I recently got back from vacation and discovered that a couple of my oca plants had overtaken the pathway separating their bed from the rest of my garden. Remembering the post about oca pie, I thought I would try adapting a rhubarb crisp recipe to oca stems, given that I was about to have a glut of trimmings!
I started with the New York Times recipe, and substituted the chopped rhubarb cup-for-cup with the oca stems, prepared the same way as for oca pie (trimmed and cut into 1/2" to 1/3" segments). I used a Meyer lemon from my tree for the “lemon or orange”. I didn’t make any other changes to the recipe.
6 cups of oca stem, freshly harvested and coarsely trimmed. Alas, all of my plants have green stems, no red for me:
chopped up (30.5oz / 865g):
in the dish, ready to top:
topped:
and finally, served. I was pleased to see what little red I had stuck around to provide at least a little visual contrast:
It was good! I think I actually would have enjoyed it even more tart, despite there being relatively little sugar in it already – definitely more experimenting to do. I suspect it would also be pretty tasty as a jam…
I did run into a few unpleasant tough fibers while eating it, but there were few enough of them that I suspect it was only one of the stems. I remember that one stem was way thicker than the others, so my guess is that it was that one. Next time I’ll see if I can spot those fibers before cooking to confirm that theory.