes from Narni, oil from Cassino, oranges from Naples and eels from Campania. Grains from Lombardy and Campania are mentioned as is honey from Sicily and Taranto. Wine from the Ligurian coast, Grecco from Tuscany and San Severino and Trebbiano from Tuscany and Piceno are also in the book.[16]

The pie calls for Okinawa Sweet potatoes, which have white skin, but are purple inside. I'm currently growing a similar one, but the skin is purple as well. They are rather dry if you bake them- I much prefer boiling them and mashing them.

As for where to get them- I don't know. A large produce stand or flea market, or maybe an Asian market? I intend to bring some with me when I move to SC, since I doubt they'll have them in the stores there.

Not sure our growing season is long enough here. I did grow some as water plant one summer around a fountain. Was really pretty but of course no spuds on the roots. Will give this a try next season and if nothing else the vines will be pretty.

Chris

A couple of days ago I visited an Asian market in our small Mass. town, and they had the Okinawa sweet potatos there, as well as a couple of other kinds of the sweet varieties. I was intrigued by their fresh veggie selections, and plan to go back. I love stir fry foods, and when I get my gas range, plan to do more wok cooking.

But I had to come back online via my DH's computer to get the recipe from FLGARGOYLE. My computer, which has all my recipes in AZZCARDFILE on it, is in the shop and I could not make sure I had all the ingredients. I am very excited anticipating a slice of Jay's pie.

So in the next few days, I hope to be back online to report how a pie-making novice does with this recipe.

I thank you for the link to the cuttings from mericlonelabs.com Jay.

The variety you are currently growing is probably like the OTHER one they had at the Asian market. It is more the color of a "new potato" yet shaped like a traditional sweet potato. I think the young lady called them a Japanese sweet potato/yam. I'll try to take a picture of the whole potato and the skin/flesh after I cut it open.

We're having folks over for Thanksgiving that have never been here before, and I'm planning a sweet potato casserole with purple sweet potatoes- should be interesting. I'll probably make the Purple Pie as well.

Up here in Massachusetts, I visited an Asian market and bought 3 of the Okinawa variety, and now have all the ingredients in good supply for making a pie. I also bought a new 9x13 baking pan. When I can, I will also check your mericlonelabs.com link and see when I should order the cuttings.

I plan to use Splenda instead of sugar. Every calorie reduction helps when you are diabetic.

Actually, I bought some of your Okinawas from the Asian market here in Mass. I may decide to take some of them home to Alabama and plant themm there. How hard could it be to grow them anyway.

As a result of my trip to the market a couple of weeks ago, I returned there yesterday and went over the entire stock in the store. I came home with some sweet/sour sauce mix, some rice vinegar, some real Chinese soy sauce, a jar of minced ginger, fresh ginger to plant at home, some black bean sauce, some sort of noodles, some Chinese cabbage, some really long green onion looking things....labelled in Chinese characters so not sure what they are exactly. And I may go back for some dried mushrooms...both Shitake and Portobellos. I did not get any duck eggs preserved in different herbs and sauces. The prices were all very reasonable too...much better than in the supermarket across the street.....and organically grown locally too.

A real discovery!

If you can spare one of the those Okinawan potatoes, stick it in a jar of water and put it in a sunny window. You can raise your own slips to plant in Alabama. Sweet potatoes need HOT weather; they won't do much until it gets hot out, so try to nurse one through the winter or something. Sweet potatoes will keep a long time in a cool (but not cold) environment.

I love Asian markets; we have a lot of them here. I found out that SC is a good climate for growing shiitake mushrooms in the woods, so you know I'll be trying that, too!

Quote from above:
"I know that she gets them at the flea market. We have a sizable Asian population here in the Tampa- St Pete area, so odd and unusual produce is available here. She will often show up with some weird-looking fruit that I've never seen before. The problem is- she doesn't know the English name for it!"

We grow Ube (purple yams) and would like to try the purple sweet potatoes.

Would you please please put a LINK to it that I might click on? I have had trouble with my computer lately and do not understand why things get messed up like this.

Another question, which my DH asked me to answer today, and of course I could not.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YAMS AND SWEET POTATOS?
RMPLMNZ reminds me of this when he mentions PURPLE YAMS and PURPLE SWEET POTATOS. A minor puzzle, but interesting.

Oh yes, I checked the Gurney Garden Catalog which arrived today, but they do not sell any purple yams OR sweet potatos. Bummer.

I added the link to mericlone-

I called the lab just now, and found out when to order the sets and when to plant them. Very friendly conversation.
I look forward to starting my sets around the end of February, when our garage restoration will be completed.

I'm planning for 25 plants of the Okinawas.

They informed me that the sweet potatos do not cross pollinate, so my chartreuse ornamentals with purplish red flesh should not cause a problem even if planted close together.

I am now visiting my Asian Supermarket, where I am trying all the different tubers. I got one purple skinned tater, and it turned out to be a white sweet potato on the inside. But it tastes just like our normal sweet potatos, looks like a baked Idaho on the inside.

I'm also falling in love with the different cabbages, just steam them and make a very light sauce, also they have some rice paper that looks like flour tortillas but is very fine. What I like about them is, they are so thin that it keeps my carb consumption down...a very good thing.

When I go this week, I'll pick up some of the WHITE skinned and PURPLE FLESHED sweet taters.

I tried to get to www.mericlonelabs.com and could not. They sell the slips for planting the Okinawa variety. But I've also found that Melissa's Produce online sells them, 10 pounds at a time. Pretty expensive, but if all else fails I could plant from that source and grow my own afterward.

My ornamental sweet potatos which I thought were gone, began to sprout early this month. Lovely chartreuse leaves. If you say the leaves are edible on yours, then why not on these too? Wouldn't it be great if KUDZU was edible? An endless supply..... :)

But I also put two Okinawa into a jar of water because they have small sprouts coming. Next week I'll put them in the ground too.

The white taters taste like a sweet baked potato, white flesh. I boiled some of the Okinawa last night to start my pie, and eating some of that was so low-key sweet and the texture and taste was like a boiled mung bean. I buy those canned also, and they are nice, but I think the Okinawa is going to be my favorite.

I need to learn more about Asian veggies, because I like the various cabbages, and would like to grow them. I wish I knew the names, but I plan to study the subject. There is a GW forum for Asian veggies and gardens, so I'll see if they are helpful. Did you read that there is a salmonella outbreak traced to papaya? I just threw out my papaya, don't want my parrots or me to get sick. I also bought two
dragon fruit, I think they might grow in my zone but think they like drier climates with low humidity.

I decided to try the Asian foods to help with diabetes. You seldom see a fat VietNamese, and it must be partly due to nutrition. I steam the veggies in a flavor of BETTER THAN BOUILLION and even the broth is low carb.

However, those things kept getting thicker and thicker, and so I added some nice fat free half and half....and instead of sugar, I put in a cup of Splenda. And the color is the most gorgeous lavender. I've done no further cooking, but it takes a big spoon to dip this out of the blender container. I think about 48 ounce size too.

And my parrots love it, the dogs love it, and I love it. I mean, what is not to like about this smooth concoction, which tastes and has the texture of a pudding. I did not add any vanilla, but I suppose I could have but I wanted to see the taste of the natural sweet potato. Also, I could have left out the Splenda and had a veggie smoothie.

I've downloaded a book on my Kindle which is a book about making green smoothies, out of raw foods. The blessed thing about such food, so many of the green foods are "free" foods that do not count against your diet if you are diabetic. That is one reason I've begun eating more dill pickles, sauerkraut, jalapenos, mustard on any sandwich, and then the SaraLee 10 carb whole wheat sliced bread....sometimes just one slice for an open faced sandwich.

But the green smoothies are espousing the raw food diet, going beyond vegan to raw, and eliminating cooked foods of any kind. You can go part way with this sort of diet, which is what I would do, but I will give it a go because by eating raw greens, I've already lost 8 pounds. Hard to take it off, but great when it happens.