OVEN-ROASTED TARO

Taro/taro root or colocasia as it’s sometimes called is a starchy vegetable of the taro plant. Native to India and South-East Asia, taro also forms a staple in diets in Hawaii, the Caribbean and Africa. Taro ‘root’ is actually the corm—swollen underground stem—of the plant, so technically not a root. Just some casual food semantics for you! The leaves and the bulbous vegetable are both edible in its cooked form, but toxic when uncooked. But worry not, I got you covered.

I want to be upfront with you here though. Although the recipe is titled ‘oven-roasted’, it actually uses two different methods of cooking: boiling first and then (oven) roasting. As cumbersome as this process may sound, the effort on your part is quite minimal and not so hands-on as the traditional stove-top method.

Taro—being as slimy as okra innards—needs to be boiled first to peel away the skins. I use a pressure-cooker here to speed up this process, but just a regular boil in a pot is plenty sufficient. Once the slippery skins have been peeled off, they are traditionally sliced into thin rounds and pan-fried with oil and spices until golden on the outside. This method works brilliantly and tastes great, but my issue with it is this: taro, like most starchy vegetables, guzzles oil. Also, it takes a long time to get it evenly golden on the outside (and it never goes crispy unless deep-fried). Oven-roasting addresses both of these problems. Roasting the thin slices at a high temperature ensures good crunch and even cooking.