{"id":223,"date":"2007-09-03T11:10:27","date_gmt":"2007-09-03T16:10:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gourmetproject.ca\/?p=223"},"modified":"2007-10-30T19:51:17","modified_gmt":"2007-10-31T00:51:17","slug":"88-jicama-and-cucumber-chili-spears-p27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gourmetproject.ca\/?p=223","title":{"rendered":"88. Jicama and Cucumber Chili Spears p.27"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nThe recipe<\/a><\/p>\n

Jicama isn’t the easiest thing to find in Montreal. I went to every grocery store, fruiterie, and Latin themed shop I could think of. In the end I tracked one down at a Mexican grocery store about a block from my place. I had no idea it was there. For all the effort that went into finding it, I wasn’t overly impressed. Jicama looks cool, kind of like a gigantic radish, but I didn’t like the flavour much. It’s a bit sweet, but also very raw potato starchy. It left me with an unpleasant tingling in the back of my throat and a slightly numb tongue. I’ve never had jicama before, and I don’t know anything about it. Perhaps I ate it under-ripe? Or maybe that’s just what jicama tastes like? My dining companion has tried it, and says she preferred it cut up into little matchsticks tossed into a salad. The big spears were a bit overwhelming. I remember Harold on the first season of Top Chef was obsessed with the stuff, so I was happy to try it, even if I don’t see what he was going on about.<\/p>\n

I find it hard to rate this recipe, because it’s principal ingredient is so unfamiliar. Luckily this dish also included cucumber spears tossed in lime juice, chili powder, cayenne, and salt. I thought this treatment worked pretty well for the cucumber, and made them a fairly addictive little snack. It did little to improve the jicama in my mind.<\/p>\n

I appreciate the simplicity of this dish, the lime, chili powder, cayenne, salt dressing packed a big flavorful punch, and the dish can be put together i well under 10 minutes. I think I’d put the cucumber spears out at a summer garden party, but I’d drop the jicama.<\/p>\n

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The recipe Jicama isn’t the easiest thing to find in Montreal. I went to every grocery store, fruiterie, and Latin themed shop I could think of. In the end I tracked one down at a Mexican grocery store about a block from my place. I had no idea it was there. For all the effort […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,2],"tags":[144,373,328,507,620,506,505,203,72],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gourmetproject.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gourmetproject.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gourmetproject.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gourmetproject.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gourmetproject.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gourmetproject.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gourmetproject.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gourmetproject.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gourmetproject.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}