Sunchoke

Helianthus tuberosus (sunchoke, jerusalem artichoke...) is a false perennial, native to Eastern North America. It is a tuber forming member of the sunflower family. I call it a false perennial because it doesn't actually live from year to year. It is, however, quite persistent in the garden. Here's how it should work: You plant some roots from a friend that has too many (you always have too many if you have any), they spread out and establish themselves, grow big giant stalks with tiny little sunflowers on top, tubers form underground, the plants die off, you dig up the tubers.

Now, if you should happen to have planted them near anything, there comes a time that you realize they were planted in the wrong spot. So you dig them up and replant and they grow on happily. They grow in the place you moved them to and the original place you moved them from. They are kind of like horseradish in their persistence. If there is a tiny bit of root left in the ground, a whole new plant will form. 2 years later, I am still constantly weeding sunchokes out of the mint patch.

Some might view this plant with annoyance for its weed like nature. I embrace it though. I wish I didn't plant near the herbs but I embrace its persistence and its functional perennialism. If you have a good spot or even a crappy spot, they dont take much effort-sun, soil, or water. Sunchokes can fill them in with little effort, make pretty flowers late in the summer/early in the fall, and give you a root vegetable crop every year. All you have to do is dig them up once there has been a frost. They will magically grow back on their own next year. Even if you think you got every scrap, you didn't, they'll be back. On the internet, you will see this plant discussed in permaculture circles often for this reason. Truly perennial vegetables, in non tropical climates are quite rare or weird or bad tasting or involve much effort. Sunchokes are easy, pretty (sometimes at least) and tasty (also sometimes at least.)

Sunchokes are weird looking. They can get as big as a deformed, clenched fist. Most are way smaller and its exciting to dig up a huge jawn. Occasionally, they have knobby, branching sections like ginger; sometimes they look like turnips. They have a thin skin like a mix between yukon gold potato and ginger. They can be white or yellow or red though. Im not sure if it is species based or entirely random and wild still. I have two distinct looking varieties and I dont remember planting two different looking roots to start but I may be wrong. Some of mine are very small and round and red, like a new red potato. The others are various sizes, up to enormous and are really knobby and ginger like or turnip/ parsnip shaped with bulbous sections and long tails.

purple and red radish pods

I had a similar instance with rat tail radish. They are such a novel weirdo crop that they havent been consciously bred and adapted over the years, resulting in distinct species like a tomato/ pepper/ any other even slightly common plant you might grow. Instead their genetic makeup is vast and varied and your not quite sure what you will get. I bought a pack of seeds for rat tailed radish from Baker Creek (and there are multiple varieties of seed pod radish, rat tail just being one type) and the plants looked the same in height and girth but the flowers of some plants were white and others were pale purple/pink. The purple flowers created purple pods while the white created smooth green pods. The seeds in the packet were indistinguishable from each other.

I think a similar genetic diversity remains in the sunchokes. I sorted mine between tiny red ones and big white ones and had about 6 pounds of each, which is too many. So, Im making pickles. Supposedly sunchokes are edible raw and cooked but they are not for most people. They wont kill you raw but your friends will hate you. Gerard's Herbal, printed in 1621 states that, "which way soever they be dressed and eaten, they stir and cause a filthy loathsome stinking wind within the body, thereby causing the belly to be pained and tormented, and are a meat more fit for swine than men." This is because they have a huge amount of inulin, a long chain polysaccharide sugar that our guts can not normally break down. The good and bad thing about that is that our body treats it as fiber, which causes less sugar in the bloodstream but more farts in your butt. In fact inulin from sunchoke and chicory are now being added to packaged foods as a prebiotic fiber. Probiotic foods, like raw fermented pickles and yogurt etc, contain beneficial bacteria for our guts; whereas prebiotics create ideal conditions in the gut for the probiotics. This makes me wonder two things: 1) If we increase our intake of beneficial bacteria, would sunchoke cause less gas? 2) If we ate sunchokes all the time would our bodies adapt to all that prebiotic fiber coming through, and cause less gas?

All of this is irrelevant, I just think farts are funny still. It is irrelevant because cooking sunchokes greatly reduces this trouble and I think Gerard is a fool and his quote of John Goodyer is hilarious. It commonly comes up if you read anything about sunchokes and I just wanted to keep it going. I have had them roasted and then pureed and they are nutty, rich and delicious. Also when  raw they are crunchy like a water chestnut and everyone knows water chestnuts are gross. Who wants farty water chestnuts? Gross! Not me.

I decided rather than just roast all of them it would be worthwhile to preserve some for the winter. I have had them pickled in a vinegar brine and they were wonderful tasting and caused no gastric distress. I have seen very little about doing raw ferments with them however. And, as earlier stated, if they contain prebiotic elements, perhaps we should include some probiotics as well? I also think, unsubstantiated by the internet, that the long cold fermentation process may help convert some of the polysaccharides into a more digestible form. Fermentation is a balancing act of time, temperature and salt. If its cold it will take longer, if it takes longer you should make it really salty to protect it from harboring troublesome bacteria, if its salty it will take even longer. Pickle catch- 22. My kitchen is only about 60 degrees in the winter so I expect it will take 2-6 weeks. Time will tell. I made two batches: a kimchi and a salt brined pickle. Here's what I did:






For the kimchi i sliced the sunchokes thinly, put them in a huge bowl and salted them.










Then in a food processor I made a paste out of onion, garlic, ginger, guajillo chili, fermented carrot pickle brine, and soy sauce.

I tossed the sliced sunchokes with the paste with a spatula because Im scared of spicy hand tiny cuts.

Then I packed a crock, stopping several times to really tamp it down with a potato masher.

Finally I scraped the bowl really good to make sure the top of the crock was covered in salty kimchi goo and no vegetables were exposed to air.












Then I also made a brined pickle. First, I sliced them up the same way as for kim chi.


Then I made a brining solution at a ratio of 4 C water: 3 Tbl sea salt.











Then I added some spices; mustard, cumin, caraway, coriander, fennel, black pepper, turmeric.












Pour all that into a jar, weight the top so the slices stay submerged under brine, cover and wait.

I just made all this so I dont know how it worked yet. Update coming once I eat it!

Garlic Chives

garlic chives, coming back to life in early april

Garlic Chives have become the most prolific herb in my garden. A few years ago, we purchased 2 tiny little plants. By the end of the first year, they were huge clumps. By the end of the third year, we are weeding them out of all the herbs and even other garden beds and cracks in the sidewalk. Garlic chives differ from "regular" chives in that they are flat like a blade of grass whereas chives are round and hollow in the center. Garlic chives also have an unmistakably pungent garlic aroma. They are traditionally cooked, rather than used merely as garnish, in Chinese, Thai, Korean, and Vietnamese dishes.

Due to their conquering nature, I have taken to plucking off all the buds before they flower in mid summer so that they will not spread seeds everywhere. (Now, it should be stated that I do love garlic chives. We just shouldnt be growing them in a bed with other herbs. They need their own little zone to fill up. The flowers are long lasting, beautiful and attract benefecial pollinators. You should grow them. I will give u some!)


At first I was just eating the buds. They are very intense compared to the rest of the plant. Not quite as strong as a clove of garlic but pretty close. So I started picking bagfuls every couple weeks and bringing them home. I put them in a jar with vinegar and shook them up every day, to fully infuse the vinegar and to ensure none were floating, exposed to air for to long. Vinegar creates an acidic environment so as long as air exposure is limited, it is fairly safe for infusions, like alcohol. There isnt really a recipe, but all vinegar infusions are as simple as this. Put anything in a jar, cover it up, shake it everyday for a week or a few months, taste occasionally if you want, strain and enjoy! I had to switch to a bigger jar because there kept being more and more. I let them sit for almost 2 months all in all. Which is probably a little extreme. A week is probably enough to flavor a vinegar. It smells really garlicky now. I forgot/ was lazy/ procrastinated for a while. I will probably use it as a base for my habanero hot sauce or just as a garnish for greens or for dumpling dipping sauce with honey and soy sauce.

Fermented (?) Vermouth Hot Sauce

So I found this chili head message board on the internet and someone on there had a post about fermenting chilies in white wine. I assume, over the several weeks it was supposed to take to make this, that the wine would convert to vinegar as it was exposed to air. I never have white wine laying around, but I always have vermouth. Now vermouth is a fortified wine; it is a higher percentage of alcohol, and it is also infused with a variety of herbs. I didn't know if the higher proof would slow down or destroy that wine to vinegar conversion but I gave it a go anyway. I also think this is more an infusion of chili in booze to make sauce than truly fermenting chili.

I used Carpano Antica, which is a higher end vermouth with a bittersweet, very herbaceous profile. The end result is very tasty but perhaps not the best use of expensive vermouth. While there is some herby undertones, the chili heat really dominates. Which, I suppose, is to be expected because it is hot sauce. I think if I made it again I would use very mild chiles like anaheims so the vermouth could be noticed more. I think this is more an infusion of chili in booze to make sauce than truly fermenting chili. So, being hopeful, I added raw pickle brine as a starter to maybe get things fermenting...

When I decided it was finished, I blended it all up. This was very annoying because there was so little of it. Stopped to scrape down the blender every second. No matter what, all the seeds never ground up; so I strained it. This gave the sauce a smooth consistency and it wont keep getting hotter while the seeds sit and infuse in the sauce while its refrigerated.


Vermouth Hot Sauce

(this was all done with a scale, based on how many chilies I had, with 2% salt and vermouth to cover)

84g chili (mix of yellow jalapeno, tabasco, habanero and mostly cayenne)
2g salt
187g vermouth 
1Tbl raw fermented pickle brine (from green bean pickles- haricot vert, salt, garlic)




Chop chilies and combine all ingredients in a jar. Stir or shake every few days for a few weeks. I ended up doing 3 full weeks in a cool fall philadelphia. 

 Blend it. 

Strain it. 

Bottle it. 

Gin Basil Smash

So good. do it.

Way better than the "normal", barely-has-any-mint-in-it whiskey smash, this is a drink worthy of your muddling. I heard about it at a bar I forgot and then searched the internet until I found a few recipes. I've been slacking on the blog the past 2 weeks and I came across a picture of one of these I made months ago and realized I had never posted about it. There are lots of recipes on the web and they vary pretty widely, make it to your taste, altering lemon and sweetener to your liking....

Gin Basil Smash

2oz Gin
1oz lemon juice
1/2oz simple syrup
tons of basil! (at least 5 leaves, upwards of an entitre shaker full..)

Muddle basil and simple syrup. Add everything else and shake with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass or on the rocks in an old fashioned glass. You should probably make a stiffer drink if its going in an old fashioned glass though because the ice will melt and water it down while you sip it... I did several sprigs of basil because I had tons in my garden. The drink turned a lovely green color with a few specks of basil that I did not mind but could be double strained out.

Peach Fig Kimchi

I made a similar condiment 2 years ago and it was a huge success. I didn't measure it then and I didn't measure it now. I'd compare it to mango chutney before kimchi but it is made in the kimchi style. "Real" kim chi is a korean fermented cabbage condiment/salad/side dish. It generally contains cabbage, daikon radish, sometimes carrots, chili, garlic, scallion/onion, ginger, sometimes fish sauce. It is sour but there is no vinegar added when made correctly; the sour flavor is all from lactobacillus fermentation. There are tons of different recipes using a wide range of ingredients, sometimes even fruit.


Peach Fig Kim Chi

5 Peaches, chopped
1/2 lb Figs, chopped 
bunch Garlic Chives, diced
1 Shallot, minced
1 inch knob Ginger, microplaned
2 jalapeno, minced

Chop peaches and figs coarsely, put in a strainer set over a bowl, salt heavily and stir. Stir a few times while chopping the other ingredients. Combine everything in a quart mason jar and leave loosely capped for about a week. (Its ok for air to get in but no bugs!) Stir every 12 hours.


By chopping and salting the fruit before adding the other ingredients, a significant amount of liquid is drawn out of the fruits. When making kimchi, you want everything to be submerged in liquid, not exposed to air. By pre-salting the fruit, you also insure that any bits that do get exposed to air above the surface of the brine (or in this case fruity/ mushy/ briney stuff) will be salty enough that they wont mold. Stirring frequently reincorporates any bits that are near the surface, as well as slowly mashing it up. I use a chopstick. The fruit has so much liquid that I remove some at the start so that when finished it will have a nice, thickened, almost chunky applesauce texture.


A microplane is a superfine super sharp grater that is great for ginger, citrus zest and hard cheese. I always use it for ginger. You get really fresh, juicy ginger and are left holding some of the stringy pulp instead of eating it. I used garlic chives because they are so prolific in my garden. (You could use scallions and garlic instead.) They are a little bit tough raw sometimes and I was concerned about the texture in the finished kim chi. Luckily, they worked out fine chopped small and fermented for a week.

Peach Fig Kim Chi, after a week of stirring twice a day.

Jalapeno Carrot Pickle

I picked 5 lbs of rainbow carrots the other day and was slightly overwhelmed. So I canned some. Now I dont have to worry about them for awhile. I got the recipe from Put em up, this great canning/preserving/etc book that I love. I could only stand to wait about a day before I cracked a jar open. They're so good!! So much for preserving the harvest...

Spicy Carrots

 4 C white vinegar
1 C sugar
3 Tbl salt

2 lbs carrots
6 cloves garlic
2 jalapenos, sliced

In a small saucepan, bring first 3 ingredients to a boil.
Peel carrots and chop down so that they are 1 inch shorter than your jars.
Divide garlic and chilis between 3 clean pint jars.
Pack in carrots.
Fasten rims and put in a boiling canner for 15 mins
I didnt add the optional chili flakes of the original recipe. 
These are briney, sweet, spicy, crunchy and wonderful. 
Next time I will add double jalapeno, they give such a nice flavor without being too hot and the little slices of chili are super good too. There was enough brine leftover that I made a pint of beet pickles too, since I had the canner out and all. (Peeled and sliced beets, added all the dill seeds I just picked)

all the carrots came from this tiny row,
anise hyssop has recently colonized this bed
and the carrots didnt seem too mind

Ooops

I don't read directions sometimes. The mixology monday guidelines said to swap 2 ingredients. So, against my better judgement and sobriety, I re made my julep using Rye whiskey, Anise Hyssop and simple syrup. It was still delicious, but the Rye's spicy character was able to subdue the anise/fennel/licorice flavor of the herb more than the Bourbon did.

Anise Hyssop Julep

I decided to tryout a new made up cocktail for Mixology Monday (Hey cocktail virgin). {heres the roundup of all the drinks that month, linked ultra late..}The theme was flip flop, in which you substitute one or two ingredients in a cocktail recipe and make a new drink. This was appealing because I had just picked some herbs from the garden (and chard but it didn't cross my mind to make a drink with that.) This summer was the first time I truly appreciated both Mint Juleps and Mojitos. Last week I made a Gin Basil Smash for the first time, and it was so good. And I have so many herbs growing!

One of the odder herbs we have around various gardens in Kensington is Anise Hyssop. They all came from the Frankford Garden, its in the mint family and reproduces prolifically. It grows out of cracks in my sidewalk now, with the marigolds, and the violets, and the strawberries. It is native to the great plains region of the U.S. and was used medicinal by Native Americans, although it doesn't seem to hold great importance in their pharmacopoeia.

It tastes like a sweet fennel and makes great tasting tea. It is good in blends and by itself. I think most of the mint family (Lamacieae) plants combine well with true mint and this got me thinking about Mint Juleps. I tried, earlier in the summer when my mint was sparse, to make a Julep with Lemon Balm and it was crap. Not this time....


Anise Hyssop Julep

3 oz Bourbon
2 oz Simple syrup (1:1 <cane sugar>)
3 stalks of Anise Hyssop
ice cube tray of ice crushed in a blender

Take a few leaves of Anise Hyssop off of the stalks. Muddle gently in the bottom of a Collins glass. Fill glass 3/4 with crushed ice. Add whiskey and syrup. (1 oz syrup much if you don't like sweet things but I think it goes nicely with the herb and offsets the strong amount of booze in the drink) Stir until glass is frosted. Top with more crushed ice. Insert herb and a short straw, so you smell a face full of herb every sip. Don't forget to eat dinner.

Raspboozy Donuts

I've been making donuts a lot lately. I am trying to get a recipe down that yeilds super poofy, tender and delicious donuts but also isn't too fragile and fussy when raising the dough and getting it into the oil. I really like the ease and results of Wayne Schmidts recipe, and all his thorough research. However, it is heavily yeasted and the dough is so airy that it inevitably begins to fall before it even makes it into the oil. The slightest jostle deflates them. The recipe is very quick though....

Another recipe I've made a few times is from Sherry Yards in her book The Secrets of Baking.  It is for a brioche donut. It is super rich and not sweet. Also it is built very slowly with only a small amount of yeast to start. It takes 3 times as long to make but part of me really enjoys the process and flavor of slowly risen breads. For this recipe, you must first make a sponge. This is a wet starter that allows the yeast to easily multiply before slowing it down with salt, butter and eggs.

Brioche Donuts


Sponge

2 1/2 tsp yeast
1 Tbl brown sugar
1/2 C milk
1/2 C flour

Whisk together and then cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let sit for 30-45 minutes. 

3 C flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp cinnamon
4 eggs
1/4 lb  butter



Add flour, salt and spices. 

Beat eggs seperately and add to dough. Add butter 2 Tbls at a time. 

Knead forever if making by hand, until smooth and shiny. 

Cover bowl and let raise until doubled, about 2 hrs. Punch down, cover and raise again for 45 minutes. 

Roll out to about 1/2 inch thick. 

Cut with 2 1/2 inch donut cutters (or a tin can and a soy sauce cap!) and deep fry about 1 minute for each side. 

after sitting an hour out of the freezer

I've been making the dough up until it is ready to fry and freezing it. This recipe takes far too long to make for breakfast but they can be thawed and fried in an hour or 2.









Glaze
raspberry infused vodka
powdered sugar

Whisk until you get a good thick dipping frosting/glaze.

Cucumber Collins

A Tom Collins is a classic highball made of gin, syrup, citrus and club soda. I like them ok but never desire them or make them. I saw a few different versions of this Collins using muddled cukes and thought eating vegetables along with my cocktails seemed like a good idea.


Cucumber Collins

2 oz gin
5 slices cuke (1/2 of the small cucumber i used)
1 Tbl sugar
1 oz lemon or lime
club soda to fill


Muddle cuke slices with sugar. Add lemon and gin and ice. Stir and strain into a collins glass with ice and fresh cucumber slices.
(The cucumber I grew was yellow). I made another one with lime juice and it was much better. Perhaps it's just more like gin and tonic, but it seems like the lime and cucumber pair particularly well in a cocktail...

Gin & Tonic

Its often the simple things that are the best. Sometimes the simplest recipes are the easiest to ruin because there is nothing to hide behind. Ingredients and technique become ultimately important. A good gin and tonic can be made without anything fancy, especially once its hot outside. It is just so satisfying, so bubbly and bittersweet and herbaceous. A gin and tonic can be even better with great ingredients though.

I was in California recently and smuggled back all sorts of booze. Its very difficult to find things in Philly. The state of Pennsylvania has a monopoly on all liquor sales, so what they don't sell, you can't buy. It wasn't until the past ten years or so that it was even possible to buy liquor on Sundays. Anyways, I am very interested in the growing trend of micro brewers also being micro distillers. So after going to Ballast Point and being happily surprised by the vast list of beers I didn't know they made; I was even more excited to find out that they make booze too. (The most exciting weirdo beer I had from them was a curry stout. I want it constantly but I don't think they bottle it.) They make at least gin, white rum and vodka. The gin seemed most worthwhile because I feel that gins have a wider range of character due to the often addition of herbs. The Ballast Point gin uses Torrey Pine, a Cali native as well as Juniper and a dozen or so secret herbs. It doesn't taste particularly piney but it is delicious and smooth.

We planted a new herb in the garden this year: Borage. This is a strange and beautiful plant. The whole plant- stems, leaves and flowers are covered in tiny white hairs. It has a fuzzy glow in the sunshine. The whole plant tastes similar to cucumber. The leaves are a traditional garnish to a Pimms Cup. Having never made a Pimms Cup (yet) and with our plants struggling with the Philadelphia summer and therefore flowering very quickly without a profusion of leaves; I decided to pick the flowers and freeze them into ice cubes. As the ice melts in your drink a slight cucumber flavor is released. This seemed like it would be very pleasing in a gin and tonic. It was.

Gin & Tonic

2oz Gin
3-4oz Tonic Water
Lime wedge
Borage flower ice cubes

Build in an ice filled highball glass. Squeeze the lime at least a little. Add tonic to taste.
I prefer 3 oz of tonic and I always use Hansens brand because it is made with cane sugar and it comes in small (8oz) cans so I dont need to worry about a bottle going flat. When I only make one, I cover the top of the can with a jigger and put it back in the fridge. This keeps it surprisingly bubbly for a day or two.

Has anyone tried any other premium brands of tonic? I don't want anything with corn syrup. I've seen Fever Tree at a few stores but 6 packs of 6oz bottles sell for about $6. This seems absurdly expensive. Has anyone tried them? If they're great I could certainly buy them once....