If you recall, last week’s challenge meal involved sunchokes as well.  As many of you are undoubtedly aware, eating locally means that when things are in season, you wind up consuming a fair few of them because the harvest dictates what’s for dinner.

It seems that our farm planted enough sunchokes to have them for at least two consecutive weeks, because they were out for the weekly pick-up again.  We actually managed to score a double batch this week by trading in our allotment of dried peppers (of which we already have an entire string) for a basket of sunchokes from someone who apparently felt creatively challenged by the tubers.

After much agonizing over recipe options, I settled on a lighter, herbier version of a traditional au gratin dish for these sunchokes.  I’m not a huge fan of creamy sauces, see, and I get pretty turned off by dishes like scalloped potatoes or fettuccini Alfredo.  To complicate things, I wanted a simpler dish than a multi-ingredient soup.  Basically, I wanted something to let the character of the sunchokes shine instead of drowning it in pools of heavy cream or pureeing it into a liquid.  Me and sunchokes, we’re still getting acquainted.  I may very well make them into a soup if we get them again, but I want to have a better sense of what they are and how they work first, dig?

Care to meet some of the cast of characters?  Sliced sunchokes, red potatoes from the farmer’s market, and a magic herby yogurty sauce, pictured below.  Not pictured: Spinach.  Pecorino Romano.  Fresh yogurt herb sauce for garnish.

This was very much a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants sort of recipe, so forgive the lack of specifics in the following post.  To be honest, I’ve come to realize that very few of my Dark Days recipes make it to publication with any significant specificity.  When that dawned on me this weekend, I was initially horrified.

“Oh, my!” I lamented. “Whatever was I thinking?  However will anyone manage to make this again?”

Then I realized: I don’t want you to make this.

No, it’s not that I’m hoarding my recipes.  And it’s not that this wasn’t tasty—it was, quite.  However, the Dark Days dishes in particular just don’t lend themselves well to being quantified and catalogued.  I don’t go out to pick up a pound and a half of sunchokes; I just take the basket or two I can scrounge from the CSA.  And whatever else goes into the dish is what I have in the house.  Usually, I start with an inkling, then I begin tossing ingredients together.  Then I change tactics entirely and decide to pursue a a particular flavor or presentation direction.  Then I add a bit of this, a glug of that, a sprinkle of something else…another glug of that…a handful of something I hadn’t planned on…and then I call it dinner.  The kitchen looks like a twister barrelled through, despite the fact that I clean as I go, and I inevitably wind up forgetting several of the things I added when I attempt to recount to the Unicyclist what’s in it.  (He always asks, as he is conducting research to figure out how to expand his cooking skills.)

I suppose I could weigh and measure everything, but it’s so much easier and faster to just go by taste and adjust until it feels right.  Plus, I tend to just forget to write things down or even to measure them in the first place when I’m busy…and I usually am.  You try cooking a couple meals simultaneously while defending your snapdragons from a Chihuahua, hanging curtains, and talking to your mom on the phone.  It’s an art.  Besides, as I said: I don’t want you to make this.  What I want is for you to think, “If she can make up a sunchoke recipe on the spot and have it be tasty, so can I!”  Because you can.  Really.  And feeling like you can is essential to making seasonal, local eating work for you.

So, paltry as the details may be, shall we take a look at them?

I used a mandoline (dangerous, but speedy) to slice four medium red potatoes thinly, then I sliced the sunchokes by hand (because they were both small enough and oddly shaped enough for me to feel it was the safer option).  Meanwhile, I sauteed about 1/2 an onion, sliced, and a hearty clove of garlic on the stove, then wilted some spinach in it and set it aside.  In a blender, I combined a medium bunch of parsely, a handful of raw spinach, a sprig of oregano, a sprig of thyme (all from the garden), some olive oil, some plain yogurt, arrowroot to thicken it, and a sea salt and herb buillion cube from Rapunzel.  I know I have mentioned Rapenzel buillion cubes in the past, but I need to mention them again.  Fantastic.  Really, really wonderful and delightful and perfect buillion cubes.  I love them.  (They don’t pay me to say that.)  The varied tetra packs of veggie broth from other companies used to make me sad (often sweet or oddly flavored, lending my soups a note I didn’t care for at all), but my kitchen has been such the happy place ever since I discovered these tiny little buillion cubes.  (Rapunzel didn’t pay me to say that, either.  Really.)  I use them in soup, tamales, sauces, pilafs, and a lot more.  They save me.

That buillion cube also made the green sauce incredibly salty (because there wasn’t a lot of liquid for that one buillion cube), but that’s exactly what I wanted.  Since I hadn’t salted the potatoes or sunchokes, I knew all the flavor and saltiness needed to come from the sauce.  A major problem with baked potato dishes like this is lack of pizzazz.

I mixed the green sauce and the sliced sunchokes and potatoes, then began to layer the bright green slices in a casserole dish.  When it was half full, I layered in the wilted spinach and grated some pecorino over it, then I added the rest of the potatoes and sunchokes.  I grated just a little more cheese over the top and stuck it in the oven at 350.  It cooked for about 50 minutes total, during which time I made a fresh yogurt sauce to brighten what I figured would be pretty mellow flavors.

I mixed more parsely, yogurt, and a partial herb buillion cube together, then added it to a saucepan with some arrowroot over medium heat and let it thicken up.  Once both dishes were done, I served the herbed sunchokes and potatoes with a drizzle of tangy sauce and a side salad.

Delicious! The salt level was perfect, and the brightness of the herbs and yogurt went well with the soft and creamy potato/sunchoke combination.

I confess, I’m starting to get into these sunchokes, and I’m hoping we score another basket next week.  Perhaps January will be the month of the sunchoke here at Simple Spoonful.  So far, all signs point to yes!