Recipe Roasted Purple Yam Soup

[The Late Night Gourmet]

Ever since I first saw purple cauliflower on a cooking competition show, I've wanted to make a soup from them. Unfortunately, I have yet to find any. I have used orange cauliflower, but that color eluded me. Likewise, no purple potatoes, though I have found purple carrots. Then, my What's Your Favorite (Food) Color? post - which I repeated on my work cooking forum - yielded a response of "purple", specifically from yams that can be found in a local Asian market. So, I picked some up.

Externally, they look like potatoes.

Inside was quite a different matter. I expected them to be a solid purple color, but the reality is much prettier than that.

Looking more like a nebula in deep space than a type of food, I decided to come up with things that would work in a soup. Unlike literally every other soup I've ever made, the ingredient choices started with colors, and then whether or not they made sense. I wanted greens, oranges, maybe reds to offset the color. I considered sauteing carrot slices - orange discs offset against the purple would be stunning - but scratched that because I decided I didn't want this to be too sweet. These yams aren't as sweet as the orange variety, but they do have some sweetness.

I also dropped orange bell peppers, mostly because I didn't think they made sense in a soup. And, I did consider adding mint and/or saffron - so it would qualify for the current cooking challenges - but decided against both.

Not surprisingly, as I often do, I went in an Asian direction. I cut the yams into chunks, covered them in olive oil, salt, and homemade Chinese Five Spice, and oven roasted them.

I decided on oven roasting over just boiling so I could deepen the flavors. Then, I built the soup more or less the way I usually do. The finished product was thicker than I expected - something like split pea soup - but there was no mistaking it for a sweet dish. The orange circles you see are from a habanero jelly I made (I will post that recipe later). Very, very tasty.

ingredients

4 ears corn
1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined, retaining shells
4 cups water
1 carrot, chopped
1 teaspoon thyme
2 small onions, chopped - divided
2 pounds purple yams
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon Chinese Five Spice
1 tablespoon kosher salt
6 Calabrian chile peppers, diced
1 tablespoon galangal root, grated
1 ounce ginger, grated
2 tablespoons garlic, grated
5 ounces shiitake mushrooms, sliced (stems removed)
2 ounces green onion, sliced

Directions

1. Bring enough water to cover the corn to a boil. Add a pinch of salt, and boil for 8 minutes. Extract the corn, but retain 4 cups of the water. Cut the corn from the cobs and set aside, retaining the cobs.
2. Combine corn cobs, shrimp shells, water, carrot, thyme, and one onion in a large pot. Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer for 4 hours. Strain contents of pot out to retain the stock.
3. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. peel yams until the purple inside is exposed. Cut into 1" chunks, discarding any parts that aren't purple. Toss with 2 tablespoons olive oil, salt, and Chinese Five Spice. Arrange on baking sheets so they aren't touching. Cook for 20 minutes or until softened somewhat. Remove from oven and set aside.
4. While the yams roast, heat remaining oil in a large pot on medium. Saute onions until soft, about 10 minutes. Add peppers, galangal, garlic, ginger, and remaining chopped onion. Saute for about a minute, constantly stirring.
5. Add shrimp to the pan, stirring occasionally to keep spices from burning. Cook both sides of shrimp for minutes, then remove from pan - leaving the ginger and other contents in the pot - and set aside.
6. Add roasted yams to the pot, and stir to coat with the contents of the pan. Add stock. Stir, scraping up whatever sticks to the bottom of the pan. Lower to a simmer and cook for another 30 minutes, or until yams are soft.
7. Pour contents of pot in a blender and puree. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides, since the mixture will be thick.
8. Remove stems from mushrooms and slice in 1/4" pieces. Add to the pot and cook for 5 minutes. Add the corn, shrimp, and green onion and stir thoroughly.
9. Serve with habanero jelly of this isn't spicy enough for you.

 

[Morning Glory]

This looks like a lovely recipe. I can't get purple yams - but purple potatoes, carrots and cauliflower I can get!

 

[The Late Night Gourmet]

This looks like a lovely recipe. I can't get purple yams - but purple potatoes, carrots and cauliflower I can get!

They were at an Asian grocery store..maybe that's where you can find unusual things like this?

 

[Morning Glory]

They were at an Asian grocery store..maybe that's where you can find unusual things like this?

I do go to my local Asian store quite often - I can't recall seeing them but it could be I wasn't looking! I tweaked your photo (forgive me) to make the soup look more purple.

 

[The Late Night Gourmet]

I tweaked your photo (forgive me) to make the soup look more purple.

Thank you...this is actually more what it looks like, but (as my name implies) i was cooking - and taking pictures - late last night.

 

[Morning Glory]

I have some purple potatoes in the fridge which need using. So perhaps this would be a good destiny for them in lieu of yams.

 

[Morning Glory]

Thank you...this is actually more what it looks like, but (as my name implies) i was cooking - and taking pictures - late last night.

I understand. Its always best to take snaps in daylight if possible. If I cook at night I either don't photograph the food or I save it to photograph the next day. I'm lucky as I'm retired and home all day so a lot of the food I cook is made in daylight hours. The Pilau I posted recently I made and photographed in the daytime and it was then served up at night (it reheats perfectly).

 

[The Late Night Gourmet]

Updated to account for the addition of the corn. Funny, but I made the stock using 4 ears of corn, retaining the water I used to boil the corn, and even added the cobs to the stock...then forgot to add the kernels to the soup, and forgot that I used the cobs when I wrote the recipe the first time. In retrospect, I could have retained twice as much "corn water" for the stock to make it less of a stew.

 

[Morning Glory]

This might be of interest (I think purple sweet potato is the same as purple yam).

https://www.asdagoodliving.co.uk/food/features/ube-purple-sweet-potato

 

[The Late Night Gourmet]

This might be of interest (I think purple sweet potato is the same as purple yam).

https://www.asdagoodliving.co.uk/food/features/ube-purple-sweet-potato

I do recall seeing that article when someone told me about ube. You see what the cross-section of what I made looked like, and it's certainly not as brilliantly pastel purple as the article shows. But, the article also doesn't show the vegetable...just the end product. And, it doesn't show any recipes. These products all are sweet recipes that almost certainly don't add anything that would darken the color: it's all sugar, cream, butter and the like. Maybe they add something to enhance the purple? Most of what I added wouldn't affect the color much, except for the spice and the peppers, but roasting them very likely did, and the stock I made was far from clear, too. Maybe I'll try something similar where I focus on keeping the color's integrity.