Shanghai sells purple "space spuds" for Valentine's dinners

Feb 12, 2007, 10:27 GMT

Beijing - Restaurants in Shanghai are offering Valentine's dinners featuring a new purple variety of sweet potato grown from seeds that were irradiated on a manned space mission, state media said on Monday.

Several Shanghai restaurants have developed dishes using Purple Orchid Three 'space potatoes,' claiming that the unusual colour of the vegetables represents the 'nobility and romance' of Valentine's Day, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Hong Kong chef Kent KC Lee pioneered the Purple Orchid dishes at Shanghai's Carnation Restaurant, including a salad, appetizers, desserts, cakes and an iced drink, the agency said.

The restaurant has already used 'hundreds of kilograms' of the new purple sweet potatoes, the Carnation's general manager, Hua Guoqiang, told the agency.

Purple Orchid cod balls, made from cod fish covered by purple potato crisps, are one of the most popular dishes in the series, Hua said.

A local food and beverage association invited 30 well-known Shanghai chefs to try out 60 possible dishes using the 'space potatoes,' which were grown by Haikou Purple Orchid company in China's southern island province of Hainan.

The sweet potatoes were produced from seeds carried on the Shenzhou VI mission, China's second manned space flight, in October 2005.

Other 'space vegetables' developed in China from seeds irradiated in outer space include cucumbers, radishes, asparagus, tomatoes, aubergines, chili peppers, corn and cabbages.

Since 2003, vendors in Beijing have sold 'space watermelons' developed from seeds taken on earlier Shenzhou flights.