Indonesian Boiled Sweet Potatoes and Plantains: Kolak Pisang Ubi

"Scientifically," sweet potatoes and yams are not the same, but in every day terminology, especially in the United States, the terms yams and sweet potatoes are interchangeable. Why? Well, true sweet potatoes are thought to have come from the "New World" (what is now Peru), and yams were brought to the "New World" from Africa by slaves. The thing was, not all Africans brought to the New World had yams, but they found that sweet potatoes were similar to their yams, and the term was applied to the sweet potatoes in the New World. 

Pandan leaves are blade-like leaves from a tropical plant, and they are 1 to 2 feet in length (they have to be cut or folded in order to add them to recipes). Pandan leaves are used in cooking and sometimes in medications in the Philippines and southern Asia. They are available in Asian stores and they aren't all that expensive, and they can be frozen (or kept frozen, as they might well be sold that way). If you don't want to look for pandan leaves, you can skip using them in the recipe. It won't be quite the same, but it also won't bring about an attempt to end the world, but head to a bomb shelter, just in case. What's that siren?

This is a sweet dish, but you can certainly use less sugar, if you so desire.

 

Ingredients:

 

1 pound sweet potatoes or yams, peeled

2 ripe plantains (black peel), peeled

1 pandan leaf

6 tablespoons coconut sugar (or 5 tablespoons brown sugar)

2 inch piece ginger, peeled and sliced

1 1/2 cups water

1 cup coconut milk

1 cinnamon stick

1 teaspoon salt

Cut both the sweet potatoes and plantains into pieces of about 1/2 to 1 inch. To a pan, add the water, coconut milk, pandan leaf, sliced ginger, cinnamon stick and salt over medium heat. Bring to a boil, add the sugar and stir well to dissolve. Add the sweet potato and plantain pieces, adjust heat to maintain a steady simmer, cook until sweet potatoes and plantains are tender.

WORD HISTORY:

Crop-The ultimate origin of this word is a bit shaky, but it "seems" to go back to the Indo European root "ger," which had the notion "twist, bend," with a figurative use for "crawl." If true, this would make "crop" related to "group" and to "cripple," both from the Germanic roots of English. Old Germanic had "kruppaz," meaning "a mass of something pressed/compressed together; thus, a cluster;" thus also more specifically, "a pouch in the lower part of the neck of many bird species (part of their digestive system)." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "cropp," meaning "the pouch in a bird's neck," but also, "a sprout (not including the root), the top of plants in a rounded shape," later applied more and more about grain plants, which then progressed to "the collective production of grain in a growing season;" thus the expanded modern meaning in the mid 1500s for specific fruits, vegetables and grains produced in a season (example: "The tomato crop in parts of the U.S. was limited by bad weather in the spring"), which later expanded into non food products (example: "The crop of evening television shows is pathetic," and, "The crop of college football players ready to turn professional this year is a pretty good one"), but also for hair, circa 1800 (example: "The young actor's thick crop of blond hair gave him a chance to play many roles of northern Europeans"). The Old English form then became "croppa," then "croppe" (with the 'e' usually pronounced as 'eh/ah'), before the modern form "crop." The upper part of plants meaning led to the usage of "crop" for a "whip," then especially for a short type of whip used for horseback riding. The verb form came from the noun around 1200 and simply meant "to cut off the tops of plants," which then led to more generalized usage, but especially "to cut off the top of an animal's ear" (seemingly the late 1500s) and later into photography "to crop a photo." The expression "crop up" (likely replaced in some cases in modern English by "pop up") apparently comes from the notion of a sprout coming up through the soil, and then later used in mining jargon in England in the 1600s in reference to "layers of rocks or ore becoming visible through the soil." Forms in other Germanic languages: German has "Kropf" meaning goiter, craw part of the digestive system of many birds, (rare) head of cabbage (from the idea of "round growth"), Low German has "Kropp," craw part of the digestive system of many birds, goiter, Dutch "krop," goiter, head of lettuce, also used at times for fruit or vegetable harvest, riding whip, Danish "krop" meaning "body" (in senses of for live creatures, flesh, carcass, parts of devices like planes or vehicles, insect abdomen), Icelandic "kroppur" meaning "body," Norwegian "kropp" meaning "body," Swedish "kropp" also meaning "body." Note: Old French borrowed the word from Germanic ("seemingly" from Old Norse, but perhaps from Frankish?) giving modern French "coupe," meaning "the back quarters of a horse, the hips, the buttocks."