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Creamed Salsify or Oyster Plant
Wash and scrape the salsify, throwing it immediately into cold water to which a little vinegar or lemon-juice has been added, to prevent discoloration. Cut in inch slices and cook in boiling water until tender, adding salt just before cooking is completed. When tender, drain and combine with medium white sauce. Serve with tiny fried sausage balls.
A straightforward vegetable dish that depends entirely on getting the salsify prepared before it browns. Nothing here needs correcting, but a few of the assumptions are worth spelling out.
- Buy it firmSalsify is also sold as oyster plant; the related black-skinned root sold as scorzonera or black salsify is a different species. It turns up in autumn and winter at farmers' markets and some greengrocers. Choose roots that are firm and unshrivelled; limp ones are woody at the core.
- The acidulated water is not optionalCut salsify oxidises to a dull grey within minutes. Have the bowl of cold water with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice standing ready before you pick up the peeler, and drop the pieces in as you go. The sap is also faintly sticky; rinse the knife occasionally.
- TimingInch slices take roughly 15 to 25 minutes at a simmer depending on the age of the root. Test with a knife tip rather than the clock. Salt at the end, as the book says.
- Medium white sauceThe usual proportion for a medium white sauce is 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour and 1 cup milk, seasoned with salt and pepper. Thin it with a little of the cooking water if it stiffens while the salsify drains.
- Sausage ballsBulk pork sausage meat rolled into marble-sized balls and fried until browned through, about 8 to 10 minutes in a skillet. Any well-seasoned fresh sausage removed from its casing works.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; as a rough guide, about 1 1/2 lb of roots, trimmed and peeled, would give four modest side servings with the sauce.
Salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius) is often said to have earned the name oyster plant from a faint marine sweetness in the cooked root, a resemblance that nineteenth-century cooks took seriously enough to build mock-oyster fritters and mock-oyster soup around it. It was a common kitchen-garden crop in Europe and North America through the 1800s, valued because the root keeps in the ground over winter and can be dug as needed. Today it sits as a specialty item.