Easy Roasted Sunchokes

This is another recipe I made using some of our CSA vegetables: sunchokes!



I had never had a sunchoke before, and I have to say I was a bit skeptical. Sunchokes, also known as Jerusalem artichokes, are actually a part of the sunflower family! This knobby little tuber almost looks like a ginger root, but they taste like a cross between a delicious, buttery artichoke and a potato. In short, if you haven't tried them, I'd highly recommend them! If you're looking to buy them locally, they're apparently native to the Eastern United States (which may explain why I hadn't encountered them in California). The color on the skin can vary from brown to red, or even purple. Ours were red, which I've read have a more buttery, nutty flavor than those with light brown skins.






What You'll Need
8-10 small sunchokes
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and cut in half
1 tablespoon olive oil (plus more, as needed)
1/4 teaspoon salt
Leaves from 2 sprigs fresh thyme

What You'll Need to Do
Preheat the oven to 425°F.

Before slicing, you'll need to scrub the sunchokes under cold running water, since you'll be leaving the skin on. Slice the sunchokes about 1/4-inch thick. The exact thickness isn't important, but you want them to be as uniform as possible so that they'll cook evenly.

Add the sunchokes and garlic to a small bowl and toss with olive oil (add slightly more than 1 tbsp if needed, until pieces are lightly coated). Sprinkle in the salt and herbs, and toss to coat the sunchokes. Then transfer to a baking sheet or roasting pan. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the sunchokes are tender inside, like a potato.


Other tips and tricks:
For easy clean up, I like to line my pan with parchment paper.
You can also use dried herbs instead of fresh. When preparing these for the second time around, I used 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme and 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary. I also mixed things up: using about half red sunchokes and half "brown." I thought they were equally delicious!

Roasted Fingerling Potatoes

We had a lot of fingerling potatoes from our CSA...I'd roast 'em in a side dish, and then I'd look in the bag and it was like they had multiplied or something...I made them in a lot different iterations. I found that they didn't work well just thrown in with other potatoes and such, they're more dense and less starchy, so they need a bit more work to break them down and make them nice and tasty. When prepared properly, however, my boyfriend couldn't stop raving about them!

I've got two recipes to recommend here, but the first step in both is to take those lovely potatoes, run them under some cold water, and scrub, scrub, scrub!

This first recipe is adapted from Emeril. I prepared these potatoes to go with a weekend brunch.

Pan Roasted Fingerling Potatoes
What You'll Need:
12 or so fingerling potatoes, washed and scrubbed clean!
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp (each), chopped fresh: rosemary, sage, and thyme
salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

What You'll Need to Do:
Place the potatoes in a pot and cover with water. Raise to high heat and bring to a boil, cook until the potatoes are fork tender (a little less than 10 minutes). When done, throw them in a colander and cool them under cold running water. 

Once they are cool enough to handle (this may take a few minutes), place the potatoes on a cutting board and slice them in half lengthwise then sprinkle a little salt and pepper on 'em.

Heat a sauté pan (or frying pan) with olive oil over medium-high heat. Place the potatoes in the pan, cut side down, and cook them until they're browned and crispy, about 3 minutes. Turn them to the other side and add sage, rosemary and thyme. Cook for another three minutes or so, until they are brown and crispy like the other side. 

Remove from the heat, toss and season with additional salt and pepper, if needed.



Additional Thoughts:
These were delicious with a weekend brunch!

For a different twist on preparing fingerlings, I also tried roasting the potatoes in the oven
Oven Roasted Fingerling Potatoes
What You'll Need:
2 lbs fingerling potatoes, washed, scrubbed, and halved lengthwise
1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
1 tsp chopped fresh sage
1 tsp chopped fresh thyme
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 small onion, thinly sliced
A few drizzles of olive oil

What You'll Need to Do:
Preheat the oven to 425°F. Combine everything in a bowl, tossing to coat. Line a baking pan with parchment paper (or aluminum foil) and put everything in there. Bake for approximately 30 minutes, or until potatoes are tender. Turn them after 15 minutes or so, so that they bake nice and evenly.

Additional Thoughts:
No picture for this one--but they were delish!

Don't feel wedded to the herbs, it would work just as well with an entire tablespoon of rosemary or thyme, or some other combination of these three.

Roasted Winter Root Vegetables

If there was one thing we were not short on in our CSA share it was (not surprisingly) root vegetables! I've roasted my fair share of vegetables in the past, but this time I tried to come up with some new techniques that would bring out a variety of flavors. For that, I went to the internet!

Let's start out with the basics...my standard go-to recipe is adopted from Vegan with a Vengeance. I like to toss vegetables with fresh chopped rosemary, thyme, and sage, and a little bit of maple syrup and olive oil to keep them moist. You can also add a bit of ginger in there to spice things up a bit! If you chop your vegetables up into nice even chunks (about 1/2-3/4 inch each) you can throw them in the oven at about 350-400F. Toss them around a bit after about 20 minutes, and 45 minutes to an hour you'll have a nice tasty side dish! They're ready when they're fork tender (don't be afraid to try a bite to see if they're just right!). Perfect for Thanksgiving.

Keep in mind that different vegetables cook at slightly different speeds, so you'll want to chop up the slower cooking veggies (like carrots) a bit smaller. I find this recipe works well for things like sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, and squash. Things like sunchokes, black radishes, and fingerling potatoes, however, cook a bit differently. More on these "exotic" vegetables tomorrow...