Comunidad Health Foods

Are you sick of jicama yet? I might be, a little, but only because I pretty much single-handedly went through that monster of a root on my own the other week. If people are what they eat, right now I’d  definitely be a big, dense brown root veggie about the size of a small child’s head. So then why am I telling you about more jicama, you ask? Well, mostly because I thought this Thai Jicama Slaw would be a nice segue way between the cilantro jicama recipe from last week and the Thai chicken recipe I have coming up. Plus, a lot of the recipes I’ve been trying lately need some more tweaking and aren’t really blog-ready yet, making it slim pickins around these parts for blogging.

This recipe really came out of my own head with the help of what (little) I know of Thai cuisine and a session of perusing the world wide web. Most jicama recipes you see will incorporate lime and cilantro, and while that’s fabulous (see Heck of a Jicama Salad for proof), I had just gotten through an entire Tupperware container full of that particular recipe. If I didn’t try something new and different, I was going to experience jicama burn out, fast. Thankfully, I also discovered during my research that jicama pairs well with Thai flavors. It just so happens that I had half of a red bell pepper, half of a cucumber, some carrots, sesame oil, and peanuts that I was trying to use up. Clearly, this was fate.

I’m just now realizing that I also had a Thai curry paste sitting in my fridge that I’m trying to use, that would have worked well in this, too. Can’t win ‘em all.

What came out of this abundance of jicama and odd other ingredients I wanted to use was pretty great! It’s not what I would call spicy food, but there is a kick that you get every couple of bites from the crushed red pepper. It’s just as crisp and fresh tasting as other wonderful jicama slaw recipes, yet it’s different from a lot of the flavors you tend to find in them. You could scale back the dressing if you want – it’s pretty heavily dressed, but even the fats used are healthy so don’t let it scare you too much. A lot of jicama recipes don’t call for oil at all. You could also use less jicama and more other ingredients – this would make the slaw a little more vibrant. I just used what I had on hand, and encourage you to do the same.

One Year Ago: Lazy Balsamic Chicken Skillet

Yield: 6 servings

Prep Time: 15 minutes plus approximately 30 minutes to cut jicama¹

Inactive Time: 1 hour

(printable recipe)

3 tablespoons sesame oil

2 tablespoons lime juice

¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

freshly ground black pepper, to taste

375g sliced jicama (approximately half large jicama)

75g cucumber, julienned

40g shaved carrot (approximately 1 carrot)

65g red bell pepper slices

45g chopped snacking peanuts (approximately ¼ cup)

Whisk together the sesame oil, lime juice, red pepper flakes, and black pepper. Add the remaining ingredients and toss well to mix the vegetables and fully coat them with the dressing. Cover and place in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour before serving. Slaw will keep, refrigerated, for up to 2 days.

¹For instructions on how to cut a jicama, see this how-to post

Although it lacks the alliterative genius of Meatless Mondays or Wordless Wednesdays, sandwiched between those two days is what my family has come to call Pancake Tuesdays. Ironically, my drive to make pancakes for dinner tonight came as a result of a Thursday night pancake meal that came so close to winning me over, that I just had to try again with a few tweaks before telling you about it. The next day I was making my meal plan for the week, and tonight seemed like the perfect opportunity.

My first attempt with this recipe for Cinnamon-Applesauce Pancakes surprised me in several ways. First, I made them with L in mind, knowing his affinity for all things cinnamon and apples – yet biting into them, I didn’t really detect these two autumnal flavors at all. Instead, I was hit with Surprise #2: rather than a sweet, cinnamony delight, I was eating darn near the closest thing to From-Scratch Aunt Jemima pancakes as I’ve ever experienced. Now, I’m not calling Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix the Holy Grail of pancakes, but they’re what I grew up with and they will always hold a place in my heart. This sneaky recipe for cinnamon apple-turned-run-of-the-mill pancakes had potential.

During round two, I made a few modifications: first, I went to a light sour cream instead of almond milk. The original recipe calls for buttermilk but I goofed and only had almond on hand, so we went with that instead in Round One (L thought adding sour cream to the batter, which I wanted to do the first time, sounded weird). This produced a much thicker batter that reminded me of a bread dough or even (unsurprisingly) the bread pudding pancakes from last month. I also eliminated the whole eggs in favor of whites, mostly because in decreasing the yield I was left with a recipe that asked for “1/3 egg,” which just screamed egg white substitution to me. I kept the cinnamon-sugar + plain applesauce combo over the cinnamon-applesauce + plain sugar combo originally called for, which was a modification made in Round One as well, thinking the sweetness would be cut slightly and the cinnamon flavors could meander through without being too overwhelming. I also decided on a slightly funky topping: cole slaw (and L thought my cheddar cheese slices last time were weird!). I just thought it’d be a fun way to dinner-ify the dish, detracting just a little bit from the carbfest I was making for myself without being too distracting. It wound up being exactly that – a little citrusy with the slightest ever kick from the kohlrabi, radish and ground pepper – but mostly a clean tasting, crunchy accompaniment to the warm, soft pancakes. Because I didn’t change anything and am already posting a recipe here, check out the original if interested over at The Baking Barrister.

I was surprised by how much of a difference those few (ok, mostly the sour cream) changes made to the finished products! While both were delicious, the second attempt was much more homemade feeling – it strayed from the Aunt Jemima realm of pancakes and into a rustic, heartier round of batter that cooked up into a thick yet pillowy soft pancake. I’d like to try it with the originally called for buttermilk before I make any conclusive statements about whether or not this recipe will be put into my routine arsenal, but it is, by far, the best (standard, non-mix) pancake I have made.