Chips ahoy!

To get to the giant granadillas, the owner’s son scaled a nearby tree that looked too twiggy to support his weight. That was how come I kept looking up, willing those branches to hold, and so noticed the strange fruits. They looked like…

“Potato,” the owner said. “That’s what we call it, anyway.” The damn things almost looked the part, if from a distance. On closer inspection, their skin was rough as bark, and pitted where worms had eaten into.

Was it edible? “Even better than true potato,” the son said.

It was not. More like sweet potato, if you ask me. But before that, I took to the Internet for “fruit that looks like potato.” Google pointed me to the air potato, Dioscorea bulbifera, a member of the yam family and native to the Philippines (among other places). Wikipedia says that it is one of the most widely consumed yam species. That makes this “fruit” a tuber, indeed like potato.

Peeled, the flesh turned out to be a vivid yellow-green. It discolored easily, though, a trait it shared with potato. The disconcerting thing was that it secreted a copious amount of mucus similar to that of okra or aloe vera. If there’s one texture I hate, it’s that.

But then I had decided upon the ultimate test of the thing’s potato-ness. Chips! I sliced it as thinly as I could, washed off the slime (I tried to, in any case), then steeped the slices in brine for 30 minutes, patting them dry before frying.

The first batch I cooked too long; once out of the oil, the chips darkened and tasted appropriately burnt. For the next batches, I waited until the slices turned just a shade golden before removing them from the pan. I was apprehensive because they were still bubbling at that point, which meant that there was still water in them, but I had already tasted the alternative, so there.

I shouldn’t have worried. They were perfectly crispy, if a tad more delicate than potato. Very good, if I may say so. If this is indeed air potato, it could very well be a cheaper alternative to potato. Air potato grows extremely quickly, up to eight inches a day (in some places, it is considered a noxious weed). Like granadilla, it has been largely overlooked, even ignored. Well, I challenge you to ignore those chips.