Chilli Roasted Oca With Hedgerow Pesto: Two Recipes for the Price Of One | Tin and Thyme (2024)

Have you grown ocas, been given some or found them in your veg box? Not sure how to cook them? These chilli roasted oca tubers make a delicious, colourful and easy meal with wild garlic and hazelnut pesto and some sort of green on the side.

CT has been interested in The Lost Crops of the Incas for a very long time. One he’s been growing over the years isoca (Oxalis tuberosa). I was recently gifted a kilo of beautifully coloured oca tubers from The Guild of Oca Breeders. This was a rare treat as I hardly ever getto try any of CT’s precious tubers.

You can prepare them in pretty much anyway you’d cook a potato, but I like them best roasted. Here I give you my recipe for a quick and simple dish of chilli roasted oca with hedgerow pesto.

Why Oca?

People often ask me what oca taste like. My best description, in fact my only one, is that they are sort of like a slightly lemony potato. They come in a variety of colours and some taste more lemony than others. Like potatoes, some have a waxy textureand some are floury.

They are all delicious. In my experience, the white ones seem to be the flouriest and have virtually no tang at alland the bright pink ones,the most lemony. In the batch I cooked for the chilli roasted oca, it was the orange ones that were the sharpest.

Oca has been grown in the Andes for thousands of years. It’s important there for enhancing food security as it has a high nutritional content. It also helps control pests and diseases by improving crop rotations.

It’s second only to the potato for the number of tubers grown. Oca isa good source of Vitamins A, B and C as well as iron, zinc flavanoids and fibre. In New Zealand, tubers are also widelyavailable but they’re known as yams.

We’ve already got potatoes, so why do we need oca you may well ask? Variety is the spice of life and it’s always good to have some alternatives. They are a valued crop back in Peru and Bolivia, even though they have plenty of potatoes. But the key to oca is that, unlike potatoes, they don’t get blight.

The Guild of Oca Breeders

A couple ofyears ago CT and a group of like mindedoca enthusiasts decided that trying to grow bigger oca that tuberised in the UK growing season was more than one person could cope with on their own. TheGuild of Oca Breederswas born. Their mission? ” Tobreed a variety of oca that responds much better to European variations in day length and climate”.

Oca’s are daylight sensitive, as was the original potato. Left to their own devices, they don’t start to tuberise until the days and nights are of equal length, i.e. in September and October. By then, it’s too late in ourseason for them to grow to a decent size. The Guild are breeding new varieties and selecting the best producers in an attempt to recify this problem.

Ocas aren’t easy to find, but they are becoming more widely available in the UK these days. Look out for them at farmer’s markets. I even saw some for sale in a small Cornish shop a couple of months ago.

If you’d like to try growing some of your own, you can buy carefully selected tubers from The Guild of Oca Breeders. You’re unlikely to be able to source such good specimens from anywhere else. If you’re a keen grower and would like to get involved in breeding ocas, the Guild are always looking for new members.

Chilli Roasted Oca with Hedgerow Pesto

So back to the recipe for chilli roasted oca tubers. They make a delicious and easy meal with wild garlic and hazelnut pesto and some sort of green on the side. We accompanied them with a few Brussels sprouts that were loitering in the fridge.

I made the pesto with roasted hazelnuts and the first foraged wild garlic of the year. The slight sharpness from the chilli roasted oca cuts through the richness of the pesto and makes a perfect accompaniment.

Wild garlic has a really short season, so use whatever pesto you’re able to make. You’ll find a few ideas a bit further down the post. For a vegan option, this carrot top pistou recipe with lemon is really good.

If you’re looking for more oca recipes, I have a delicious one for a vegan oca peanut stew with kale. Definitely worth checking out. And these oca latkes are pretty good too. There’s a vegan version as well as a more traditional one.

Blender & Air Fryer

I used my power blender to make the pesto. It made quick work of blending the wild garlic and hazelnuts. I roasted the ocas in my Air Fryer, but they can be donejust as well in the oven. The oca’s bright colours fade a little during roasting, but they still look attractive and appetising, though I do say so myself.

Other Recipes for Pesto You Might Like

• Basil & pistachio pesto via Greedy Gourmet
• Carrot top pesto via Fuss Free Flavours
• Cavolo nero & hazelnut pesto via Family Friends Food
• via Tin and Thyme
• via Tin and Thyme
• Spinach and pea pesto via Tinned Tomatoes
• Watercress pesto via Tin and Thyme
• Wild garlic pesto two ways via Tin and Thyme

Keep in Touch

Thanks for visiting Tin and Thyme. If you make these chilli roasted oca with wild garlic & hazelnut pesto, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. And please rate the recipe. Have you any top tips? Do share photos on social media too and use the hashtag #tinandthyme, so I can spot them.

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If you’d like moreair fryer recipes, follow the link and you’ll find I have quite a lot of them. All delicious and nutritious, of course.

Choclette x

Chilli Roasted Oca. PIN IT.

Chilli Roasted Oca With Hedgerow Pesto – The Recipe

Linkies

I’m sending this recipe for chilli roasted oca with hedgerow pesto to Jac at Tinned Tomatoes for Meat Free Mondays.This is really the end of Brussels sprout season and mine were only just hanging on in there. I had to take an extra layer or two off them, but they were saved from the compost heap. So, I’m sending this post to Elizabeth’s Kitchen Diary for theNo Food Waste Challenge.