Eat the Sunchoke

Eat the Sunchoke

We had nearly given up hope. This winter, like the winter before, and the winter before that, has moved us all one tiny step closer to packing up and moving to Los Angeles. (Unfortunately, the distance between us and that move merely splits in half every year; we get closer, but we will never actually leave our garbage ice city.) But the sun is beginning to shine. We have swapped our winter coats for spring coats. We look confusedly at our windows and remember they open, and that it is a nice thing to open them. We start to believe that we will survive, yet again. And yet: There is nothing to eat. March blows.

The entire period between late February and mid-April is the worst time of the year, culinarily speaking. The hardiest members of the squash and brassica families, among them winter squash and Brussels sprouts, have given up; they were harvested months ago and are now stale and dry. Citrus season, those cheerful few months in the middle of winter in which we all eat between two and six clementines per day, is waning — grapefruit and some tangerine varieties are still pretty good, but even they are starting to yield to the melting of the frost. Anyone who tells you that classic spring vegetables like asparagus and peas are available in March either lives in a place that doesn’t have winter or is a god damn liar.

But there is one vegetable that thrives in this terribly confusing frost/melt/frost/melt weather: the sunchoke. And it’s actually pretty good! The sunchoke is also known as the Jerusalem artichoke, which is a bad name for two reasons: It is not an artichoke, and it is not native to, nor can it even be grown in, Jerusalem. It is in fact the tuber — so, technically, not a vegetable, but I think I can stop issuing caveats like this to prove that I know the difference, because you know I know — of a variety of sunflower, and it is native to North America, where it is more specifically endemic to the northeast. It was a fairly important crop for the American Indians of the region, and when Europeans came over, they found it, alternately, either very tasty (the French) or fit for livestock (the English, predictably).

The name “Jerusalem artichoke” comes from the Italian word for sunflower, girasole, and for the fact that the French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who was the first to export the sunchoke to Europe, thought they tasted a bit like artichokes. (Probably.) Thanks to the French, who very much love the vegetable, the sunchoke became very popular in Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But, because it’s one of, like, two things that grows in the early springtime in northeastern North America, it developed a reputation as a poor man’s food by the middle of the nineteenth century. It languished there, uncool for the wealthy, for another hundred years, until the name “sunchoke” was given to it in the nineteen sixties by Los Angeles food wholesaler Frieda Caplan, who was trying to come up with a more appealing name. It’s an okay name, I think!

Sunchokes are best in February and March; for some reason, they taste best when harvested immediately after a frost, which you can really only do in the springtime, when the temperature is fickle enough that the day after a frost might be warm enough to dig up some tubers. They look mostly like young ginger: knobbly, pale tubers, rarely bigger than a golf ball, with a thin beige skin. I like them because they’re a multipurpose food. Unlike potatoes, to which they are often compared, you can (and should!) eat them raw, but they also roast and mash well. And they’re healthier than potatoes, with high levels of potassium and iron.

To shop for sunchokes, opt for the smaller ones, which tend to be sweeter and more flavorful. Avoid any that look, like, wrinkled, or soft, or any that have that greenish tint tubers sometimes get. Like potatoes and most other root vegetables, you can and should eat the skin. Don’t bother peeling it; it is thin and won’t notably impact the flavor of your final dish (though it may turn purees slightly greyish).

Escarole and Sunchoke Salad

Shopping list: escarole, sunchokes, almonds, olive oil, lemon juice, shallots, honey, ricotta salata

This is a super easy salad I have stolen basically intact from the New York restaurant Otto. First things first: make the dressing. Finely mince a shallot, put it in a container, and cover it with lemon juice — and god help you if you use that shelf-stable lemon juice in the plastic bottle. Let that sit while you do the rest of the prep.

Any bitter green will work for this salad; frisee would be fine, as would watercress or endive or chicory. Take your head of escarole (or whatever), slice off the root and discard, then slice width-wise into pieces no more than an inch or so across. Wash thoroughly (often escarole has dirt in it) and dry. Wash sunchokes and slice thinly into rounds. Otto peels them first; I do not, and nor should you. Nor should Otto, really, but they invented the salad so they can do whatever they want, I guess. A mandoline would be best for this, although sunchokes are easy to slice with a knife as well. Put in a bowl with water and a little lemon juice if they’re going to be sitting out for any length of time; they’ll brown, like potatoes or apples. If not, throw them in a big bowl with the escarole. Chop a handful of almonds and add those too. Crumble a whole mess of ricotta salata (or feta, or, I guess, parmesan, though it won’t be as good) over the top.

Mix in olive oil with your lemon juice and shallot mixture in a ratio of about 1:1, then add a small squeeze of honey and shake thoroughly. Pour over salad and toss thoroughly, adding salt and pepper to taste.

Sunchoke Soup With Hazelnut Gremolata

Shopping list: sunchokes, chicken stock, garlic, onion, olive oil, vegetable oil, smoked paprika (sometimes labeled pimenton), thyme, parsley, lemon, hazelnuts

In your tiniest saucepan, heat up a few tablespoons of vegetable oil and add in a pinch or two of smoked paprika and a sprig of thyme. Heat over medium heat for about five minutes, then remove the thyme and keep the oil. Put the hazelnuts — you should buy pre-peeled hazelnuts, since peeling them is horrible — in an oven of some kind at about 400 degrees for ten minutes, checking frequently, until aromatic and golden but not burnt.

This is pretty much the most basic pureed soup recipe there is; you can replace the sunchokes with any variety of root vegetables and end up with a nice soup. But today is sunchoke day, so: In a Dutch oven or soup pot, saute chopped garlic and onion in olive oil until translucent. Wash sunchokes and chop into small pieces, then throw into the pot. Stir around for awhile until sunchokes have a little color, maybe ten minutes. Add in chicken stock just about to the level of the sunchokes, cover, and raise heat to a simmer. Cook until the sunchokes are soft enough to piece easily with a fork, then stick in your immersion blender and blitz until smooth (a food processor or blender will work but be awkward and create more dishes). When you think it’s done, blend it some more, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Make your gremolata: Chop hazelnuts into very small pieces. Using a microplane, grate fresh, raw garlic, no more than a clove, into a pile. Get about twice as much lemon zest as garlic. Chop a whole bunch of parsley and combine all this stuff together.

To serve, ladle the soup into a bowl. Place a heaping pinch of gremolata in the middle, then drizzle the smoked paprika oil around it in a circle.

Fuck It, Just Roast Them

Shopping list: sunchokes, olive oil, onion, garlic, thyme

This is the laziest recipe. There are plenty of ways to make roasted sunchokes, or roasted anything, much more complicated: you could par-cook by boiling or steaming; you could brown in butter on the stovetop first; you could roll in a seasoned flour mixture; or you could roil them around in an ultrasonic bath to create minute peaks and valleys for a crispier texture. But you don’t really need to.

Pre-heat oven to 380 degrees. Wash sunchokes and chop into chunks maybe an inch on each side. Throw in a big bowl. Slice onions in half through the root and then thinly width-wise, giving you single half-moons. Chop garlic into a few pieces per clove, and throw garlic and onions into the sunchoke bowl. Throw in a few sprigs of thyme or a hefty sprinkling of dried thyme. Pour oil in bowl, mix up until well coated, then pour onto a baking tray. Space them out so they’re not touching; if they’re touching, do two rounds. Do not overcrowd the tray. Roast until a knife pierces through the sunchoke without resistance. Eat with salt.

I can tell when winter is almost over because I have totally forgotten any other state of being; can you remember wearing shorts? Or sitting on the ground for fun? I cannot, which means it must almost be time to do that again. Another way to tell that winter is almost over is that I legit got excited this week about sunchokes. I mean, they’re pretty good! But like, remember peaches? When is summer ag —

Photo by Walter Parenteau