Potato and Garlic-tasting

We now live a short walk from the largest market in Santiago, called La Vega, so we've started coming here to do our regular grocery shopping.  Prices are typically half to a third the prices of supermarkets, which adds up fast!

La Vega has anything and everything in the way of produce, so we bought three types of garlic and three types of potatoes to do a side-by-side tasting.

The garlics were: 

1) Chilean (reddish)

2) Normal

3) Chilote/Elephant

We sliced and fried one set of garlic and roasted entire cloves of garlic for another tasting set.

The potatoes were:

1) Papalisa (tiny pink/yellow ones)

2) Yellow (big yellow one)

3) Chilota (long skinny purple ones)

We roasted the potatoes in the oven whole.

Note that items 3) from each list are from the Chilean island of Chiloe and their names are derived from this.

The Spanish word for garlic "clove" is "diente" or tooth, which I find particularly fun.

Ajo Chilote (Elephant Garlic) and Ajo Chileno

The Ajo Chilote had a drier inside compared to the other types of garlic.

Fresh, peeled garlic

Pan-fried sliced garlic

Entire cloves of garlic, oven-roasted alongside the fried garlic

The complete tasting with roasted potatoes

We quickly decided that eating large amounts of plain garlic and potatoes is not the best, so we accompanied the spread with tomatoes, toasted white bread, and olive oil.

Results:
The Papalisa is from Peru and has a beet-like texture and mild flavor.  It is yellow with pinkish spots, so we've always noticed it in the market.  All the papalisas we see at the market are pretty soft/rubbery compared to the potatoes we're used too.  As far as we can tell, they're supposed to be sold this way.  Matt did not care for the papalisa and could not finish his portion.

The fried elephant garlic was really bitter... we couldn't finish it.  However, it was tasty in the roasted form.


Other than that most differences in the garlic and potatoes were subtle.  We both agreed that the normal garlic and yellow potato were the richest.  Fortunately/unfortunately these are the ones we normally buy.  I guess the exercise confirms our buying habits, which is positive, but we were hoping to branch out to something more exotic.