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Jerusalem Artichokes
Topinambours à l'Italienne are cut in fancy shapes, cooked with butter, stock, etc., and glazed; served with Italian sauce. They are also sautés in thin slices.
A purée of Jerusalem artichokes with cream, sprinkled with grated Parmesan and browned, is called Topinambours au gratin.
ASPARAGUS.
Plainly boiled, they are called Asperges en branches.
Four lines on Jerusalem artichokes and one on asparagus, which together say more about how this kitchen thought than most of the longer pages.
- “Cut in fancy shapes” means most of it is thrown awayTurning a knobbly tuber into even olive or barrel shapes costs you more than half of each one. The waste was not a side effect. The uniform shape was the dish, and the trimmings went into the stockpot or the purée.
- Glazed, without sugarIn this book a glazed vegetable is one cooked in stock and butter until the liquid has reduced to a syrup that coats it. No sugar is added. If you glaze these with sugar you will get something much sweeter than the page intends, because the tubers are already sweet.
- They brown the moment they are cutPeeled or cut surfaces discolour fast. Into acidulated water as you go, or accept the grey. The book never says so, which is a reminder that a page like this records results, not methods.
- The purée has to be sievedTopinambours au gratin starts from a purée with cream. Mashing will not do it; the skins and fibre do not break down, and the purée has to go through a sieve or a mouli to be worth the cheese on top.
- Asperges en branchesWhole stalks, plainly boiled. In a chapter where every other vegetable gets a sauce, a gratin or a mould, asparagus is the one thing permitted to arrive as itself. That one line is the chapter’s highest compliment.
Measure this entry against the pages given to carrots and onions and you can read the kitchen’s opinion. The Jerusalem artichoke grows almost anywhere, spreads without help, and keeps in the ground through winter, so it was always available and never prized. It gets three treatments: an Italian sauce, a quick sauté, and a gratin with Parmesan — each of them a way of putting something else in front of the flavour. A vegetable tolerated rather than wanted, kept on the list because it was there.