Category: Vegetables + Salads

I grew up in the Philippines where a lot of vegetables were called differently from what they use here in the States. A good example is turnip. My turnip, or singkamas, has a tough brown skin and a white, watery, and almost translucent flesh inside that you eat with shrimp paste or vinegar and fish sauce during the summer months. Here in New York, that’s the same as the Mexican jícama while the turnip has a thinner skin that’s white at the bottom and purple towards the top and it has a slight bitter taste perfect for raw salads.

For some of you, the American turnip might be too bitter here and that’s why I decided to add honeydew for a slight tinge of sweetness and a different texture. Cantaloupes should be okay too and would be a good addition if you use both turnips and jícama. The portions below made a perfect appetizer for two people.

Ingredients:
1/4 lb cooked shrimp, deveined, peeled
2 small to medium-sized radishes, thinly sliced
1 small turnip, peeled, thinly sliced
half a honeydew, the flesh thinly sliced
1 stalk of scallions, diagonally sliced

For the dressing:
ginger knob, peeled, crushed
a splash of fish sauce
juice from 1 lemon
olive oil
pepper
red chili flakes

1. In a large glass bowl, whisk all the dressing ingredients. Toss in the shrimp and chill in the fridge for about 15 minutes.
2. When ready to assemble the salad, remove the shrimp from the fridge and add the vegetables and fruit. Toss until well combined. Add more olive oil if necessary.

They’re ginger, said the guy at the cash register next door after the lady who was ringing me up asked him what they were. No, they’re not, I said. Sunchokes, I iterated. Nah, they’re ginger, he insisted. The lady in between us was confused enough to ask the manager to come over who then gave her the product code for sunchokes and then rang me up at $3.50 a pound. That was my good deed of the day–insisting a higher price rather than accepting what ginger would have cost me at 99-cents a pound.

Now sunchokes, or Jerusalem artichokes, do look like ginger because they’re both from the tubular family but they are actually a substitute for potatoes because of their consistency. The only difference is that it contains inulin, and not starch, to store energy, and since the human digestive system cannot break down inulin, you’ll be, well, hoping you ate ginger instead.

You’ve most likely seen them on menus roasted or puréed in the springtime, so I wanted to find a new way to eat them. Most recipes don’t require you to peel off their brown paper-thin skin when you roast them, but I peeled them anyway since I wanted to eat them raw. They’re a little sticky to the touch when peeled–sappy even–but that wouldn’t matter as soon as you marinate them in the dressing here. I served them with some leftover glazed ham from Easter and tossed some frisée leaves in the same dressing to make a quick and easy lunch.

Ingredients:
juice and zest from half a lemon
small shallot, finely chopped
1 1/2 tsp whole-grain mustard
canola oil
salt and pepper
3 small to medium-sized sunchokes, scrubbed clean, peeled, thinly sliced

1. Make the salad dressing. In a small bowl, combine the lemon juice and zest with the shallot and mustard. Drizzle the canola oil while whisking until you have enough oil sufficient for your sunchokes. Season with salt and pepper.
2. Add the sunchokes to marinate them in the dressing for about 30 minutes before serving at room temperature or chilled.

Almost three months after my trip to Dominica, I invited the ladies I met at Jungle Bay Resort to my apartment for a reunion. Six of us ate, drank, talked and hung out for eights hours! I was pretty tired the next morning, but was grateful for the new friends I met during a pretty tough holiday. Jai was the only vegetarian in the group, so while I served everyone else pulled pork-style center loin, I put this salad together as her main course so she could have the bite of the farro grain and the earthiness of the mushrooms while we devoured our meat.

This dish was also inspired by my last trip to San Francisco because the mushrooms for sale in the farmers’ market were less expensive. I saw plenty of them in the Ferry Terminal and that made me wish I had access to a kitchen. So now back at home, I bought a combination of hen of the woods, shiitake and oyster mushrooms for twice the price. Farro to me is so California: I saw it several times on different menus while I was there; I rarely see it here in New York. When you make this on your own, try some chanterelles if you can add a few more bucks to your grocery budget and buy crimini and whites to add to the quantity without breaking the bank. A good Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese will do, but I like Pecorino better for this. Use a vegetable peeler to shave the cheese. Everything is quite pretty but you’d be even happier with the smell.

Ingredients:
1 cup uncooked farro
1/2 pound mix of wild mushrooms
salt
pepper
olive oil
lemon juice
Pecorino cheese, shaved
a handful of parsley, roughly chopped

1. Heat the oven to 350º. In a medium saucepan, combine the farro and enough cold water to cover it by about an inch. Soak for 20 minutes. Drain well and return the farro to the pan, again covering it with cold water. Bring to a boil over high heat to cook. Lower the heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes, until the farro is tender but still has some bite.
2. While the farro is cooking, toss the mushrooms with salt, pepper and olive oil in a large bowl. Spread the seasoned mushrooms out evenly on a lined baking sheet and put in the oven for 20 minutes.
3. When the farro is cooked, drain well and spread it on another baking sheet to cool. Do the same with the mushrooms once they are cooked. When both farro and mushrooms are close to room temperature, combine them in a serving bowl. Drizzle with some lemon juice and toss gently with Pecorino cheese and parsley.

Related post/s:
Dominica travel stories