My husband texted me from work one day and said he was bringing home a vegetable called a Chayote. I had never heard of it so I had to look it up. The information on the internet said it was actually a fruit, but eaten like a vegetable. What I saw said it didn’t need to be peeled and could be boiled, steamed, fried, roasted, baked, mashed, sliced, diced, and even eaten raw. But the chayote the internet was referring to didn’t have spikes. The ones my husband brought home had spikes. So it was recommended that we cut off the spikes and peel it before cooking. I am sure it will come as no surprise to anyone that I roasted it. I roasted it just like I do all the veggies! But what may come as a surprise to you . . . as it sure did to me was that it ate my flesh!
Ok, so that might be a bit dramatic, but . . . as usual I didn’t take a lot of time researching it. I looked it up quickly and saw that, as I said, the internet says it is a fruit eaten like a vegetable. The initial search return was showing it as a squash. So – squash, it can easily be peeled cut up and cooked. Well, I was forgetting that it is a fruit. So, my plan to quickly wash, peel, slice, and stick it in the oven on time bake before I left for class was quickly SQUASHED after I cut the ends off and sliced it in half. IT HAD A SEED.
ALSO, it was slippery as heck. I couldn’t actually hold the outside of it as it was spiky and my attempt to use my vegetable peeler failed. So I was trying to hold it on the exposed flesh. My first thought was that it would cook up slimy like okra because it was so slippery!
So I googled something – I don’t even remember what because I was in such a hurry. The result came back with some video of some guy saying to cut one end off (ok, too late for that) then he used the portion that he cut off to rub the fruit at the cut end which produced some foaming stuff. He said you needed to do that for a few minutes to pull out the enzyme that makes it bitter. I tried that, but I think I could not get the same result because I had already cut it in half, so I was trying to rub the exposed part. Remember, I had been treating it like SQUASH because I had seen it called squash.
I had to use a knife to peel the skin off and by this time I was using a towel to hold it because it was so spiky and slippery. I ran out of time, I had to leave to teach my yoga class so I only managed to peel one. I put them in a bag and then in the fridge to deal with when I got home.
As I was getting ready to go to class I noticed my fingers were peeling. They were the same as when I use peroxide without gloves. They were cracked, dry, and rough. I decided I had better use gloves when I was handling those things. Looking it up now, FoodUniversity.com says that it contains an enzyme that could cause your hands to peel when eaten in large quantities. Well, I think that just handling it will do that.
So on my second go at this wily fruit I wore gloves. I tried to cut it in half using the seed as a guide, so cutting on the outside edge of the seed. Then I used a knife to cut the skin off. Then I sliced it.
The internet says it has a lot of nutritional benefits!
Have you ever had chayote?
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