New Year, New Foods

With the perfume of New Year’s resolutions still in my nostrils, and the crispness of a new fallen snow shocking my eyes, and the cold wind burning my cheeks, and the warmth of The Little Wood Stove That Could pumping out of her vents, I am taking a moment to reflect on 2014.  It was—as any year lived—a mixed bag of tricks.  I had some accomplishments and made some wonderful memories. Unexpectedly low lows, however, make me glad to hit the restart button and put that particular number behind me.

Foodwise, it was a year of learning and exploring, of making my first garden in a raised bed, of expanding my repertoire and my preparation horizons.  I have much to be thankful for, and mostly to always have a full larder.  So many in the world, and so many in our history, have gone without.  Too many are suffering from starvation still.

So, being blessed as I am, I am making goals for 2015 (and not a minute too soon!):

1.     To try new foods, challenging my palate and opening my horizons.

2.     To incorporate more fruits and vegetables into every day’s meals, fighting the tendency to center meals around meat and starch in the winter months.

3.     To make “shopping at home” a regular feature, perhaps monthly.

I’ve already gotten started on #1.  The last of the indoor holiday markets was the Saturday before Christmas.  I had pre-ordered from Greg at Claybank Farms, so I went to pick up my order.  On the table in front of me lay some plastic bags containing something that looked like huge bulbs of ginger.  Now that I’ve known Greg for some time, all I had to do was point at the bags and raise one eyebrow to get the full story and inevitable sales pitch.

It seems that Jerusalem artichokes (also known as sunchokes) are like Grape Nuts, in that they are neither from Jerusalem, nor related to the artichoke.  They are actually the tuber roots of a certain kind of sunflower native to North America, and were even cultivated by Native Americans long before the arrival of European settlers.  According to Wikipedia, they contain a large amount of inulin, which we cannot digest in the stomach.  You know what that means?

That’s right.  Gas.

But I digress.  Greg persuaded me to try them and gave me a recipe that seemed simple enough.  I was to wash them (but peeling wasn’t necessary), cut off the end of each where the tuber attached to the plant, then slice them thinly length-wise.  I could toss these with a tablespoon or so of olive oil, salt, some herbs (I used Fines Herbes to get a good mix), and a whole lotta sliced garlic (I used about 5 cloves).  I should spread them out in a baking dish and bake at 425° for 15 minutes, then switch to a high broiler setting for about 5 minutes to brown them on top.  I bought them and thanked him, wished him Happy Holidays, then tucked them into my vegetable drawer to be ignored until the calendar had been switched and the Christmas decorations had been removed.

I’m not sure why I’m nervous about trying to cook new things.  Some things don’t scare me at all.  For Christmas I made two things I’d never attempted:  Beef Wellington (was delicious, but not perfect; perhaps for another blog entry?), and flourless chocolate cake (also deliciously flawed).  And my family ate them both with aplomb.  If they had failed, well, we do have a dog.  And a compost heap.  And other things to eat.  So, I’m not sure why I was procrastinating about preparing those wiggly little sunchokes.  Maybe because they looked like ginger.  Maybe because I thought they’d be hard to slice, and I just wasn’t up to the task.  Maybe because I thought they’d taste terrible, and leave an aftertaste on my palate it would take days to get rid of.  Maybe because I keep hoping my son will like one of these vegetables, but of course he never does.  Maybe I should have worried more about the gas.

I needn’t have worried about making something unfit for human consumption.  I was making pork steaks and green beans, and the ‘chokes would be an optional side dish.  They were surprisingly easy to cut, sort of like a radish.  And they came out perfect after a few minutes in the oven.  The garlic balanced the sweetness.   The flavor is mild, but difficult to describe.  The closest flavor I can think of is a turnip, but without the gritty, mushy texture I despise from turnips.  The simple preparation allowed me to test out this new (to me) vegetable.  I can’t say I’d like to eat them every day, but my son ate one without spitting it out, which is in fact a stunningly positive recommendation.

In all my trepidation and fuss, I overlooked taking the obligatory food shots.  If you want to see pictures of sunchokes, I suggest you visit the Wikipedia page.  I will instead leave you with a shot of our holiday decorations, which every year I am sad to take down.  The end of another year.  The beginning and promise of a new one.