What is This?

I always look back at my Uni days in Aust with amazement. It is difficult to believe that I had lived such a sheltered live that when I arrived here for my undergrad studies, I had never cooked a meal for myself or washed my own clothes. During my first year, I spent much of my time eating foods that came out of a can or a packet. In my second year, my meals consisted mainly of rice (thanks to Dad's foresight to send me a rice cooker) and steamed egg/vege/whatever that will fit in a little plate atop my cooking rice). I can now cook a semi decent meal on my own and recognise most food stuff, although I still have my own adventures in that area.

The other day I bought a root vegetable which I thought was 'fen kot' which my mom usually buys to boil soup. It is sweet, and has heat reducing properties. When I got to the cashier and the produce was scanned, it appeared as sweet potato (white skin). Now, I have never seen a white skin sweet potato and have no idea what to do with it. There were 5 other people waiting in queue so I didn't want to return it. I got home and the sweet potato remained in my fridge for a week before my Malaysian friends paid me a visit. They told me that I can't hope to cook anything savoury with it, only sweets. It seems that the particular variety was cross bred with yam so it has white skin and purple insides. It was advisable to steam it and eat it on it's own or cook dessert with it, like bubur cha cha. That was a challenge. The last time I ever cooked a dessert was the gingko nut/sweet bean curd sheet dessert when I was trying to impress Gaz during our courting period. He didn't like it but finished his bowl anyway. It wasn't sweet or tasty enough. But I had to do something with the sweet potato so, this is what I did with it - cooked it with rock sugar and added sago to it. Not much of a sweets person, I gave half of it to Gaz's mom and had two bowls myself (was quite tasty). Gaz came home after work that night and polished off the rest. Not bad huh?

Purple rings in the sweet potato. I expected more purple
Sago swimming in the pot. Sago sinks to the bottom after it's cooked