We cooked air potato (and still learning about its toxicity)! - Dipesh Dulal

Few years back, I was surprised to see a wild climber which had been expanding over the trees in my backyard had some potato-like growth on its shoots. While I was new to the farmhouse to settle for good, I did not know what this species was. While it was apparently similar to the yam plant, villagers suggested me that they call this wonder tuber gittha (गिट्ठा) and they would usually cook it than waste it.

Gittha: the air potatoes are finally welcomed in our kitchen.

Initially, I ignored them. Over the years, we as a family have been emerging as organic activists. Hence, this year, we decided to try this and integrate the same with our movement. It took us almost 5 years to accept this wild aerial tuber as something that can be welcomed to our kitchen.

We did not decide out of blue. In fact, we cooked these tubers also because we ran out of potatoes in the house.

Look at the leaves of air potato; these look like those of yam plant.

Regarding toxicity of air potato
I have read many authentic articles regarding toxicity of air potato. Hence, we do not encourage valued readers go after this plant without learning details about it. One needs to learn about the toxic species, toxic parts, methods to remove the toxicity, and so on. In our case, we consumed the aerial tuber of this plant by peeling off the tuber skin, and a bit deeper; and properly cooking it. We do not avidly consume it; for instance 3-4 times a year, with significant gap between each instance.

As we used this as an alternative to potato, one can assume that we could have mixed this with another vegetable. Of course, we cooked this along with green amaranth leaves!

After a self-fulfilling perception of having a healthy morning meal, I thought of putting our (my family's) action in one of the corners of global food scenario.

Why is gittha (गिट्ठा) called air potato in English?
I assume that the name holds true. The tuber looks like potato and it grows aerially attached to the expanding shoots of this specific climber plant.

Air Potato is a wild climber that can be used as credible food source.

We know that we are feeble in production capacity so that we could sustain our food sources with locally grown/produced and organic stuffs. However, our action can prove to pose an alternative thought pattern in the space and time fluidity that has been evident with consumerism, mass media, social media, algorithms, accelerated climate change and all that lie in the spectrum of wicked problems of the world.