Peas that pack a punch

I like to think I learn well from others’ mistakes.

My first introduction to wasabi was when my boyfriend and I went out for authentic sushi, and he took some of the green paste (not knowing what it was) and smeared it all over his sushi like it was guacamole.

After a few seconds of chewing his sushi in what looked like total agony, he downed both his glass of water and mine.

Wasabi, by the way, is Japanese horseradish.

Now, I’ve had horseradish before, during Passover Seder.  I know how strong and bitter it is. I’ve witnessed my boyfriend’s reaction to wasabi and heard the story of how his sinuses were on fire for the next hour.

But when I came across wasabi peas in AJ’s, I couldn’t resist.

Apparently I don’t learn from others’ mistakes as well as I’d thought.

When I opened the container, the first thing I did was smell its contents. (Has anyone but me noticed that I seem to have an obsession with smelling food before I eat it? This is such a journey of self-discovery.)

The peas smelled like Chex Mix. I love Chex Mix almost as much as I love indie hard rock, or fuzzy slippers on a cold day. This boded well.

I didn’t throw all caution to the wind based on smell, however. Tempted as I was to stuff a handful of these in my mouth (like I would with Chex Mix at a party, unless someone was looking), the word wasabi emblazoned across a red flag in my mind kept me from doing something so rash.

So I just took one. Gingerly, I put it on my tongue and waited.

About two seconds later, the burning began.

I clamped my mouth shut. I crunched the pea. My tongue wilted.

(All right, so my tongue didn’t wilt. But it felt like it.)

Hot doesn’t really cover it, nor does spicy. If you’ve ever tried wasabi before, I’m sure you know exactly the sensation I experienced from just one little pea. It burned, it tingled, it hurt… And although I thought I tasted Chex Mix during those first few seconds, that was probably due to my overactive imagination. I wouldn’t know, because any flavor was soon incinerated.

After trying one for himself (which he didn’t end up swallowing), my dad commented that maybe these are meant as more of a garnish than a snack — maybe they’re supposed to be put in a salad or something. But no, they’re sold in the snack section, next to the saltwater taffy and the yogurt-covered pretzels.  And apparently, they’re a popular snack in Japan.

My dad was right in part, though. AJ’s suggests crushing up these peas to make wasabi pea-rusted ahi tuna steaks (scroll about 2/3 of the way down the page for the recipe). I don’t know when or why I would have a use for this, but I suppose it might be worth a shot…especially since I have a rather large container of peas still sitting on my kitchen table.

The bottom line: Anyone who likes wasabi will probably like these, since the dried peas themselves have no discernible flavor and seem to only serve as a vessel for wasabi paste. (Plus they’re crunchy, I suppose.) These peas pack a punch, and if that’s what you’re looking for, they make a great snack. But if you’re not a fan of spicy food, stay far, far away.

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Ingredients: Green peas, corn starch, glutinous rice flour, wheat flour, sugar, soybean and/or palm oil, salt, wasabi, FD&C yellow #5 and blue #1.
Price:$4.49 at A.J’s Fine Foods
Pros: None personally, but for someone who likes excessively spicy food, I’m sure these are great.
Cons: They’re…well, excessively spicy. My tongue still hurts a little.

When vegetables get creative

Veggie chips aren’t weird.

Everyone eats veggie chips.  I mean, honestly, potatoes are vegetables.  Those Ruffles in my pantry?  Perfectly normal.

The chip aisle was the last place I expected to find anything out of the ordinary, but as my eyes skimmed over the variations of barbecue, onion, vinegar, and sour cream (not necessarily combined), something pink caught my eye and stopped me in my tracks.

That’s a chip?

“Exotic vegetable chips,” the package read.  I snatched up the bag and stared at the picture on the front.  Vibrant pink circles of crispiness, and…was that a mangled onion?  They had the “exotic” part right; the “vegetable” part I wasn’t so sure about.  This, I had to try.

The back of the bag gave a helpful breakdown of each chip:

Taro (also known as malanga and dasheen) is apparently a tuber indigenous to India and Asia.  (Essentially, it’s a culturally aware potato.)  This was the white chip which gave me the first impression of being a mutilated onion.  Its flavor wasn’t bad at all — actually, it reminded me of a less-salty, slightly sweet potato chip.  I could probably eat a whole bag of these.  In fact, I actually could, because Terra (the chips’ brand) apparently liked this particular chip so much that they devoted an entire product to it.

Yuca, also known as cassava, is described as a “woody shrub” and also a “starchy tuber,” neither of which sounded particularly appealing to me.  Ironically, my thought process upon eating one of these chips went something like this: “Salt!  Salty…bark.  And now it’s just bark.  Crunchy.”  Yuca definitely has a strange texture in chip form.  I’d take taro chips over yuca chips any day.

Sweet potato sounded like the most normal chip out of the bunch.  After all, who doesn’t love sweet potato pie?  It’s also a name I can pronounce correctly, which is a nice bonus.  This orangey root (because yes, sweet potatoes are roots) makes a pretty good chip, I have to say.  It definitely had a strong sweet flavor, and its aftertaste was even sweeter.  This particular brand might have benefitted from more salt, but overall, it was a solid chip (figuratively speaking — and I suppose literally, too).

Ruby root vegetables are described on the back of the package as “perhaps the most dramatic.”  The bag didn’t specify what root vegetables were used in these, but it did inform me that they were “kissed with beet juice,” which accounts for that eye-catching red (hot pink on the package) and also has me wondering how exactly a beet kisses a chip.  But I digress.  Flavor-wise, these were sweet at first and nutty (and slightly bitter) after crunching them for a few seconds.  They had a strange tendency to disintegrate into a sort of juice form, which was when they turned nutty and more bitter.  Strange and interesting, but definitely not my favorite.

Batata is just another word for potato, but these have been “savored in the Carribean for centuries,” according to the package.  (Here we go again, putting the “exotic” in exotic veggie chips.)  These looked like potato chips, and tasted the most like them out of all the chips in the bag, but they were definitely sweeter and less salty.  (Harder and crunchier, too.)  I felt like they were a little tainted by some of the stronger flavors in the same bag, but overall they tasted fairly “normal.”

Parsnip does not sound edible.  In fact, it sounds like something I do when I’m cutting my hair.  But apparently, it’s just a stronger-tasting version of the carrot — Carrot 2.0, I guess.  Carrot chips sound weird, but parsnip chips are pretty tasty.  The flavor doesn’t kick in at first, but when it does, it’s an explosion of nuttiness.  Eating these made me want to try an actual parsnip, just out of curiosity.

So there you have it: vegetable medley, gourmet chip style.  While I’m more of a regular-potato-chip junkie kind of person, these chips are a good alternative if you’re looking for something a little less salty and greasy.  They have a lot to offer in the flavor department, from bitter to nutty to sweet.  As an added bonus, Terra has an extensive list of related recipes on their website, which would probably make these chips even tastier.  The shrimp salsa and the blissful bruschetta sound especially good (though maybe I just have an abundant affection for alliterations), and seeing as I have half a bag of chips left, I just might try this whole cooking thing.

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Ingredients: A seasonal mix of root vegetables (sweet potato, parsnip, batata, taro, yuca), canola oil and/or safflower oil and/or sunflower oil, beet juice concentrate (for color), salt.
Price: $5.19 at Fry’s Marketplace
Pros: Interesting variety of flavors, healthier alternative to “normal” potato chips.
Cons: The chips come in an assortment, so the flavors are less distinct.  The bag I got also came with a largely disproportionate amount of red root vegetable chips (which happened to be my least favorite), but that could just be my luck.