Ingredients:

couscous
beets
turnips
radishes
herbs
olive oil
lemon

Directions:

Cook cous cous according to directions. Let cool. Finely chop or slice vegetables you have in your refrigerator, such as beets, radishes and turnips. Finely chop herbs, again, any that you have in your refrigerator.

Mix cous cous, vegetables and herbs. Sprinkle with salt and fresh ground pepper to taste. Drizzle with olive oil for a very light coating. Squeeze the juice from one lemon and mix. Refrigerate and serve.

From: Heather

Maybe that’s one reason why fresh local vegetables have been hard to come by in Denver.  Instead of wandering through aisles piled high with colorful and awe inspiring vegetable variety, my market trips have been full of colorful cardboard boxes with phrases like, “grown in California” or “grown in Mexico.”  To be fair, the Colorado Fresh Market makes no claims that they sell local produce, or that they are a true farmers’ market, and I did find one vendor who had grown his asparagus and spinach. But Colorado Fresh Market is the premiere outdoor market. And I just hope that people understand many of the vegetable vendors buy their products from wholesalers who may truck them in from other states.

But that’s enough whining.  Back to hope and vegetables.  My husband and I will be sampling our first uber-locally grown vegetable tonight, Baby Bok Choy, from right here in my front yard.  I planted it a few weeks before the last frost, and it has been one happy vegetable!  Instead of “harvesting” today, I really was only planning on doing some thinning.  When I bought the 6-pack of Bok Choy seedlings, I took the label literally and thought there were only 6 plants.  I plunked them in my newly prepared plot, and didn’t think more about it.  But then I realized, where I thought I’d planted one plant, I’d really planted three or four.  Which makes, like, 24 bok choy plants that were all going to be ready to eat at the same time.  Unless I could convince my cat that she likes Bok Choy, some thinning was in order.

So then I procrastinated some more, until I finally got to thinning them out today.  And you know, they’ve grown so well, and there are so many of them, that I think I have enough for my first official side dish from this years’ garden!

At the market this week, I approached a crop of Jerusalem Artichokes and hovered again, maintaining enough distance to keep the farmer from engaging with me.  I listened to the comments of passers by.  “Oh, it’s ginger” one woman said with confidence when a friend asked her what it was.  Another said it was a sunchoke.  Finally, I asked the farmer who told me it was a Jerusalem Artichoke.  It’s the root of a flower that is related to a sunflower, and has nothing to do whatsoever with an artichoke.  These Jerusalem Arthickokes had been left in the ground over the winter, and dug up for last weeks market.

Andrea Chesman, in her book The Garden-Fresh Vegetable Cookbook, says the Jerusalem Artichoke was native to the Americas, and first brought back to Eurpoe in the 1600s.  The Italian word for sunflower is “girasole” to which some people attribute the Jerusalem part of the vegetable name.  Someone thought the root tasted like an artichoke – and voila – we had the Jerusalem Artichoke.  More recently, there is a movement to rename the Jerusalem Artichoke to be called the Sunchoke to make things less confusing.  If there’s a petition out there…..I’ll sign it!

Andrea’s favorite preparation method for Sunchokes is to roast them.  I cut them into one inch slices after scrubbing them clean. I left the skin on, but you can also slice off the nobs and peel them.  I tossed them in salt and pepper and added a little garlic and put them in the oven for 15ish minutes at 500 degrees.  I was not prepared for how good these sunchokes tasted.   They had the texture of a roasted potato, but a more complex and rich flavor, as if I had added spices (but I hadn’t).  I popped the bite size pieces into my mouth one after the other, until I had eaten an entire pint all by myself.

Note to self: sunchokes are high in fructose and have been known to produce gas as a byproduct of their metabolism – if you know what I mean.  Perhaps a smaller quantity would have been a wiser choice for my first exposure to this veggie.  But even still, they were so good, I will definitely be buying them again.

You can also eat them raw.  I passed out samples to my husband and a group of his cycling buddies.  “Like a radish without the bite,” was one comment.  Another said, “good for salad, it would soak up the dressing.”  Another method of preparation is to sauté them.

Here’s what the flower looks like.

Maybe I should grow a few.  Though I’ve read that the tubers spread underground, and the flowers should be contained in their own bed if you don’t want them to take over the world.  And that might lead me to eat pints at a time.  Probably not a good idea.

Do you have a favorite Sunchoke recipe?