Another foray into the root vegetable center of the world…the UK Garden Box
This week’s veg box included these… strange knobbed things. Does anyone know what they are?! I mean, did you instantly identify them? If so, where are you from??? We peered at them in bewilderment, and had to actually slink to the computer – in shame – and email the CSA to find out: they’re Jerusalem Artichokes.
Well. Knew it was wistful thinking that they’d be something like, oh, truffles or something else brown and knobbed and unidentifiable. (Frankly, we’d be just as stumped if they were truffles… although we could sell them on the black market in France and buy a villa, at the rate one pays for them!) I guess artichokes would go well with …mushrooms? Rosemary? They look like potatoes… kind of. Maybe they’ll be good with soup, since I was just getting ready to throw together a potato-spinach thing. (Mom, have we ever eaten these? We’re not thinking we have…)
Any thoughts? Or, are we still on a Donal run and going to just say “roast ’em?”
This morning the meteorological office reported that it was 2 ° C. by 7:30. Last night we walked home from Choral Society and it was 5 ° C, and a lovely clear night with the moon an icy sliver above us and twenty mph. gusts, which carried a wind chill factor that brought the temp down to 3 °. We were both red nosed and frozen faced when we got home. The high today is forecast to be something like 5 ° C., which is 41 ° F. It got up to 3 ° C – 34 ° F – at nine this morning. In a suspiciously connected incident, I mentioned to my friend Barbara last week that I am a wimp about the cold, and she said she thought it might get colder at this latitude. We now officially blame the weather on her…
The clouds are rolling in however, and we’ll be back to a reasonable 8 – 9 ° with sheeting rain and knee-deep puddles shortly…
– D & T
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Yep – I didn’t want to depress you by telling you that the weather so far has been unseasonably good – last year we had sheeting rain g for about a month…
If you go to Geekfarmlife.com you will find that they talk a lot about Jerusalem Artichokes on their podcast. I believe that if you don’t boil them and throw the water away you get even more erm ‘windy weather’ if you see what I mean….
India
Make sure you have some cardamom seeds on hand when you eat these. Midsummer Night’s Knitter has a real point.
Trim off the nobbly bits, peel these, and roast them, then blend them with carrots to make a really tasty soup. They oxidize quickly, so you need to immerse them in a bowl of water as you peel them.
My parents used to grow Jerusalem artichokes. They have beautiful flowers that look a little like sunflowers, but they are a little invasive and tend to take over a garden.
shrieking with laughter that you thought you got that many truffles in your CSA box. Yes, you could buy a villa with that many. Enjoy them–I was so disappointed as a child because I thought my aunt/uncle had artichokes in their garden, but they were this variety and not the one that I love.
This is a great song for your choral group:
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/243.html
I finally got round to posting a recipe for parsnips that you might like.
Artichokes are best used in a mixed vegetable soup, I think, as they have such an overpowering taste.
I would have been stumped too! Good luck with those homely little things.