Manioc-Cassava-Tapioca-Yuca Four Ways in Four Days

I ate a raw piece of Manihot esculenta Friday night and so far it hasn't killed me.

Which is good.  I didn't really expect it to, but I always wondered if it just might, as the roots contain cyanogenic glucosides to some degree.  I first learned of manioc (as manioc) in a wonderful Nutritional Anthropology class at C.U..  While I was fascinated by my professor's research into the plant (how sustainable swidden agriculture can be in the upper Amazon basin, why people would select plants that have more cyanide rather than less, how drought exacerbates cyanide poisoning among the manioc-dependent) but I was scared when she told me that it was on sale at ethnic grocery stores in town.  A personal point of pride (since about 6th grade) was that I could always identify what not to eat in my surroundings, and here she was suggesting that something in a produce bin might harm me if I took it home and stuck it into a stir fry.

So, in college I was fascinated with the plant, buy never ate any.

In graduate school, I was somewhat disappointed to learn that the yuca added as a side dish to the great veggie enchiladas at La Parilla was not actually the roots of the yucca we see around (Yucca glauca) but somehow didn't put it together that I was eating manioc.

Tapioca pudding reminds me of my grandparents, unless it is weird, warm coconut milk pudding with fruit and odd tapioca shapes at a Thai buffet, and then it just reminds me of my sons at Thai buffets.

 When I moved to Oklahoma, I was shocked to find big ball tapioca on the shelf at the local grocery store. I excitedly pointed it out to my mother, "Bubble tea is big in Western Oklahoma?!"  She thought I was joking, but I had never had large pearl tapioca in anything other than bubble tea, first with her in Nanjing, China, and later at our favorite tea spot in Lawrence.  I had never heard of "Frog Eye Salad" the Mister still thinks I'm making it up when I tell him that Frog Eye Salad is why they sell big ball tapioca in my small town.

All of these products are from the same plant.  Manihot esculenta is known as manioc, cassava, and yuca (typically pronounced so it alliterates with ukulele: YOU-ke rather than spiny YUCK-a yucca), and from its starch, tapioca is derived.  The plant is in the Euphorbiaceae (the spurge family), and is the only edible crop from that giant family*.  Manioc is a major player on the world food scene.  The factoid given varies, but it a staple food for at least 500,000,000 people and ranks just behind rice and maize for food importance in the tropics.  It comes in bitter (higher cyanogenic glucosides) and sweet (lover cyanogenic glucosides) forms and my Roots cookbook assures me that the fat waxed root I bought at the Mexican Supermercado in Norman, or the thinner root I found at the local grocery store, are sweet.

I made some tapioca pudding using minute tapioca.  Then I fried some chips.  Then I fried some yuca fries.  Then I made a breakfast pudding out of long-soak tapioca, young coconut chunks, grated yuca, and quinoa, among other things, and the boys and I assembled berry-pudding breakfast parfaits**.  Today I fried the rest of the root.

The pudding and the chips were great-- for a home fryer, yuca is preferable to potatoes because with the lower water content yuca chips crisp up better. None the less, I won't be buying manioc/yuca/cassava roots again any time soon.  Although who knows, I should probably look up a recipe for frog eye salad.

*Quiz, how is manioc like pineapple and vanilla?

**Asked the Mister, "Are you following any sort of a recipe?"  Well, not really, unless you count the pudding recipe on the tapioca package, a vague recollection of over-night non-oatmeal oatmeal using quinoa, a recipe for a Thai coconut tapioca custard in hand, and my desire to somehow replicate, but make higher protein and more breakfast worthy, the Thai buffet pudding.  I had all sorts of recipes.  They just weren't for quite what I was making.