Sunday, February 28, 2016

#21 Smoking Sunchoke Dumpling Soup



Dumplings made sweet and tasty with sunchokes, shitake mushrooms, Shallots and garlic. A dash of rice wine, S&P and squeeze of lemon.  Add a green like spinach, chives or cilantro. I think it best to chose one green flavor to go with so it's more distinct. I was over zealous and added all 3, which worked fine.






Sautée the ingredients before filling and pinching the gyoza wrappers to make the little fledgling like dumplings. Boiled them in ginger cilantro chicken (or veggie) broth for 6 minutes. Served with a drizzle of spicy toasted sesame oil, and soy sauce, and a cup of the soup broth.


Thursday, February 25, 2016

#20 Hear the Crunch: Sunchoke Fried Rice

The sunchokes provide the essential crunch of water chestnuts, but also bring great flavor. This seems like a many step process, but simply a one pan preparation, and one-dish finale. Economical too.  


With a large frying pan or wok, cook the ingredients in five rounds, then combine them all back into the pan for final heating and seasoning when ready to serve. 

Sunchokes Prepare sunchokes (aka Jerusalem Artichokes). Scrub clean or peel, and chop evenly into chunks a little larger than a sugar cube. Heat frying pan to high with sunflower oil (any nut/vegetable oil), and sautee chokes for 3 minutes, until browned but still crunchy inside. Remove chokes and set aside. 

Mixed Veggies Reduce heat to medium high and add a drizzle of oil to the frying pan if needed. Add chopped onion, garlic, carrots, celery and sliced scallion, salt and pepper. Add a few tender greens if you'd like. Cook until soft but not limp or wilted. About 5 minutes. Remove and set vegetables aside.

Nuts Roast peanuts or almonds until golden. Remove and set aside. 

Eggs Drizzle a little more oil into pan if needed. Add whisked eggs to make thin omelet layer. At the last minute, slightly scramble the egg and remove in strips or chunks.  Remove omelet in and set aside.

Rice Into frying pan, add 1 or 2 teaspoons of toasted sesame oil, and 1 teaspoon of sunflower oil to coat the bottom of the pan, heat to medium high, crumple in some day old rice, about 3 or 4 cups. Break apart any clumps, add sat and pepper and heat until just warm. 

Into the rice, all all the prepared ingredients. Heat thoroughly. Add few light splashes of soy sauce, grate in some ginger. Mix well and serve with a sprinkling of sesame seeds, a splash of hot sauce and celery leaves. Voila!

Ingredients list:
8 medium-large or 1# of sunchokes (aka Jerusalem Artichokes)
1/2 large yellow onion chopped
2 cloves of garlic minced
2 stalks of celery chopped
2 scallions sliced
1 small or medium carrot cleaned and sliced in half or quarter circles
1/4 cup of peanuts or almonds
2 tablespoons of sesame seeds
*sunflower oil, or other nut or vegetable oil 
toasted sesame oil
grated ginger
soy sauce 
hot sauce


*I used sunflower oil because it is just so perfect! Besides being a nice mildly flavored oil with a high heat tolerance, Jerusalem artichokes are in the sunflower family.

Monday, February 22, 2016

#19 Winter Harvest Sunchokes with Sunflower Seeds and Rosemary



Peel and slice about 10 large sunchokes, add 1 medium yellow onion, wedge sliced. Coat them with a mild olive oil and melted butter mixture, about 3T, (or sunflower oil if you have it). Mix in 2 cloves of chopped garlic, and 1T of chopped rosemary, Salt and pepper.

Spread on a sheet pan and roast in a preheated 425 degree oven for 20 minutes.
Stir in 1/4 cup toasted sunflower seeds and squeeze some fresh lemon juice.
Roast an additional 20 minutes, stir.

Roast additional time if needed for caramelizing, depending upon the moisture level in the sunchokes, and how browned you want it. The pictured sunchokes were roasted about 50 minutes for a light golden color and they were particularly moist from a winter harvest.