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Try to make it as an up-and-coming American menu item with a name like yuca, which is properly pronounced youka, not yuck-a. Perhaps that's why the versatile tuber works its way into restaurant kitchens under aliases, like cassava and manioc.
And find its way onto menus yuca does, boiled, baked and fried into specialties that stretch from its native South America through most tropical countries, with the possible exception of Southeast Asia, where it reportedly is used as animal feed.
Because some varieties of yuca root, which also is known as Manihot esculenta, contain a toxin known as cyanogenic glucoside, chefs usually serve the vegetable in a processed form ground, steamed, baked or fried - to neutralize any harmful elements.
When turned into flour, yuca is toasted in butter to produce farofa, the traditional garnish for Brazil's national dish, feijoada, a complex stew of black beans, sausages and meats served at restaurants like Terra Brazilis in San Francisco.
At Criolla's, Johnny Earles' 120-seat Creole-Caribbean restaurant in Apalachicola, Fla., chef de cuisine Philippe Robles turns the finely grated yuca into cassava pone, a dessert item. The pudding is made with eggs, raisins, coconut milk, sugar, vanilla and a touch of black pepper, he says. But the pudding plays second fiddle to Criolla's top-selling chocolate cake, he adds, because chocolate is more familiar to the customers.
Preparing the fresh root is labor-intensive, according to Randall St. Clair, executive chef of Ciudad, the Los Angeles restaurant owned by Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger of Border Grill fame. St. Clair's staff first pares the tough, outer layer, then "yuca has a really thick, fibrous core that you remove," he says. For Ciudad's mashed yuca, "it takes a long time to cook, like boiling rocks," he claims.
Sliced thin and fried, yuca substitutes for another native South American tuber, the potato, in snack chips. "Mango Gang" leader and Miami chef Alien Susser says he pipes the chips with seasoned goat cheese, crowning the disks...