Chayote - salad or soup - Garden Kitchen

(Photo LOF : green chayote in a revolutionary plate)

The chayote harvest is finished by the end of January. You can keep them for a month or so at room temperature. They start sprouting long tendrils while they wait on the counter.
(Photo LOF : Green chayote salad with rice vinager vinagrette)

The chayote is not very expressive and needs a shave, it likes neither wind nor cold, but is a good climber.
An inhabitant of Alcacer do Sal grew a chayot that grew all around his living room.

How to eat a chayote? There are 2 different types of chayote (sechium edule), xuxus (in portuguese) - green or yellow. The yellow or cream coloured chayote is very good in soups - cook for 10 minutes in a pressure cooker with chicken broth - marvelous - a woodsy mushroom flavour. Add cream - even better.

The green chayote is tasty grated as a salad.
At LOF we use a simple vinagrette, no mustard but with a rice vinager, a little sweet, not very strong, with a strongly flavoured olive oil and a dash of black pepper. This salad should be "fatigué" or exhausted which means you need to toss it with the vinagrette about 10 minutes before serving.

Its a very good starter and in the Réunion islands they describe it as half way between a cucumber and a green apple and like it with ginger and garlic.
(Photo LOF, yellow chayote in the garden)