Yucca Yucky

So, I work at a small convenience store where we sell a lot of ethnic food from South America. The old owners, who owned it for over 30 years, were from South America. So, they carried all these items from their culture, and had a strong customer base that relies on the store for their favourite treats from home.  My boss is just keeping up the tradition.

We sell a lot of Yerba Mate (loose tea) imported from Paraguay, and I say a lot I mean A LOT! It’s usually sold in one kilo bricks, but people will buy 10 kilo packs. Mass Tea. We also sell candies, spices and home-made food like empanadas and bread balls.

Frozen- From Costa Rica

 I’ve worked there for three and half years and I haven’t tried a lot of the specialty items we have there. One item in particular I’ve been curios about is Yucca, or Cassava. It looks like frozen chunks of dough (which I thought it was) and customers told me it tastes like a potato. My thinking: then just eat a potato.

Actually, it’s a root with the peel taken off. They grow mostly in South America and even more in Africa. It’s a crop that really helps out those places in times of famine.

 It’s a carb, so it’s not all that healthy for you, especially when they say it’s best when it’s deep fried. (but what isn’t?) The kind I bought had already been peeled and cored, but when you purchase it fresh there can be major danger in cooking this root. If you don’t cook and prepare it properly you can get really sick, and even die. There are poisons in the peel, and if it’s not boiled long enough, that can cause your body to produce cyanide. This is a big issue in those countries that grow it because sometimes they don’t have good cooking equipment, and they are already malnutrition. A lot of people die because of these cyanide issues, but it’s a resilient crop that they depend on.

looks like pale-dry pine apple lol

Being as brave as I am I decided to try it anyway.  Geez, putting my life on the line for blogging. So how do you cook it anyway you ask?  Well online and on the package it says it must be boiled first for half an hour. I boiled mine for 35 mins. to be safe.  Then online it says you can bake it for some crisp or most highly suggested: deep fry it in some oil. There are also some sauce recipes online that go well with it. You can also do some baking with it. I decided to just try it boiled to see if I even liked it.

I was kind of scared cause I couldn’t stop thinking about the cyanide poisoning. So I tried a small piece around the edges, with salt and pepper, like I would a potato. It was odd. It was tasted like a perogie with no stuffing, and a little potato-y. But it had a bit of strange texture, like a paste residue. Maybe like a more pasty cooked potato and I kind want to say like a soggy cookie residue. It wasn’t horrible, but it tasted like it was a wanna-be potato.  I`m sure if I deep-fried it, it would have been much better, but then I`d just eat some fries instead.  

I just think it`s kind of pointless. Potatoes taste so much better, and they can be grown right here in Canada. And they`re cheaper! (and they can`t give you cyanide poisoning J)

I`ll give this whole Yucca-Cassava thing ** out of 5