I was just at a get-together where someone brought a vegetable tray. Mostly, it was familiar things like carrots, celery, and bell pepper slices… but there were also these things that looked like styrofoam, sliced into sticks three or four inches long, with a half-inch or so square cross-section. The resemblance to styrofoam did not end with their appearance: They were a little bit starchy, and a littler bit sweet, but otherwise had no flavor whatsoever. They were decent enough as a crunchy dip-delivery mechanism, but I wouldn’t eat them without dip. And they can’t be too exotic, to have made it into a mass-market grocery-store veggie tray.
So, what were those things? Someone thought maybe daikon, but I can’t imagine that any sort of radish could possibly be that devoid of flavor.
Well, then, if it was jicama, it wasn’t good. The flavor wasn’t anything like “Oh, this is sweet”. It was more like “Wow, this is just as flavorless as it looks. But it’s got to have some flavor. Hm, a little starchy, I guess. And sweet, maybe?”.
I should also mention that, when I said that it looked like styrofoam, I mean right down to appearing to be composed of small beads compressed together.
I’m pretty sure I would have recognized a brassica flavor in kohlrabi, and if it was parsnips, then whoever was slicing them was throwing a whole lot away, because few or none of them appeared to have a natural curved surface. And I’m sure that it wasn’t puffed rice: It looked like it was made of styrofoam-like pellets, but it didn’t chew that way.
So I guess it probably was jicama, even if it wasn’t as sweet as it’s supposed to be (grocery stores carrying veggies with less flavor than they’re supposed to have? Gasp!).
Before I got to the end of your post I was guessing daikon, which is a type of radish but is pretty mild. But Daikon does have a noticeable flavor that I’d describe as sort of licorice-y, the texture isn’t styrofoam-like, and I really wouldn’t expect to see it on a vegetable tray in the US unless maybe it came from an Asian grocery store, so you’re probably right that it was something else.
Oh, is that what jicama is? I thought it was some exotic food product. It’s just what we call singkamas in the Philippines. After reading the Wikipedia article, I now know that the words jicama and singkamas are both derived from the Nahuatl xicamatl.
Jicama are NOT sweet. Very, very, ever-so-slightly sweetish at most. Like a memory of what is sweet. Eaten plain they are pretty flavorless, just have a nice crunch. Most folks doctor them up by marinating them in something or spicing them with something.
From the OP’s description I would safely bet on Jicama.
Back in the early 90’s I was chef at the St Louis Art Museum. I used julienned jicama, carrots and spinach as a base for a grilled chicken salad. I used a very flavorful sesame lime based vinaigrette to dress the salad. The jicama lent very little flavor (which the dressing overcame) but it did add a nice crunch.