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Fried Oyster Plant
Parboil the plant, scrape off the outside, cut in slices, dip in egg, roll in bread crumbs, and fry in hot lard.
"Oyster plant" is salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius), a long tapering root sold in winter at farmers' markets and some greengrocers; scorzonera, the black-skinned relative, behaves the same way. The recipe is a two-stage job — boil, then crumb and fry — and the whole thing turns on keeping the root from browning between the two.
- Stop the discoloration firstCut salsify oxidizes to a dirty grey within minutes, and the sticky white latex in the root stains hands. Work with a bowl of acidulated water (a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar per quart) alongside you, and drop each piece in as it is cut.
- Parboil means tender, not softScrub the roots whole and simmer them in salted, acidulated water 15–25 minutes depending on thickness, until a knife tip enters with slight resistance. They finish cooking in the fat, and overboiled salsify collapses in the pan.
- Scraping after boilingThe instruction to scrape after parboiling is deliberate and worth following — the skin slips off under a cloth or the back of a knife the way it does on a boiled beet, and it avoids the latex entirely.
- SlicesCut on a slant into pieces about half an inch thick. Thin coins lose the point of the dish, which is the mild, faintly sweet, oyster-ish interior against a crisp coating.
- Egg and crumbsDry the slices well or nothing will stick. A light dusting of seasoned flour before the egg gives the coating something to grip; season the crumbs, since boiled salsify on its own is very mild.
- Frying fat and temperatureThe recipe says only 'hot lard'. Lard works well and gives a clean flavor, though its smoke point is only moderate; another fat with a higher smoke point will also do. Shallow-fry at around 350-360F, three minutes or so a side, and drain on paper.
- YieldA pound of salsify, roughly four to six roots depending on size, trims and peels down to enough for two to three people as a side dish.
Salsify earned the name "oyster plant" from a supposed resemblance in flavor — a comparison that is traditional rather than chemical, and one nineteenth-century writers repeated with varying degrees of conviction. It was grown as a kitchen-garden root in Europe by the sixteenth century and traveled to American gardens with other cool-season crops, where it kept well in the ground or in sand through the winter and so earned a place in the vegetable chapter of household books like this one. The same boil-crumb-fry method was commonly applied to parsnips, a root that shares its season and sweetness though not its family.