Creamed Chayote with Chives (Page 533)

RECIPE #874

• Date: Saturday, November 22, 2008 -- 6pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B-
  

The Vegetables section of The Book is running a little low, so I am left mostly with things that either (a) don't sound good, or (b) involve vegetables I am not sure how to find. I thought this recipe would fall in the latter category, but lo and behold, my local grocery store carries chayote. Chayote (aka christophine, aka vegetable pear) is a member of the gourd family. It looks roughly like a pear, but tastes more like squash. This was my first experience with chayote, and it wasn't bad. The recipe, however, was a little odd. I sliced the chayote and then cooked it in oil. Once it was tender, I added cream to the skillet and cooked until the sauce was thickened. Then I topped it with chopped chives and served. The one aspect of this which made no sense was that the chayote was cooked in so much oil that there was excess oil in the pan when I added the cream. So the cream became mixed with vegetable oil, which was really not very tasty. You can't appreciate it in the picture, but the cream/oil combo also gave the sauce a not-very-attractive curdled look. Other than that, the dish was fine, so it could easily have been fixed by draining off the excess oil before adding the cream.

Here is the recipe.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend! I am in Westerville, OH, with my special gentleman and his family. We had a yummy Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, and have been partaking in various relaxing activities since then -- this morning we cut down a Christmas tree! I never manage to get much done work-wise over Thanksgiving weekend, so I usually try to pick a time-consuming but not too intellectually taxing task to do over the weekend. This year that task was planning our honeymoon for June. We have gone through many possible ideas of where to go: Hawaii, Alaska, the Smoky Mountains, etc... We do a lot of traveling internationally for work, so we both agreed that we wanted to stay in the US for our honeymoon and go somewhere really beautiful. In the end we decided on a trip through Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. We will start off with a few nights at a cute resort in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, near the Grand Tetons, then take a few days driving down to Moab, Utah, where we will camp near Arches National Park for a couple days. We will finish our trip at a fancy spa/resort in Colorado for a couple nights before we fly back to Indiana. The whole trip will be 12 days which will give us plenty of time to hike, whitewater raft, mountain bike, kayak, and just relax! I am very much looking forward to it. After much internet research, I made all the necessary reservations this morning, so now we are good to go!