Any vegetable cooked in coconut cream is bound to taste good. It’s just that, delicious as they are, jackfruit, squash, banana heart and bamboo shoot can get… well, let’s just say, boring. That’s why I get excited when I come across takway at the local market. So excited, in fact, that I always forget to ask the vendors why they don’t carry it more often. It’s not like gabi (taro) was ever in short supply.
“That,” says an agriculturist friend, “is one reason it isn’t.” As it turns out, it is from the takway, or runners, that taro grows shoots, i.e., new plants (though the vegetable can be grown in other ways). A takway on the table is therefore one or more potential gabi that will forever remain un-sprouted, never to see the light of day, no thanks to you and me.
And coconut cream. Might as well blame that too. We’ve never cooked takway without it, which is to say we’ve never had takway any other way. Not that anyone’s complaining. Tunô/gata ennobles everything it touches, or, if not that, at least covers up for a vegetable’s less savory aspect, which in my case would be the sliminess of, say, okra, eggplant, and, yes, takway. Chili oil (that would be the specks of red orange in the photos) also helps, but that’s another story.
To be perfectly honest, I have never cooked takway before. Or gabi, for that matter. The itch factor scares me. The cook says you simply have to refrain from stirring the pot to prevent this from happening, and that’s just what I love to do: stir. Hi, my name is Chris and I’m a stirrer. I can’t leave my vegetables be, not even gabi. Let’s just say that if I ever tried cooking takway, “boring” would be the last word on anyone’s mind.
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