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

Now that we’ve gone over the nitty gritty technique of how to cut a jicama, it’s time to get to the good stuff – the recipe. Jicama is a pretty versatile ingredient because of its mild flavor. Some people whisk up a simple lime vinaigrette to poor over julienned jicama for a raw, healthy take on fries. Other people chop up jicama and sprinkle it over their salad for a nice crisp crunch. This recipe uses jicama the way I like it best – as the basis for what is essentially a much cooler, hipper, tastier version of a slaw. It’s kind of like taking those jicama “fries” I just mentioned and putting them over a bed of lettuce. It’s sweet without added sugars, crunchy and crisp without any vats of oil, and bursting at the seams with flavor. If you’ve never had jicama before, this is a great first recipe to try. Once you do, let me know that you’re ready for the next step up with this other great jicama salad recipe I have waiting (im)patiently in the wings (this one, thai inspired)!

One Year Ago: El Diablo Black Bean Casserole

Two Years Ago: Vanilla Almond French Toast

Yield: 6-8 servings

Prep Time: 35 minutes (including chopping the jicama) plus 15 minutes down time

Cook Time: 0 minutes

(printable recipe)

½ large bulb jicama root, peeled and julienned

a sprinkling of coarse kosher salt

½ cup lime juice

1-2 hearts of romaine, coarsely chopped

¼ cup finely chopped cilantro

1 teaspoon ground cumin

5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil¹

Place the jicama sticks in a very large bowl and sprinkle with salt and 2-4 tablespoons lime juice. Toss to coat, then fill the bowl completely with cold water. Let the jicama sit for 15 minutes before draining well.

Meanwhile, stir together 2-4 tablespoons of lime juice with the cilantro and cumin. Whisk in the olive oil to emulsify. Arrange the lettuce on a serving platter and top with the drained jicama. Pour the cilantro-lime dressing over the jicama as evenly as possible, and serve.

Leftovers may be kept refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Last week was quite an experience for me. For L’s senior week – the week between finals and graduation where most people go to the beach and drink themselves silly – we chose to return to campus for a relaxing few days. The first half of the week, we holed ourselves up in his room and did a whole lot of nothing much. The second half, one of his suitemates and his girlfriend came up, and we did a few touristy things, took walks, played Frisbee golf, and got more sunburnt than I care to admit. It was a nice week, but there’s one part of it that posed a bit of a challenge: no dining hall options. All food venues on campus closed down and L’s meal plan expired along with his last final, so we were left to fend for ourselves in the jungle of unwashed pots and pans and stained countertops that is the communal kitchen in his dorm. He has a full-size refrigerator, a sink, and a microwave in his suite, but there’s only one central oven for the full dorm building and let me tell you – it’s skeevy. Majorly skeevy. But it was either brave the communal kitchen or starve/live off of PB&J for 3 square meals a day for a full week (or I guess order take out constantly, but this goes back to all 4 of us being poor college students). Skeevy kitchen it was.

A few good meals did come out of these less-than-ideal circumstances, though tweaking the end result was necessary on most occasions and I learned the absolute importance of tasting meals as you go, particularly when the only measuring utensil you have is a plastic 1.5C liquid measuring cup. When I made the dressing for this particular chickpea & asparagus quinoa salad (originally a brown rice salad), I was very heavy-handed with the peanut butter (very surprising, I’m sure) and a little shy with the lemon.  I added more lemon to the leftovers for lunch the next day and was significantly more satisfied with that, as the original attempt was a little heavy from the imbalanced ingredients. I also think this would be better with tahini (what the original called for) or even almond butter (to complement the almonds in the dish), but the peanut butter was successful enough that I can assure you it will work with whatever nut butter you have on hand. You could even forgo the nut butter altogether and make it more of a vinaigrette by substituting sesame oil. I found the original to be a little on the bland side, so I added salt, pepper, and a little cinnamon, which really perked the dish right up. I also added a handful of spinach the next day to bulk up the veggie content, and I really liked it that way. L really liked it the first night (he didn’t have any of the leftovers), but found it so filling (without meat! Crazy!) that he couldn’t even finish his portion of it.

 

 

I think next year I’ll kick Passover off with a post about what I like to eat during the holiday to stay healthy and satisfied. It slipped my mind this year, and by the time someone suggested it to me, I wasn’t sure my advice would be particularly helpful – after all, in just over 24 hours we can all eat grains again. This year has been particularly challenging for me, as I left my box of quinoa at my parent’s house – talk about low carb meals! I admit that it has forced me to make some less healthy choices than I would like – as excited as I get about a successful and filling low carb meal here and there, I don’t like actually following a full on “low carb diet” – and I am very, very much looking forward to dinner tomorrow night. I’m not sure what I’ll make yet, but the box of lasagna noodles in my pantry is looking mighty fine right about now.

Then again, so does this recipe for grilled chile quesadillas! I know, I know, I just told you about quesadillas – how repetitive of me! But hear me out. First of all, it’s National Grilled Cheese Day, and I still don’t have a legitimate grilled cheese recipe for you so I want to make do with what I have. Second of all, this one speaks to all of the vegetarians out there (I haven’t forgotten about you!), whereas yesterday’s recipe contained chicken. I thought it would be a nice 30 Minute Thursday post to follow up a very unconventional quesadilla with a much more classic one. Plus, I ate it with a side of succotash salad, which – if you don’t follow the corn rule – could actually be eaten on Passover. So I like to think that this post does a good job of pleasing everyone this week.

This quesadilla was absolutely delicious. There was a perfect amount of cheese and using the smoked cheddar was incredible. All I would change next time would be to increase the amount of chile peppers slightly. I poured a spicy salsa verde on top (which, by the way, could not have been easier to make), which I made a little hotter by not removing the seeds, so that made up for the lack of kick from the quesadilla itself.  The succotash salad was equally tasty, and even easier to make. It wasn’t overly flavorful – it made a good pair for a spicy dish because it was refreshing and cooling. All I would say with this is to choose your oil for the dressing wisely – I used sesame and could absolutely taste it. A canola oil would be much more neutral, but otherwise go for a decent quality oil with a flavor that would go well with the rest of the dish, because you can definitely taste it. Also, if you have a little leftover succotash and a little leftover salsa verde, try mixing them together - it's fantastic!