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Jerusalem Artichokes
Pare artichokes, put in cold water till ready to cook. Drain, place in buttered baking dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dot with butter, cover and bake till soft, about 30 minutes.
A bare-bones vegetable bake that leaves out the oven temperature, which is the one number you need. Treat it as a covered braise in the oven rather than a roast.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives none. A moderate oven, 350-375F, suits it: covered and dotted with butter, the tubers steam in their own moisture.
- What the vegetable isJerusalem artichokes are the tubers of Helianthus tuberosus, sold today as sunchokes. They are unrelated to globe artichokes and need no trimming beyond paring and trimming the knobs.
- The cold water mattersPared sunchokes brown quickly. Acidulate the holding water with a squeeze of lemon or a splash of vinegar and they stay pale through baking.
- Cut them evenlyThe recipe says nothing about cutting them. Knobby tubers vary wildly in size, so halve or quarter the large ones into pieces of about 1 inch or the small ones will collapse before the big ones soften.
- TimingThirty minutes is right for small pieces in a tightly covered dish. Test with a knife tip: done means yielding but not mushy, since overcooked sunchokes turn watery and lose their sweetness.
- Add a little liquidA covered dish with only butter can scorch at the edges if the tubers are dry. Two or three tablespoons of water, stock or cream in the bottom guarantees steam.
- YieldFigure 1 1/2 lb of tubers for four as a side dish, rather less as the center of a one-dish meal, in which case pair them with cheese, bacon or a cream sauce.
- A note on digestionSunchokes store carbohydrate as inulin, which many people do not digest comfortably in quantity. Serve modest portions the first time.
Jerusalem artichokes are a North American plant, cultivated by Indigenous peoples long before European contact and carried back to Europe in the early seventeenth century, where they were grown and eaten for a time before the potato overtook them. The name is a double misnomer: the plant has no connection to Jerusalem, and the "Jerusalem" element is commonly explained as a corruption of the Italian girasole, sunflower, though that derivation is traditional rather than settled; "artichoke" is usually said to refer to a supposed likeness of flavor in the cooked tuber. The plainness of the treatment - pare, butter, cover, bake - is characteristic of the period's confidence that a vegetable needed little more than an oven and seasoning.