Jicama: It's Crunch Time

"It's not 'ji-KA-ma', it's 'HEE-ka-ma,' " the waitress said as I tucked into the delicious, raw, white sliced vegetable on my salad plate. She was kind enough not to add, "Where have you been?" Nowhere near a place that ever sold or served it, that's for sure.

Clearly, if I wanted to feast often on this mild, slightly sweet, crunchy tuber, I would have to grow it myself. But during the ensuing six years I learned that jicama (Pachyrrhizus erosus and P. tuberosa), also known as yam bean or Mexican potato, was strictly tropical. Even most Californians lacked the nine months of hot weather required for a good crop.

Nevertheless, years of tricking the climate with a passive solar greenhouse had taught me that very little is impossible if there is a plant you are determined to grow. Besides, I was unsure what size standards those naysayers had applied. A jicama vine, my research told me, could produce a tuber that weighed 50 pounds. I immediately thought of B. Kliban's lighthearted book, "Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head." I like my food to at least fit inside the fridge.

Last year on Feb. 15, I sowed a flat of jicama seeds indoors and soon moved the vigorous little seedlings to four-inch pots. The vines took off jubilantly and were several feet long by the frost-free date, when I settled them permanently in a greenhouse bed. Jicamas are legumes and look very much like bean plants, with three heart-shaped leaves to a cluster. Their beautiful lavender, lupinelike flowers didn't appear until early fall, and I waited until serious frost danger was imminent to remove the vines, compost them and dig up my treasures. They were brown, rough-skinned, turniplike. A number were at least baseball-size and more tender, I suspect, than jumbo ones would have been.

I tried them first in tropical-style salads with mangoes, avocado and pineapple. In their native Central and South America, they are often dressed with chile powder and lime, and would be perfect in a lime seviche. Because the plant later migrated to Southeast Asia (and most parts of the warm world), it seemed a logical step to add the sliced tubers to stir-fries and curries as well. One of their endearing traits is that they keep their crunch even when cooked, the way water chestnuts do, and their flesh does not turn brown when cut and exposed to the air. My tubers got tough and woody after a month or so at room temperature but would have kept longer in a cool spot.

One important caution: Any jicama parts that grow above soil level contain rotenone, a toxic substance often used to kill insects and fish. Avoid eating those parts, just as you would with potatoes. But with those surprising underground tubers you are good to go.

Sources of jicama seeds include John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds (http://www.kitchengardenseeds.com), Pinetree Garden Seeds (http://www.superseeds.com) and R.H. Shumway's (http://www.rhshumway.com).