Kitchen Adventures!
SHEILA SQUILLANTE
Here we go, everybody--the first post in Food You (Still) Don't Know What to Do With, in which you send me your culinary conundrums and my son, Rudy, and I hang out together in the kitchen, talk about stuff and try to make some sense of them for you.
Thank you to Christina F. for sharing her struggles with jicama and for offering the following useful constraint:
I hope you do something other than sliced jicama for jicama
Challenge accepted, my friend! Though if I'm being honest, when I saw your note, I thought, yeah, what else can you do with jicama?
Well, two possible answers would be:
Jicama Salad with Apple, Carrot and Radish and Simple Roasted Jicama with Olive Oil and Herbs
I told Rudy to go learn some stuff about it so we could chat while we cooked. I wasn't sure how this would go, to be honest. Teenage boys can be...well, let's say laconic. But he was game! I told him that next time, he has to lead with questions for me. I can't wait to see where our conversations take us!
So first of all, as you can hear, I am not a professional podcaster! But I really liked the idea of recording our chats and now you get to hear how awesome and funny my kid is. And second of all, these audio clips are giving some serious ASMR! Maybe you like that? If not, sorry. I will try to remember not to put my phone too close to the cutting board next time. *chop, chop, cronch, cronch*
How does it taste?
Earthy. Watery. Not a potato, mom!
What's with all the wax?
You have to get the waxy skin off first. A peeler works fine. Then, we did matchsticks for the salad. We ended up leaving out the mango because it would have been weird texturally. I think we made the right choice.
I am so glad we've left behind the era of vegetables cooked to mush, scarring my children apparently for life. (And I'm not so fond of them myself, truth be told.) At least Rudy's come around a bit. Josie, on the other hand, will only eat raw veggies. I think the only exception is tomato sauce on pizza, but here she would remind us all that tomatoes are actually fruits, so never mind.
Nice carrots!
This last segment is my favorite because we get to talking about his food origin story (spoiler alert: onions!) and about how he feels about my writing about him in my nonfiction. (spoiler alert: okay!) I care about this stuff and asked both of my kids if they were comfortable having their lives splashed across the page before I sent the book around to publishers. They both gave their blessing. They are good kids. I think I'll keep them.
Also, they hoped that meant they would be famous! What do you say, dear readers? Shall we make my kids famous?
So, how did it taste?
Christina, I gotta say, I was pretty certain I would love the raw jicama salad (go ahead and substitute fresh parsley or mint for the cilantro if you have the soap thing) because those flavors are some of my favorites, but I really didn't know how I'd feel about the roasted jicama. I struggled a little to know what the correct texture should be once it was cooked, and decided it should retain some crunch and not be as soft as a potato. In the end, I dressed them with just olive oil and an herb blend (pictured in the audio clip above) that had rosemary, white pepper, sage and green peppercorns. (Fun fact: Josie gave that spice blend to Rudy for Christmas because she knows he's interested in African cuisine. So sweet, they are, these children.)
Anyway, the roasted jicama was delicious! Very much the opposite of the fresh, light summery flavors of the salad. Wintery and warming. I could imagine serving it as a Thanksgiving side dish. We ate both versions with chicken breasts coated with berbere spice blend that Rudy used making the Ethiopian dish, Doro Wat a while back. Whew, spicy! We dumped some plain Greek yogurt on top to cool it down and it worked beautifully.
I hope you'll give jicama some love and follow along to see what food we tackle next week. Do you have a good recipe for jicama to share with Christina? Do you have a food you don't know what to do with? Let me know in the comments here or on social media and I'll add it to our menu!
Buon apppetito!
Sheila & Rudy