Saturday Night Fiesta Dinner

I'm training for a 10 mile race coming up in April and have been going on long runs. Saturday morning, while running 7 miles (!!!!) I had plenty of time to think about food, which is the only reason I run. We had some leftover mini potatoes that needed to be used and what better way to make potatoes than in Tortilla Espanola. So The Pedant and I had a Spanish/Mexican dinner that was fantastic.

Tortilla Espanola

I sliced the potatoes very thin. We sauteed them up with 1/2 a vidalia onion and a bunch of garlic in (too much - my hand slipped!) olive oil. Sadly, it was not Spanish olive oil like Jose Andres would have liked, but whatever. We let that cook until the potatoes got cooked and the onions browned really nicely. We then used egg beaters to make a tortilla. Sadly, it didn't flip as well as hoped, but it was super tasty.

Jicama Avocado Salad

While looking for food for the week, TP passed this salad recipe in the best salad cookbook and wondered why we hadn't made this salad yet. We decided it was similar to the "Spanish" theme and cooked it up. It was very simple - chopped jicama, chopped avocado, cilantro, red onion, lemon juice, olive oil. It was really amazing.

Dinner was just lovely. We bought some Ben and Jerry's light Phish Food which made it even better.

Person vs. Metal

I believe I may have conquered the mandolin! It's truly a feat - you see, The Pedant and I were super excited about registering for it, and even more super exciting when assorted family bought it for us. Only problem, it didn't work well...

So, I decided to conqueror the machine. I mean, it's really only a fancy knife that can do super cool things.

And I did! (Mostly, I still think a blade needs to be sharpened.) I used it to slice the jicama for the jicama slaw. Twice! I even got some julienne pieces.

And it was fun!

Successful Meals and OK Yogurt

I love both the piña colada and coconut cream flavors of the Teet's store brand of light yogurt, but the banana cream flavor is just not as good. A ranking of the current Teet yogurt flavors, from best to "meh," I've tasted would be:

1. Coconut Cream
2. Piña Colada
3. Vanilla
4. Key Lime
5. Peach
6. Strawberry Cheesecake
7. Banana Cream

Anyway, the jicama salad and the other things we prepared for the dinner party last Friday (a mushroom risotto which was all the Sherbs' doing and she carried off masterfully, and stuffed zucchini) all were quite tasty. We had a lot of leftover jicama salad, so I cooked it into fritattas the next day, with mixed results. The Sherbs was a fan; I, not so much - cooking jicama seems to cook out the sweetness, leaving it a little too much like eating warm radish.

Jicama Grommit, Jicama...

Apparently, on Food Network there are 123 recipes with jicama - and one by Rachel Ray. The Pedant and I still think she used pre-chopped jicama, otherwise it would have taken longer to make a 30 minute meal.

In other (food) news - TP and I had a dinner at a local restaurant yesterday. I was in a bad mood and comforted myself with a fantastic meal (description stolen from the website):

Murali Vegetable and Goat Cheese Bake

baked layers of eggplant, roasted red bell pepper and goat cheese served over Pesto sauce

It was perfect. Although the rest of the menu was over priced (this was actually an appetizer) it was worth the trip. Mmmmm....Cheese...

Jicama . . . what the hell?

No, seriously, what is up with jicama?

The Sherbs and I foolishly decided to make a salad involving the mutant apple-radish that is jicama (it also includes beans, avocado, green pepper, and tomato). At the Teet, we got the produce guy to find us some jicama, and he gave us a huge, mutant thing weighing about five pounds that looked like a failed cross between a coconut, a turnip, and an heirloom tomato.

No, they did not have any smaller jicama available.

Turns out, only a third of the jicama was actually necessary for the salad (we only needed two cups of jicama), which is good because we did not have the machete necessary to effectively cut off more of the tough root vegetable. Then we had to peel off the stringy, leathery skin, a thankless task.

The salad, at the end of the day, is tasty. But I dare Rachael Ray to make jicama into anything in thirty minutes or less.