September 26, 2019 - This Week's Box Contents, Featuring Jicama!

Cooking With This Week's Box

Italian Garlic: Honey Fermented Garlic

Salad Mix: Salad Mix with Balsamic Vinaigrette

Green Boston OR Red Batavia Head Lettuce: Black Bean Vegetarian Lettuce Wraps

Jalapeno Peppers: Jicama and Carrot Slaw with Honey Lime Dressing (see below); Jalapeno Popper Deviled Eggs

Broccoli Romanesco or Cauliflower: Cauliflower Slaw

Poblano Peppers: Caramelized Onion & Roasted Poblano Dip

Broccoli Raab: Baked Pasta with Broccoli Raab and Sausage; Mediterranean Gratin with Almond Breadcrumbs

Purple or Orange Carrots: Jicama and Carrot Slaw with Honey Lime Dressing (see below)

Jicama: Baked Jicama Chips (see below); Jicama and Carrot Slaw with Honey Lime Dressing (see below)

Cilantro:  Jicama and Carrot Slaw with Honey Lime Dressing (see below)

Leeks: Leeks Vinaigrette; Leek & Mushroom Quiche

Sugar Dumpling Squash: Sausage & Egg Stuffed Sugar Dumpling Squash

Baby Spinach or Baby Arugula: Apple Cranberry Spinach Salad; Arugula Salad with Pears, Prosciutto and Aged Gouda

Black Bean Vegetarian Lettuce Wraps
photo from acouplecooks.com

Welcome to another week of CSA eating!  This week’s vegetable treasure is a bit less flashy than most vegetables.  Jicama is a humble vegetable, but one we’ve come to love and appreciate—both because we like to eat it and because we like the challenge of growing it!  It’s often eaten raw as a snack or used in raw salads and slaws.  One of this week’s featured recipes is for Jicama and Carrot Slaw with Honey Lime Dressing (see below).  Eat this on its own as an accompaniment to a sandwich or bowl of soup, or use it as a topping on tacos or even a lettuce wrap.  This recipe for Black Bean Vegetarian Lettuce Wraps calls for serving them with a mango salsa, but they’d also be good with the Jicama Carrot Slaw!  The second featured recipe is a simple one, Baked Jicama Chips (see below).  Everyone loves a good vegetable chip and of course every chip needs a dip.  My suggestion is to turn the poblanos in this week’s box into Caramelized Onion & Roasted Poblano Dip.   I’ve mentioned this recipe in previous years because it’s a good one and is on my favorites list!  It’s a good dip for chips, but it’s also good on baked potatoes, spread on sandwiches, and stirred into scrambled eggs.

We’re moving into fall greens and that means leafy green salads are back on the menu!  This week’s boxes will contain either spinach or baby arugula.  Fall greens go very nicely with fall fruit such as pears and apples.  This week I have two suggestions for fruity greens salads.  The first is an Apple Cranberry Spinach Salad.  This salad features fresh apple, dried cranberries, walnuts, feta  and a honey-dijon dressing that is more of a vinaigrette than a creamy dressing.  You can eat this as a side salad or add some cooked chicken and turn it into a main dish salad.  The second recipe is an Arugula Salad with Pears, Prosciutto and Aged Gouda.  This is a slightly different take on a dijon based vinaigrette, which is a nice contrast to the fattiness of the prosciutto and gouda as well as the sweet pears.  Of course, you can mix and match your greens in these two salads.

Balsamic Vinaigrette, photo from barefeetinthekitchen.com

We also have salad mix this week!  I like to keep a jar of one of my favorite, basic salad dressings handy for quick salads on the fly.  One of my favorite go-to recipes is for Balsamic Vinaigrette.  If you have a jar of this in the refrigerator, you can build a quick salad in no time at all!  Toss it with some fresh salad mix and then start adding toppings as you wish.  You might include some thinly sliced red onion, sweet peppers, shredded carrots, dried or fresh fruit, toasted almonds, and the list could go on!

Last week we featured broccoli raab along with a recipe for Mediterranean Gratin with Almond Breadcrumbs.  This is a baked pasta dish that is more on the lean side, not cream based.  If you prefer cream based, try this recipe for Baked Pasta with Broccoli Raab and Sausage.

Sadly, this is our last week for leeks.  One of our members used her leeks last week to make this classic leek dish, Leeks Vinaigrette.  I have to mention it because it is not only a simple, classic way to prepare leeks, but also because she said it’s kid-approved and accepted!  Of course, I can’t resist a good quiche and I love the way the silky leeks mix with the creamy custard of a quiche.  So, perhaps you’ll join me in making Leek & Mushroom Quiche.  Serve it for breakfast, dinner or brunch alongside this Cauliflower Slaw.  Of course you can substitute broccoli Romanesco for the cauliflower in this recipe.  This dish also includes some sweet, dried currants, toasted almonds, and a light vinegar based dressing.

Sausage & Egg Stuffed Sugar Dumpling Squash
photo from eatingwell.com

I do like eating vegetables for breakfast, especially winter squash.  Check out this recipe for Sausage & Egg Stuffed Sugar Dumpling Squash.  Of course, this dish could also be lunch or dinner as well.

Eggs are typically in abundance around here and Richard always loves a good deviled egg.  How about making these Jalapeno Popper Deviled Eggs!  Eat them as a snack, add them to a dinner menu, or pack them and take them for lunch!

Lastly, while food is our medicine on a day to day basis, sometimes during the winter cold and flu season we need a little extra immunity protection.  Start now and make this Honey Fermented Garlic.  Keep a jar of this in your kitchen and use it as your own homemade way to prevent and ward off colds, flu, etc this weekend.

That brings us to the bottom of the box.  Before I close, I want to extend one final invitation to you to join us at our Harvest Party this coming Sunday.  We’ll have lots of good food, games, activities and more.  We hope you’ll join us for the day and come prepared to reap the benefits of being immersed in nature!

Vegetable Feature: Jicama

Jicama is the odd-shaped vegetable with brown skin occupying one corner of this week’s CSA box.  It is also known as yam bean, Mexican yam or Mexican turnip and is native to Mexico.  The name of this vegetable is pronounced [HICK-uh-mah] or [HEE-kuh-mah].  It is a tropical plant that resembles a bean plant with bean-like vines and seed pods.  The jicama grows underground and is a tuber that can produce multiple tubers off the one main stem.

On the outside jicama is not the most attractive or flashy vegetable.  Peel away the brown, leathery skin and you’ll find a solid white flesh inside that is mild in flavor, crunchy with a slight sweetness and slightly starchy.  You can eat jicama both raw and cooked.  One of the most basic ways to eat jicama is to slice it into sticks and give it a squeeze of lime juice and a light sprinkling of chili powder and salt.  Jicama also pairs well with fruit including citrus (oranges, grapefruit, limes), pineapple, mango, and apples.  It is common to see jicama slaws, salads and salsas that also include fruit.  It also pairs well with avocado, hot and sweet peppers, cilantro, tomatoes, seafood, onions, and garlic to name just a few complementary ingredients.  In Asian cuisine you may find jicama used in stir-fry type preparations.  When stir-fried, jicama should be added towards the end of cooking to retain the crisp texture.  If you let it get just slightly soft, it has almost a potato-like flavor and texture.

When we first started growing jicama, we realized by accident just how important post-harvest handling is to the overall quality of the vegetable.  Jicama needs to be “cured,” similar to how we cure sweet potatoes after they are harvested.  We held the jicama in one of our greenhouses for a week after harvest at a temperature of 68-77°F with high humidity of about 95%.  This process helped to set the delicate skins so they will store better.  Jicama is very sensitive to chill injury, so it is best to store it on your kitchen counter until you are ready to use it.  If you store it in the refrigerator, you’ll notice the quality will deteriorate quite quickly.  Once you cut into it, store any cut jicama in the refrigerator and eat it within a few days.

JAC washing jicama

We can’t deliver jicama without giving credit to one of our crew members, Jose Antonio Cervantes Gutierrez (aka JAC).  JAC is responsible for introducing jicama to Harmony Valley Farm.  Without his influence, we likely wouldn’t be growing this vegetable!  One day we were working in the greenhouse and he presented me with a handful of seeds in a small packet.  He asked if I thought we could grow it here?  Well, I had no idea how to grow jicama and had only eaten it several times.  We decided to give it a try and after several years of learning we are finally getting good results!  I asked him why he brought those seeds with him when he came to work here that year.  There is a large farm not far from where he lives that grows large amounts of jicama.  He would pass by their fields, see the jicama and was intrigued by it.  He said he brought them because he had tried planting them at home, but couldn’t ever watch them grow because he had to leave to come here to work!  So, he brought the seeds with him so we could plant them here and he could watch them develop!  JAC’s favorite way to eat jicama is to eat it raw with a squeeze of lime juice and salt or lime juice and a sprinkling of Tajin, a seasoning mix made from salt and a specific type of chile.

We don’t grow jicama every year, but it has a permanent spot on our list of “vegetables we grow every 2-3 years.”  We’re grateful to JAC for introducing us to something new and we’re glad you, our members, have grown to appreciate it too!

Jicama and Carrot Slaw with Honey-Lime Dressing

picture from cookincanuck.com

Yield:  8 servings

1 Tbsp + 2 tsp fresh lime juice

¾ tsp honey

¼ tsp ground cumin

⅛ tsp salt

1 Tbsp + 2 tsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 pound jicama peeled & thinly sliced (1 small or half of a large)

2 large or 4 small carrots, grated

3 Tbsp minced cilantro

½ jalapeño pepper, seeded & minced

1. In a small bowl, whisk together the lime juice, honey, cumin and salt.  Slowly whisk in the olive oil.  Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, toss together the jicama, carrot, cilantro and jalapeño pepper.
3. Add the dressing and toss to coat.  

Recipe borrowed from www.cookincanuck.com.

Baked Jicama Chips

photo from onegreenplanet.com

Yield:  4 servings

2 medium or 1 large jicama, peeled

2 tsp olive oil

Zest and juice of 2 limes

1 tsp chili powder

¼ tsp salt

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F.  Line 2-3 baking sheets with parchment paper or baking racks if you have them.
2. Cut the jicama into super thin slices.  Try to achieve similar thickness with all the pieces.  You can cut the jicama using a mandolin or just a sharp knife.
3. In a large bowl, mix the olive oil, lime juice and zest, chili powder and salt.  Add the jicama slices, and mix well so that all the slices are fully coated.
4. Place the slices of jicama in a single layer on the prepared baking sheets.  Bake for 25-30 minutes, turning halfway through cooking, or until they begin to brown and get crispy.

Recipe borrowed from onegreenplanet.org.

September 28, 2017 - This Week's Box Contents, Featuring Jicama

Cooking With This Week's Box 

Welcome back to another week of delicious cooking out of your CSA box.  This week’s box has a few special treats in it including this week’s featured vegetable which is jicama!  If you aren’t familiar with jicama, please take a few minutes to read this week’s vegetable feature.  While it can be eaten raw or cooked, I’m opting to eat it raw this week and have found two tasty and very simple salad recipes to share with you.  You may actually have enough jicama to give both a try!  The Jicama Apple Slaw (see below) recipe is made with tart Granny Smith apples and has a creamy dressing made with yogurt, lime juice and zest as well as a little heat from some jalapeno.  We included Granny Smith apples and limes in last week’s fruit box, so this might be a good recipe choice for members who also receive the fruit share.  The second recipe is for Thai Jicama & Red Onion Salad.  (See below) The author of this recipe recommends serving it with shrimp, but I think it would be delicious with any fish, seafood or even chicken. 

I came across two interesting recipes this week for broccoli and cauliflower.  The first recipe is Grilled Broccoli with Avocado and Sesame.  This is an interesting recipe that has several components to it that come together in the end.  Grilled broccoli is drizzled with a dressing made from avocado and tahini and then the salad is garnished with slices of red onion and a bit of pickled jalapeño.  This salad will make good use of not only the broccoli in this week’s box, but also will utilize the jalapeños and red onions.  Serve this salad as a main dish on its own or alongside grilled steak or chicken.  The other recipe I came across is for Parmesan Roasted Cauliflower with Garlic & Thyme.  With this recipe you roast whole cloves of garlic with the cauliflower along with some onions.  When you serve this dish, diners can squeeze the sweet roasted garlic out of its skins and eat it with the cauliflower or you can spread the roasted garlic on bread and to eat alongside the cauliflower.  Any color of cauliflower will work for this recipe. 

What are you going to do with that crispy head of iceberg lettuce!?  Iceberg lettuce is light enough to be refreshing, but strong enough to hold up to creamy dressings such as blue cheese, ranch and thousand island.  I’m going to go with a traditional Cobb Salad this week and will use a recipe featured in Saveur as my guide.  This recipe calls for half of a head of iceberg mixed with some romaine and watercress.  I’m going to just go with all iceberg lettuce and in place of the spicy watercress I’m going to add the flavorful, tender greens from the baby white turnips.  I’ll use the grape tomatoes for this salad as well and may supplement with a few of the larger tomatoes. 

While the Cobb Salad makes a nice main entrée salad with head lettuce, I’m going to save the Salad Mix to use as a base for a simple side salad that could go with any meal throughout the week and is a good “go-to” option when you are tight on time.  I’ll use the orange Italian frying peppers to make my recipe for Creamy Roasted Sweet Pepper Dressing  featured in our newsletter back in 2014.  Once the dressing is made, all that’s left to do is just drizzle it on the salad mix and garnish with shredded carrot, tomatoes or any other vegetable of your choosing!  This dressing also makes a great dip for carrot or jicama sticks. 

Baby white turnips are one of those vegetables that we see in the spring and then it resurfaces for a few weeks in the fall.  Since I chose to use the greens for the Cobb Salad, I’m going to prepare the actual turnips using this very simply recipe for Glazed Baby Turnips with Carrots. Serve this as a side dish with a seared pork chop or a slice of ham. 

Finally, lets talk about this bag of sweet & delicious mini sweet peppers.  These little gems are delicious just eaten as is for a snack, but you can kick that snack up a notch by cutting off the tops and stuffing them with cheese!  I like to fill them with cream cheese or goat cheese, but you could also stick a piece of mozzarella inside and then pop them on the grill or put them under the broiler to melt the cheese and blister the pepper skin.  If you just have too much in your kitchen to eat this week, mini sweet peppers do freeze well and are just as tasty in the winter as they are right now.  I keep a bag in the freezer to use during the winter for pizzas, scrambled eggs, pasta dishes, etc.

Once again we find ourselves at the bottom of the box.  I’m not sure what next week’s box may hold, but if there is room we may start sending some winter squash your way.  So gather your squash recipes and get ready!  If you have any favorite squash recipes you’re willing to share, I’d love to try them!  Have a great week and enjoy!—Chef Andrea 

Featured Vegetable:  Jicama

Jicama is the odd-shaped vegetable with brown skin occupying one corner of this week’s CSA box.  It is also known as yam bean, Mexican yam or Mexican turnip and is native to Mexico.  The name of this vegetable is pronounced HICK-uh-mah or HEE-kuh-mah.  It is a tropical plant that resembles a bean plant with bean-like vines and seed pods.  The jicama grows underground and is a tuber that can produce multiple tubers off the one main stem. 

Once you peel away the outer skin, jicama has solid white flesh.

On the outside jicama is not the most attractive or flashy vegetable.  Peel away the brown, leathery skin and you’ll find a solid white flesh inside that is mild in flavor, crunchy with a slight sweetness and slightly starchy.  You can eat jicama both raw and cooked.  One of the most basic ways to eat jicama is to slice it into sticks and give it a squeeze of lime juice and a light sprinkling of chili powder and salt.  Jicama also pairs well with citrus fruit and is often used in raw salads and salsas prepared with limes and/or oranges.  It also pairs well with avocado, peppers, cilantro, tomatoes, seafood, onions, and garlic to name just a few complementary ingredients.  In Asian cuisine you may find jicama used in stir-fry type preparations.  When stir-fried, jicama should be added towards the end of cooking to retain the crisp texture.  If you let it get just slightly soft, it has almost a potato-like flavor and texture.

Jicama is very sensitive to chill injury, so it is best to store it on your kitchen counter until you are ready to use it.  Once you cut into it, store any cut jicama in the refrigerator and eat it within a few days. 

Jose Antonio holding a piece of Jicama!

We credit one of our crew members, Jose Antonio Cervantes Gutierrez (aka JAC), with introducing jicama to Wisconsin.  One day we were working in the greenhouse and he presented me with a handful of seeds in a small packet.  He asked if I thought we could grow it here?  Well, I had no idea how to grow jicama and had only eaten it several times.  We decided to give it a try and after several years of learning we are finally getting good results!  I asked him why he brought those seeds with him when he came to work here that year.  There is a large farm not far from where he lives that grows large amounts of jicama.  He would pass by their fields, see the jicama and was intrigued by it.  He said he brought them because he had tried planting them at home, but couldn’t ever watch them grow because he had to leave to come here to work!  So, he brought the seeds with him so we could plant them here and he could watch them develop!  JAC’s favorite way to eat jicama is to eat it raw with a squeeze of lime juice and salt or lime juice and a sprinkling of Tajin, a seasoning mix made from salt and a specific type of chile. 

We don’t grow jicama every year, but in our survey at the end of last year we asked you to vote for the top three vegetables you wanted to see us grow this year and jicama made the list!  You asked for it and here it is!  We’re grateful to JAC for introducing us to something new and we’re glad you, our members, have grown to appreciate it too!  

Jicama Apple Slaw

Yield:  4-5 servings

Picture from Food52.com

1 small jicama, peeled and fine julienned (3-4 cups)

1 Granny Smith apple, fine julienned

2 Tbsps cilantro, chopped

¼  green cabbage head, shredded (could substitute broccoli stems)

For the Dressing:

1 cup plain yogurt

1 jalapeño, seeded and minced

2 limes, zest and juice

¼ cup sherry wine vinegar

Salt and black pepper, to taste

1. Mix julienned jicama, apples, cilantro, and cabbage together.
2. Whisk all dressing ingredients together. Toss with jicama apple mixture.  Season as needed with salt and black pepper.  Serve immediately. This recipe is best eaten the day of. 

Recipe borrowed from Food52.com.

Thai Jicama & Red Onion Salad

Yield:  4-6 servings

Recipe picture from Cookingcanuk.com

1 small or ½ of a medium jicama, peeled 

½ small red onion, peeled

1 ½ Tbsp fish sauce

1 ½ Tbsp rice vinegar

2 tsp agave nectar (can substitute sugar)

1 red chili, minced or ½ tsp red chile flakes

¼ cup chopped cilantro

1. Cut jicama into quarters, then thinly slice.  Thinly slice the red onion into half-moon pieces.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together the fish sauce, rice vinegar and agave nectar or sugar until it dissolves.  Add chile or chile flakes and whisk again.
3. Place the jicama and onion slices into a medium-sized bowl.  Toss with the rice vinegar dressing.
4. Add the cilantro and toss again.  Serve.

Recipe borrowed from cookincanuck.com.

Vegetable Feature: Jicama

by Sarah Janes Ugoretz

Harvesting Jicama

Before we kick off this week’s vegetable feature, let’s cover one thing right off the bat—pronunciation! Our delicious feature this week is jicama, which you can choose to pronounce one of two ways: HICK-uh-mah or HEE-kuh-mah. Also known as the Mexican yam or Mexican turnip, jicama is native to—you guessed it—Mexico! This vegetable is the edible tuberous root of a vine that can grow to be 20 feet in length. The largest recorded jicama weighed in at a whopping 50 pounds! At Harmony Valley Farm, we deal in much smaller versions of this vegetable, keeping them to less than 5 pounds each—a much more manageable amount to work with in your kitchen.

Apart from its brown papery skin, jicama is entirely edible. The creamy white flesh is firm, sweet and slightly starchy with a very distinct crunch. Thinking of jicama as a savory apple, as TheKitchn describes it, may help in classifying this unique food that many of us may have had limited exposure to.

Jicama is typically enjoyed raw, though it can be sautéed or stir-fried and still retain its crunch. To prepare, begin by peeling the skin. Using a chef’s knife, remove a thin slice from the top and bottom of your jicama in order to create a flat surface on each end. Working from top to bottom and following the curve, carefully slide your knife under the skin to remove it. Once peeled, you don’t need to worry about removing any seeds as the entire interior portion is edible.  Jicama is often served in very simple preparations such as salads, slaws, salsas or just eaten raw on a vegetable tray.  It pairs well with citrus fruits, peppers, avocado and cilantro.

The jicama harvest begins! 

Unlike apples and other fruits, jicama doesn’t oxidize (turn color) once its flesh has been exposed to air. Store half of your jicama in the fridge for later use and all you’ll need to do is remove the thin layer of exposed flesh that has become somewhat dry. In general, store your jicama loose in a cool, dry place at room temperature where it should keep for about 2 to 3 weeks.  The storage for jicama is similar to sweet potatoes.  They are actually subject to chill injury at temperatures less than about 50 degrees.

While it’s challenging to grow jicama in the Midwest, we’re continuing to learn about growing this crop in Wisconsin.  One of our employees, Jose Antonio Cervantes Gutierrrez, introduced us to this crop several years ago with a small handful of seeds he brought from home.  After some experimentation, we’ve finally figured out how to pull off this crop with success.  We use a combination of an early start in the greenhouse and the use of plastic mulch to trap heat and increase the soil temperature to create a microclimate more similar to the ideal growing conditions for this crop.  We hope you enjoy this little taste of the tropics!

Jicama

Jicama Sticks with Chile & Lime 

(Botana de Jicama con Chile y Limon)

Servings: 6

1 pound jicama, peeled

Juice of 2 limes (about ¼ cup)

Juice of ½ bitter orange (about 1 Tbsp), optional

1 Tbsp distilled white vinegar

¼ tsp ground dried chile, cayenne or red pepper flakes

¼ tsp salt

⅛ tsp freshly ground black pepper

1 tsp finely chopped cilantro, optional

1 tsp sugar, optional

1. Cut the jicama lengthwise into ½-inch thick slices, then cut the slices into ½-inch wide sticks. 
2. Place the sticks in a medium bowl and toss with the rest of the ingredients.  Arrange in small 2-ounce shot glasses, standing them up like breadsticks, and moisten with the juices of the marinade.

This is a traditional way to enjoy jicama in Mexico and is a common street food offering.  This is Maricel Presilla’s interpretation of this method of preparation that is featured in her cookbook, Gran Cocina Latina.

Vegetable Feature: Jicama

by Andrea Yoder

Jicama is a tropical plant that resembles a bean plant and is also known as yam bean, Mexican potato, chop suey bean, or “cooling tuber.” We grow jicama on plastic covered beds to trap additional heat and make the plants think they are in a warmer, tropical location. The plant forms blossoms that produce a pod containing seeds that can be planted to propagate the next year’s crop. While this is happening above ground, a tuber is swelling below ground. Sometimes a plant will produce a single tuber and sometimes a second one develops below the first.

Jicama bears resemblance to a potato or turnip. It has a thick, light brown skin that should be peeled away prior to eating. Jicama’s beauty lies inside with its crisp, crunchy white flesh. It is a mild, neutral flavored vegetable that is slightly starchy with a touch of sweetness. Jicama can be eaten raw or cooked. One of the most basic ways to eat jicama is to slice it into sticks and give it a squeeze of lime juice and a light sprinkling of chili powder. This is a common street food in many parts of Mexico. Jicama is most often used in salads and slaws, which are a nice accompaniment to grilled fish, chicken or beef dishes. It pairs well with citrus fruits and juice including limes and oranges. It also goes well with sweet & hot peppers, cilantro, mint, apples, mango, onions, chipotle, and sesame oil. While jicama is typically eaten raw, it can also be cooked. In Asia it is used in a variety of stir-fry type preparations. When stir-fried, jicama should be added towards the end of cooking to retain the crisp texture. If you let it get just slightly soft, it has an almost potato-like flavor and buttery texture.

It is best to eat jicama within a week or so. Because it is a tropical vegetable, it is susceptible to chill injury if stored at temperatures less than 55 degrees. Thus, we recommend storing your jicama at room temperature until you are ready to use it.

Apple-Jicama Slaw

Recipe borrowed from The Rodale Whole Foods Cookbook. 

Serves 6
1 medium jicama, peeled and cut into very thin matchsticks (about 3 cups)
3 crisp red apples, cut into very thin matchsticks (about 3 cups)
1 small red onion, very thinly sliced
1 small fresh jalapeño pepper, finely chopped
¼ cup finely chopped cilantro
2 Tbsp sunflower or olive oil
2 Tbsp orange juice
1 Tbsp lime juice
1 Tbsp honey
Salt and black pepper, to taste

1. In a large bowl, combine the jicama, apples, onion, jalapeño and cilantro.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the oil, orange juice, lime juice and honey. Add the dressing to the vegetables and toss to evenly coat. Season with salt and black pepper to taste. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving.

Sautéed Jicama

Recipe borrowed from The Rodale Whole Foods Cookbook. 

Serves 4
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 pound jicama, peeled, halved and cut into thick matchsticks
1 carrot, cut into thick matchsticks
1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
⅓ cup water
Salt, to taste

1. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the jicama, carrot and garlic. Cook, tossing frequently, until the jicama is golden brown around the edges, about 7 minutes.
2. Add the water and cook until the jicama and carrot are crisp-tender and the water has evaporated, 3 to 5 minutes. Season with salt to taste.
Note: This is a basic recipe that you could do any number of spin-offs with. In addition to or in place of carrots, you could also include sliced sweet peppers, broccoli stems or celery. For an additional touch of flavor, add a little bit of soy sauce and orange juice in place of the water. You could also add a drizzle of a flavorful nut or toasted sesame oil just before serving.