Jicama. Mexican turnip or Mexican potato.Yambean. A crisp, turnip-like vegetable which can be cooked or eaten raw in salads.
Jicama. Mexican turnip or Mexican potato.Yambean. A crisp, turnip-like vegetable which can be cooked or eaten raw in salads.
"Tree jellyfish". Cloud ear fungus that grows on dead wood, available fresh or dried. If fresh they have a bland flavour but take up the flavour of the foods with which they are cooked. They should not be fried as they explode, but should be stewed for at least an hour. If dried they are black and are broken into small pieces. They swell hugely when soaked. Dried mushrooms may also be ground to a powder, in which form it may be used to flavour soups and stocks.
Asiatic pennywort, the leaf of which is used as the base for a drink or eaten in salads and cold dishes,
is a species of yam, a tuberous root vegetable (though, with some varieties, ubi or ube are also produced above ground at leaf nodes along the vine.) The interior of ube can be lavender to deep violet-purple in color with an outer skin that can be tan to dull brown and smooth to fibrous. Some varieties produce round tubers, others, oblong, and some produce large irregular bulbous and craggy tubers. It is sometimes confused with taro and the Okinawa sweet potato. The "queen of ube" is the fragrant and very sweet, Kinampay ube. In general, the flavor is delicate and softly sweet. Purple yam is used in many desserts, as well as in pastries. In the Philippines, it is eaten as a sweetened dessert or jam called ube halaya/ubi helaya and added as an ingredient in the ice dessert called halo-halo. The ube is often stored and prepared mashed, chipped, and powdered.
