You would expect a delectable, high-priced vegetable to be displayed in a beautiful cloth or attractive basket. But not the chinchayote, which is sold in this part of Mexico only from December to May.
You won’t find the chinchayote, which is the root of the pretty, green, pear-shaped chayote summer squash, in a supermarket and not easily in a public vegetable market either. In traditional markets, you just might have to scout the corners for a humble-looking woman sitting on the floor with her produce spread out in front of her. Or ask a vegetable seller in a stall, where she may have a modest quantity of chinchayote tucked away in a dirty plastic bag.
Perhaps all this humility is due to the appearance of the chinchayote—brown, rough and elongated, a bit like a slightly hairy, stretched potato. It would seem that this starchy vegetable has never inspired poetry or been the subject of still lifes, to compete with the apple, orange, or even the onion.
However, “If people know it, they’re enchanted by it,” said Natalia, a long-time vegetable seller in a stall at Guadalajara‘s Mercado Juarez. This was the case, I found, for the Mexicans I asked about chinchayote, and even for a few foreigners, who shared their knowledge of the vegetable with me as if it were some secret love potion.
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