While we wait for sunflowers

A recipe for Jerusalem Artichokes with Sautéed Cod

In the four years when I lived in the capital of the then Soviet Union, Moscow’s farmers markets were divided into different sections. One, reeking of brine, was a barricade of wooden barrels in which sliced cabbages, heads of garlic, or small pickled cucumbers fermented away in sour water flavoured with dill and peppercorns. In the vegetables zone, burly women wrapped in heavy shawls against the grim chill of the building stood behind mountains of more cabbage heads, piles of onions with green shoots emerging from their flaccid bulbs, and snow-rotted potatoes scarred by spades. Butchers in the meat quarter sold lumps of flesh with splinters of bone that had been attacked without restraint by the Soviet equivalent of the horror slasher in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie. (I’m definitely not giving you a link to the original trailer.)

Danilovsky Market, my local – Photo by Igor Shelaputin

One January, hidden in the PlantsFlowersBulbs section, I came across a hummock of gnarled roots. Why are you selling Jerusalem artichokes in this part of the market? I asked. The Russian babushka favoured me with a withering look that said, Another crazy Westerner who knows nothing. “Because this is the plants-and-flowers area.” But, tovarishchi! Comrades! These are not plants, they’re vegetables! 

Provoking laughter in a Soviet farmers market was usually a challenge. This valiant Woman Worker of the Motherland gathered her associates around to enjoy her hysterics over the exotic eating habits of foreigners. Apparently, Jerusalem artichokes, sold under the French-fudged name and pronunciation as Tuppinumboor, were not grown for food but were marketed as privacy screens - aspirational branding given nobody had much access to any.

The plants can certainly soar to an astonishing 3 metres/9.8 feet, their stems far outgrowing in proportion the modest aster-sized versions they bear of the sunflower, to whose family they belong. The women might have laughed less if I’d pointed out that they were originally indigenous to the central belt of the USA, therefore indisputably decadent.

Native American Indians had long cultivated the tuber for its edible root. Anyone who has done the same will know that in digging them up, not every one gets unearthed. As a consequence, the Jerusalem artichoke spread to both US coasts. When the colonists discovered them, they sent the tubers back to Europe where they became a popular naturalised crop, though eventually falling out of favour in the US only recently to return.

Despite their name, Jerusalem artichokes are not artichokes. ‘Jerusalem’ is a corruption of the Italian word ‘girasole’ - ‘follow the sun’ because like the common flat-faced sunflowers grown for their oil and seeds, they turn their heads to track it crossing the sky. The ‘artichoke’ addendum is a result of 16th century French explorer Samuel de Champlain, he of the Labrador lake and founder of Quebec, sending roots home with the observation that they tasted like artichoke.

Apparently, the name topinambur dates from 1615 when a member of the Brazilian Tupinambá tribe visited the Vatican at the very same time a Canadian sample of the root was on display. Its exposition was to demonstrate its valued role in helping stalwart French Canadians survive the grim winters. It was enough for both the tribesman and the root simply to emanate from the New World for the tuber to be given the name topinambur, despite the enormous distance that separated them. (How a 17th century South American Indian would find himself in Vatican City all the way from the east coast of Brazil is another story. Surely there’s a book here of the Dana Sobel ‘Longitude’ variety? Animal skin tailoring and moccasins may feature as inadequate clothing among prelates shrouded in long draught-excluding dresses. Consider the bestselling project yours.)

Nowadays, if you’re looking to express yourself casually in France, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Spain and Germany, you can add topinambur to your lexicon, along with whichever swear words a native of the country you’re visiting has insisted means ‘Have a good day.’

They are easier to grow than to prepare for cooking, though it has become less of an effort than it used to be to prize the thick skin from around the knobbles. A vegetable equivalent of body-contouring has been applied to Jerusalem artichokes to make them smoother, so you no longer need to boil them before peeling them, which always reduced their white flesh to a vague grey after cooking, like the teeth of many non-Americans after 50.

Their skins have become thinner, besides. So that slicing them without peeling them then roasting them in butter and oil produces a nutty, sweet and soft vegetable that is entirely delicious.

They may look akin to fingerling potatoes, but unlike potatoes they contain very little starch. What gives them their sweetness is the carbohydrate inulin. If they’re stored for any length of time, this inulin is converted into fructose, which is one and a half times sweeter than sucrose. Since inulin isn’t assimilated in the intestine, it doesn’t cause a glycemic spike like potatoes do, so Jerusalem artichokes have a history as a folk remedy for diabetes.

Stewed with some onion melted in butter and thinned out with milk, water, or a light stock, they make one of the most comforting of winter soups, served sprinkled with crisp crumbs of bacon or fried shallots. They can also be dropped around a joint and roasted. But this version with cod shows them off as a real star vegetable. 

Serves 6

2kg/4½ lbs Jerusalem artichokes
Juice of one lemon
55g/2oz shallots (1 large), peeled
200g/7oz carrots (2 or 3), peeled
200g/7oz bacon (optional)
60ml/2fl oz olive oil or duck fat 
8 cloves of garlic (not peeled)
24 pearl onions/cipolini, peeled
5 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
1/2 litre/16fl oz Chablis or other dry white wine
1/2/16fl oz litre chicken stock
30 mussels, cleaned and de-bearded (optional)
6 x 170g/6oz cod (preferably loin, about 4 pieces)
Olive oil or duck fat
Salt and freshly milled black pepper to taste

Peel the Jerusalem artichokes and drop them in a bowl of water acidulated with the juice of one lemon to keep their colour. Dice the bacon, shallots and carrots into small cubes. Cut the artichokes into 2.5cm/1in cubes. Brown the bacon in a pan with 2 tablespoons of olive oil or duck fat over medium-high heat. Once the bacon begins to colour, add the garlic, pearl onions and carrots, and sauté 2 more minutes. Add the shallots, thyme and bay leaves. Cook 2 minutes, stirring. Add the white wine and reduce until the pan is almost dry.

In a separate pan, add the remainder of the olive oil or duck fat. When the pan is very hot, add the artichokes and sauté, shaking regularly to brown all over, then add them to the first pan and pour in the stock. Bring to a boil and cover pan with a lid. Cook for 10 minutes at high heat.

After artichokes have softened, sieve the liquid content of pan into a clean pan, reserving the artichokes, and reduce the liquid by half with a fast boil. Season to taste, then add the mussels. Cover the pan and cook on a high flame about 1 minute. Discard any mussels that remain closed. Incorporate the artichokes and mussels and set aside.

In another pan, sauté the cod skin side down in a small amount of butter, 3 minutes. Turn and cook other side, 3 minutes depending on thickness. The fish will continue to cook when drawn off the heat.

To serve, spoon the artichokes and mussels onto a warmed platter and place the cod on top. Strain the garlic, thyme and bay leaves from the stock and pour a little of this sauce around the fish then serve.