Introducing obscure vegetable: sunchokes, three ways

Sunchokes or Jerusalem artichokes are weird-looking bulbs that look nothing like artichokes, but, surprisingly, when cooked their flavour resembles artichokes a little bit. I was super-happy to discover this, because I love artichokes, but they are so expensive, and then they actually have so little meat in them!

After a rigorous scrubbing --these babies are root vegetables, after all!-, dirt gives way to a milky, pink-tinged skin. They look pretty cool, like alien tumors or magnified microbes or something. For reasons uncomprehensible to me, sunchokes are a bit of a 'forgotten vegetable'. I think it's such a pity, because they are really amazing little things --let's be real, the artichoke thing had me sold since the beginning... So what can you do with them?

It seems like the most obvious thing is soup. You simply soften shallot and garlic in a pan, deglaze with white wine and then add diced sunchoke and let it simmer with some stock for about 20 minutes, pureeing afterwards. The result is a very satisfying, velvety soup full of that characteristic, artichoke-like flavour.

But I wanted to go further in my exploration. After some googling, I found out that sunchokes can also be eaten raw. You can integrate them into a slaw -just grate everything from carrots to apple to fennel to beetroot to celeriac to radishes... and, of course, your sunchoke, and let marinate in a lemony, herby vinaigrette for a few minutes before eating. If you want the flavour of the sunchokes to stand out more, you can turn them into a veggie capraccio: slice them really thinly in a mandolin and dress them with olive oil, lemon juice and some sea salt. In any case, the key to eating them raw is to slice them really thinly. I enjoyed this version, but the flavour was much less pronounced.

Third and final way of consuming these little freaks is popping them in the oven. I love a good roasted veggie and sunchokes didn’t disappoint. Just cut them into small-ish pieces, toss in a little olive oil and herbs (show them some love! A little rosemary perhaps? Some garlic...) and roast in the oven for about 20-25 minutes at around 200C until they’re cooked on the inside and golden or even beginning to crisp on the outside. The artichoke-reminiscent taste is not so strong as it is in the soup but it’s a subtle presence.

A lone-star roasted sunchoke piece

The only drawbacks to sunchokes: the price (they’re more expensive than other root vegetables or potatoes) and the cleaning: they tend to be smallish and have a very uneven surface which gets completely covered in dirt, so cleaning them or peeling them requires a fair amount of elbow grease.