Friday 16 May 2008

JERUSALEM ARTICHOKES

If you want success next summer - ie tall plants requiring minimal water and lovely sunflower-type flowers plus a guaranteed crop of something in autumn, then these are the plants for you. Make sure that you plant them in a suitable place because you will have them coming up every year forever afterwards. All you need is to plant one tuber next spring and you will get a crop. This plant of mine must have come up from a root I dropped last year because I certainly did not plant it here!

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Today I decided to dig up one of mine because it is all yellow and scrappy-looking now.Bad photo I know. The tubers are formed under the ground like potatoes.
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This one plant had them so densely packed it was amazing. Several were the size of my hand.Not necessarily a good thing when it comes time to prepare them for cooking.

Now, what to do with them? Some people call them 'fart-a-chokes' so don't eat too many the first time!

Here is how I cooked them last night and they were delicious This recipe is from my copy of Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book, which is all tattered and falling apart from 20 years of use.

4 comments:

gary said...

Hello,

I've never eaten Jerusalem artichokes so this is second-hand information, but I've heard that their propensity to, err, induce gas is to some extent determined by how they are cooked.

Regards, Gary

Rachel said...

I like Jerusalem artichoke, fwiw. My question is, do the tubers spread? I wouldn't mind having a bush in one part of my front yard, but I don't want it taking over everything.

Kate said...

Rachel, they multiply to form large clumps unless you dig them up and eat them, of course. They don't seem to spread by seed.

Rachel said...

hmmm... I'm pretty good at eating what I sow! I think I might sneak them into the front yard. Himself has a horror of me taking over the front yard for agricultural purposes, but if the flowers are purty, he won't know my ulterior motive, will he!? Besides, he objected to me turning our backyard into a parterre a legumes, until he started eating the heirloom tomatoes...