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Jerusalem Artichokes a
l'Italienne.
Ingredients.
Two pounds of Artichokes.
One gill of Consommé.
Two ounces of Butter.
Pepper and Salt, Nutmeg. Lemon-juice.
Italian Sauce (see Entrées).
Wash and peel the artichokes, shaping them like small pears, of even sizes. Butter a stewpan with two ounces of butter, and arrange the artichokes in circles in it, sprinkle over a little pepper, salt, nutmeg, and lemon-juice; pour one gill of consommé to them, put the lid on, and simmer gently for half an hour, basting them occasionally; they should colour a deep yellow. Just before serving, roll them in the consommé. Serve with Italian sauce round them.
A straightforward braise-and-glaze that depends on two things: buying enough tubers to survive the peeling, and reducing the stock at the end so the artichokes take on a shine.
- Jerusalem artichokes are sunchokesThese are the knobby tubers of a perennial sunflower, sold today as sunchokes or topinambour, and have nothing to do with globe artichokes. Nothing in this recipe works with globe artichoke hearts.
- A gillIn a British book of this period a gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, about 5 fl oz or 150 ml. American readers used to a gill as half a cup will be a little short; err on the generous side, as the liquid is meant to reduce to a glaze.
- Buy more than two poundsTurning knobbly tubers into even pear shapes throws away a great deal. Start with 3 to 3½ lb of medium sunchokes to end with 2 lb trimmed, and choose the smoothest, least fingered ones you can find.
- Keep them from browningCut surfaces discolour within minutes. Drop the shaped tubers into water with lemon juice as you go — the lemon juice listed in the ingredients is for the pan, so squeeze extra.
- The hinge is the glaze"Roll them in the consommé" means the stock should by then be reduced to a few spoonfuls of syrup that coats each tuber. If liquid still pools in the pan at the end, lift the lid, raise the heat and let it reduce, turning the artichokes as it goes.
- TimingHalf an hour at a bare simmer suits pieces the size of a small pear; small ones can be tender in 18 to 20 minutes. Test with the point of a knife — overcooked sunchokes collapse into mush rather than staying whole for the sauce.
- Italian sauceSauce italienne is a brown sauce — demi-glace with a duxelles of mushroom, shallot, chopped lean ham and white wine, finished with parsley. A good reduced veal stock with sautéed mushrooms and ham stands in for it if you are not making the book's version.
- InulinSunchokes store their carbohydrate as inulin, which is not digested in the small intestine and causes marked wind in many people. Long slow cooking breaks down only part of it, so do not count on cooking to solve the problem. Serve modest portions to anyone unfamiliar with them.
- YieldTwo pounds of trimmed tubers with sauce serves four to six as a vegetable course alongside a roast.
Jerusalem artichokes reached Europe from eastern North America in the early seventeenth century and were widely grown before the potato displaced them; the "Jerusalem" is generally traced to a corruption of girasole, the Italian for sunflower, though the derivation is traditional rather than proven. By the late Victorian and Edwardian period they seem to have slipped down the social scale in Britain, more often boiled plain or puréed, and a recipe like this one instead gives them French restaurant treatment: turned to a uniform shape, braised in consommé, glazed, and served under the name of a classical sauce. Shaping vegetables "like small pears, of even sizes" is professional kitchen discipline — it helps them cook evenly, and it also makes a cheap winter tuber look like something worth putting on a dinner-party menu.