For all of you who have patiently waited to hear Farmer Lee Jones sing about the farm’s vegetables, your patience is now being rewarded! Farmer Lee is so excited about the new crop of oca plants that he has burst into song.
Here’s we record this moment and its lyrics for posterity:
Oca, oca
Zippity doo
I've got a tuber for you
Oca!
Farmer Lee hesitates to share his ideas about how to prepare this South American root vegetable that’s long been grown in the Andes—but then his enthusiasm overtakes him. His suggestions include baked oca, boiled oca, fried oca, oca tubers in soup . . . anywhere your imagination takes you: from stews to desserts (by replacing rhubarb or gooseberries, for example, when baking a pie) and much more.
The oca tuber has a potato-like flavor, sweet yet slightly tangy. Flavor notes range from chestnut-sweet to those of apple and celery. When raw or lightly cooked, the oca plant offers up a satisfying crunch that’s similar to biting into a carrot. When cooked, the consistency is similar to cooked potato with sour cream or like winter squash. Skin of oca vegetables is shiny and waxy, easily cleaned, in a mix of pink and cream. When cooked, the two-to-six-inch-long tubers turn pale yellow. As Farmer Lee digs up some of the new crop of oca tubers in the Instagram video highlighted above, he notes how loaded they are in the ground, little jewels that vary in size, which naturally lends them to a variety of applications. He admits that it took a little while for the farm to figure out the best way to grow this tuber from an ancient culture that blended those of the Spanish, African, Japanese, and Chinese—but, as his happy song indicates, our oca plants are ready for you! Just let your product specialist know what you need.