Brave New Mouthful

Reprinted with permission from Orange Bicycle

I've been tutoring a Cuban couple in English, and last night they made me a traditional Cuban dinner. I'd never really had Cuban food (except for once at Cañitas), and I wasn't quite sure what to expect. It was really simple but very delicious: black beans and rice, salad, yuca root (aka casava), chicken, and—a new food for me—malanga (also known as taro, or, in Japanese, satoimo). To be honest, malanga was fairly plain, but I really enjoyed getting to taste a whole new food.

If you think about it, most of us as adults can count on basically only eating things we are familiar with. One of the defining experiences of childhood must be how many foods and tastes are new, but I can't remember how that felt. And, growing up in California, I don't remember when I wasn't familiar with "exotic" foods like jicama, avocado (which I wish were still called the alligator pear) and kiwi. Still, it's easy enough to try a new dish or preparation, or even a new produced ingredient like wine, cheese, or sauce. But I really treasure the moments when you try an entirely new basic food flavor.

When I lived in Mexico in college, one of the first new fruits I tried was the delicious nispero, a little tart fruit with big smooth seeds. It took me years to figure out that the English name is loquat, and I actually haven't been able to find any until just a few weeks ago, during a visit to a California farmer's market. I also remember fondly the tuna fruit (when you see tuna flavored ice cream on the menu, don't be alarmed; if it were actually fish-flavored it would be called atun), which is a cactus fruit called the prickly pear, as well as the white-fleshed, creamy guanabana, otherwise known as a cherimoya. The epazote herb flavored bean dishes, and we often ate nopalitos cut from cactus paddles. Likewise, I enjoyed getting to know tomatillos and a delicious tea made from jamaica (hibiscus flowers). And of course there were all kinds of new chiles, like chilacas/pasillas, poblanos/anchos, serranos, and piquin, to name a few. We even ate raw raw sugarcane as a treat!

I know no one thinks of Germany as being a culinary paradise, but when I lived there I tried, and learned to love, belgian endive, celeriac (celery root), and the delicate quince fruit. I love all members of the crucifera family (broccoli, etc.) of vegetables, so of course I enjoyed kohlrabi, and likewise I loved a wild relative of the allium (garlic & onion) family which doesn't grow in the states called Bärlauch.

Traveling and fearless cooking projects have introduced me to Indian ingredients like ajowan, tamarind, and the challenging asafoetida (whose name shares a root with the word fetid); Southeast Asian delicacies like the tangy, mild, gingery galangal root, tangy kaffir lime leaf, and delicious, moist palm sugar; and Japanese treats like shiso leaf, the beautiful lotus root (renkon), burdock root (gobo), and fuyu persimmons, a smooth-fleshed, firm, sweet, delicious fruit that's very different than the sour, mushy persimmons we have here.

Of course, our wonderful farm share and the farmer's market have introduced a brave new world of produce to us as well, from fava beans to greens like sorrel, watercress, and mizuna. We've eaten fiddlehead ferns and all manner of wonderful wild mushrooms, not to mention a variety in kinds of mundane ingredients like apples, tomatoes, and potatoes that I never dreamed possible.

I'm sure I'll never run out of new foods to try, and a few that are high on my list now are cardoons, pawpaws, a now-rare native North American fruit I first heard about in Ohio on my cross-country trip, and the truffles I couldn't afford to try on my last trip to Italy.

What are new foods you've eaten? Did you like them?