Cuban | [ No Recipes ]

This yuca was a spontaneous purchase I made yesterday while at Wholefoods. It’s a long thick root that looks like a giant sweet potato with a waxy scaly skin. I’ve never cooked it before and have only eaten it a handful of times and yet this staple in many parts of the world called to me as I was heading to the cashier.

Yuca also known as “cassava root” is the the tuber below a cassava plant. According to Wikipedia, “the cassava plant gives the highest yield of food energy per cultivated area per day among crop plants, except possibly for sugarcane”. Both the leaves and the roots are eaten, and the roots are turned into flour which is used to make tapioca, boba, bread, etc.

But there’s a catch: it contains a compound that turns into cyanide in the presence of an enzyme found in the plant. The leaves have a particularly high concentration of this compound but it’s also found in the roots. Luckily, cooking renders it harmless, so just make sure it’s cooked all the way and you’ll be fine.

It’s got a texture somewhere between potato and pumpkin with a slight sweetness. Doused in olive oil and dressed with a garlic yogurt mojo sauce, it makes for a great side for fish and meat dishes. The tart yogurt and lemon give it a nice light taste while the potent raw garlic adds a ton of peppery flavour.

How do you like to prepare yuca?

1 small yuca (cassava root) peeled and cut into large even sized chunks
1 garlic clove finely minced
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 C plain yogurt
1 Tbs lemon juice
olive oil
cilantro leaves

Add the yuca to a large pot of salted water and bring to boil. Boil until you can pass a fork through a piece of yuca. You want it cooked through, but you also don’t want to over cook it as it will lose its shape.

Mash the minced garlic and salt together to form a paste then add the yogurt and lemon juice. Stir to combine.

When the yuca is cooked, drain and dump into a bowl. Add copious amounts of olive oil while gently tossing until the surface of the yucca is slightly shiny. Plate the yuca and pour the yogurt mixture on top. Scatter some cilantro leaves on top and grind a little black pepper to finish.

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Last week, I was sitting in a product meeting at work. Our CTO was eating a banana and as he set the peel down on the table it struck me that it would make the perfect vessel to hold food. Since then I’ve been mulling over all the different ways one could cook food in a piece of the fruit that’s come to symbolize rubbish.

I began to fantasize about fork tender hunks for moist pork surrounded by rice infused with the flavors of banana and the savory pork. Over the following week I decided that a Cuban mojo would make a fine marinade (although I’d considered using a tamarind based marinade).

My biggest concern was that the astringent taste of the peel would ruin the contents. Upon doing some research I found that banana peels are used in some regions of India to make chutney. I also learned that there are some nasty pesticides used on bananas so I decided it would be best to use organic bananas. Beyond that I found nary a reference to cooking with banana peels.

My first inclination was to roast them at a low temperature, but after thinking about it for a bit, I realized that the dry heat would make it take a lot longer to make the meat tender. I was also thinking that it could potentially render the rice inedible. In the end, I decided to steam the bundles.

As with most things one fantasizes about for days on end, this didn’t quite live up to the high expectations I had, but that’s not to say it wasn’t good. As expected, it had a fairly strong banana flavor, so if you don’t like bananas, this might not be for you. The meat came out incredibly moist and tender and the rice was cooked perfectly, soaking up the flavors of the peel along with the juices from the pork.

The next time I do this, I’m going to try serving it with a salsa… maybe a mango coconut celery salsa.