Playing with strange foods

I like to play with my food.  It's because I don't really eat.  I'm not anorexic or anything even close to it.  I just happen to be one of those people who eats when I'm hungry and stops when I'm full.  And I won't eat bad food just to satisfy my hunger.  I can always go find something worth eating!  When you don't eat very much, you definitely don't want to waste time on bland, boring stuff.  So I get excited when I get to go to a restaurant and do a tasting menu.  Love the creativity of chefs! 

We had the opportunity to go to Park 75 in Atlanta and sit at the chef's table.  It was a big square stainless steel table smack dab in the middle of the busy kitchen.  A row of line cooks to my right at several stations, the bakery/dessert station to my left, the walk in cooler over my right shoulder, the sink and clean up section behind me, discreetly hidden behind a folding screen.  The first course that we were presented with was a ceviche-like dish served on a Himalayan salt block.  I still remember that first thrilling bite, cool, citrusy, what is that?  Dissected it like Gordon Ramsay on Kitchen Nightmares or Robert Irvine on Restaurant Impossible, oohing and ahhing.  Then realized that because I was playing with my food instead of actually eating it, the salt block had melted into the food and it was suddenly slap your face salty.  Oops! 

But I digress.  Writing this blog is more about finding things that I've never seen and/or never tried to prepare and wading right in.  I'll taste anything once, as long as it's not still moving.  I could eat squriming bugs if I was stranded in a jungle or if I landed in an alternate universe competing on Fear Factor but most days, I draw the line at food that moves.  If Andrew Zimmern shows up at my door and offers to take me to Southeast Asia, I'll say sure, knowing that I'm going to eat some disgusting stuff.  I'm in my own kitchen, though, and here I make the rules. 

So... those of you who know me now realize that I write like I talk.  All over the place.  Too much detail.  Yada, yada, yada.  (Thanks to Larry, I now know that "yada" means to know and be known.)  Get to the point already!  Ok. Ok.  I'm getting there.

I went to the Asian market today.  (Ok.  I admit, I go most days.)  I wandered around the produce section and decided that for some reason, I NEED a pomegranate.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with it.  I'll figure that out later.  Because the really interesting thing that I found was labeled "malanga coco" and looked like a small dirty yucca or taro root.  It smelled slightly nutty.  It was in a bin sandwiched between yams and jicama.  (I actually had a jicama in my hand with an idea for a salad to go with dinner.  I abandoned it when I saw the ugly malanga cocos beside it.)  Here it is.

When I got home, I fired up the computer and Googled malanga coco.  Google knows all.  Apparently it is either A: a member of the taro family or B: a magical medicinal root that calms the stomach or C: a weird, dirty looking vegetable that is delicious when sliced thin and deep fried.  I'm hoping it's C.  Because, DUH, any vegetable is delicious when sliced thin and deep fried. 

Sorry that there are no completed dish photos for this debut blog.  I've been sitting here typing when I should have been cooking!  My husband just ventured into the kitchen and offered to "help" with dinner.  Yikes!  Imperative that I sign off now. 

Please check in again and always, play with your food!