Achocha Roundup

In previous episodes I have mentioned this interesting plant. As I said, it came from HDRA. I picked it at a venture as one of my six seed choices after my father gave me a subscription to their Heritage Seed Library. You know when you go to a foreign restaurant... don't you always have to pick the one dish you don't know what it is?

HDRA says it is described as 'One of the Lost Crops of the Incas' and some have wondered 'how?'. In a good year, this is a plant that willl take over if not controlled... it has potential as a crop, and as an ornamental.

Growing...

I got half a dozen individual plants going in pots on the kitchen window shelf. In late May I planted half in the greenhouse and half outside with a bit of net to climb. The greenhouse ones grew quicker but put out little fruit - perhaps because they need insects to pollinate them. The outdoor ones grew quite quickly too. In fact they grew quick enough that before I knew it they were growing over various other things (my purple sprouting broccoli from the Spring that I kept going for the leaves, for example) and I had to hack away and re-route them up yet more netting held on stakes.

This rough treatment may have slowed them down a bit. By October, though, I had a hedge of Achocha vines at the back of the veg garden, perhaps eight feet wide and six or seven at the highest. And it had fruited merrily:

...Picking...

For some time I'd been picking the fruit idly and munching them in the garden - texture a bit like a green pepper, flavour a bit like a cucumber. And occasionally putting them in salads. But a bit bemused, really. Then came the first frost and the vines started going a bit wilty and I realised I had to do something with the fruit or see them go to waste. So I picked and picked and ended up with about ten pounds:

...Cooking...

Then I still didn't know quite what to do with them. They were all a bit old for salad. I put a lot of them in curries and stews, using them the same way you might use onions. This was fine except for the riper ones which needed to have the seeds taken out before cooking. Then I realised I wasn't going to eat them all in time so I made pickle with what was left, by boiling them up in a mixture of vinegar and garam masala and cooking the whole lot down until all the water had evaporated and bottling with hot oil on top to preserve. I cracked a jar this week with a curry and it was pretty tasty.

...and Starting Again

In a way the most amazing thing about this interesting and versatile plant was the seeds. Before cooking and pickling I popped the seeds out of all the riper fruit, and they're very odd. In the immature fruit they're imbedded in pulp, but as the fruit matures a stalk forms on which the seeds hang insided the hollow shell of green flesh. They look like artefacts - counters in a game or primitive coins, don't you think?

They're about a quarter of an inch high. I kept an envelope full for next year, and if you'd like half a dozen, to experiment with the Achocha lifestyle, drop me a mailing address.

More by jbr | Oct 13, 2005 | | TrackBack ()