Sophie Grigson - Vegetables

SEE ALSO GLOBE ARTICHOKES (PAGE 139).

I have fond memories of my mother making Palestine soup way, way back, in the cubbyhole of a kitchen in our holiday home in France. As a name for Jerusalem artichoke soup it now strikes one as a distinctly tasteless joke, but to be fair it pre-dates the creation of Israel in 1948. When I came to look up the soup in her Vegetable Book (Michael Joseph, 1978) it turns out to be a puréed cream of a soup, and not at all the clear broth studded with knobbles of sweet, semi-crisp artichoke that I thought I recalled. Memory plays strange tricks…

This is how I now prefer to make the soup, the intensity of slow-cooked vegetable sweetness shot through with a balancing measure of white wine vinegar. All in all, it is a deceptively simple creation, obviously at its best when simmered in a home-made stock, but still more than palatable when a decent instant vegetable bouillon is substituted.

Serves 6

1 large onion, halved and sliced

675 g (11/2 lb) Jerusalem artichokes, peeled, halved and sliced

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

4 good sprigs thyme

1 bay leaf

1 litre (13/4 pints) chicken or vegetable stock

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

2 tablespoons roughly chopped parsley salt and pepper

To serve (optional)

6 thick slices baguette

150g (5oz) single Gloucester, mature Cheddar or Gruyèe cheese, coarsely grated

Put the onion, artichokes and oil into a pan and add the thyme and bay leaf, tied together with string. Cover and sweat over a low heat for some 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Now add the stock, vinegar, salt and pepper (be generous with the pepper, please) and bring up to the boil. Simmer for 10 minutes, then taste and adjust seasoning. Discard the thyme and bay leaf and serve, sprinkled with parsley.

If using the bread and cheese, toast the baguette lightly on both sides under the grill. Then, just before serving, top with grated cheese and slide back under the grill to melt. Float a slice of cheese on toast in each bowl of soup as you serve.

Jerusalem artichokes impart an enormous depth of flavour to any sauce or stock they are simmered in, which is what makes this otherwise fairly classic chicken pie so appetising. For a dish like this, I use a mixture of breast and leg meat, cut into large chunks. The darker flesh stays moister throughout the double cooking.

Serves 8

500g (1 lb 2 oz) puff pastry

plain flour

1 egg, lightly beaten

Filling

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

30g (1oz) butter

500g (1 lb 2 oz) Jerusalem artichokes, peeled and cut roughly into 1.5cm (5/8 in) thick chunks

finely grated zest of 1 orange

150ml (5floz) dry white wine

21/2 tablespoons plain flour

300ml (10floz) chicken stock

700g (1 lb 9oz) boned chicken, cut into 3–4cm (11/2 in) chunks

150ml (5floz) double cream

salt and pepper

Begin with the filling. Fry the onion and garlic gently in the butter until tender without browning. Now add the Jerusalem artichokes, orange zest and white wine and boil down until the wine has virtually disappeared. Sprinkle over the flour and stir for a few seconds so that it is evenly distributed. Gradually stir in the stock to make a sauce. Season with salt and pepper, then stir in the chicken. Now cover and leave to simmer away quietly for some 10 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Then uncover and simmer for 5 minutes, until the sauce has thickened. Stir in the cream and cook for a final 3 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Spoon into a 1–1.5 litre (1 3/ 4-2 1/ 2pint) pie dish and leave to cool.

Roll out the pastry thinly on a floured board. Cut out a couple of long strips about 1cm ( 1/ 2in) wide. Brush the edge of the pie dish with the beaten egg. Lay the strips of pastry on the edge, curving to fit and cutting so that they go all the way around but don’t overlap. Brush them with egg, then lay the remaining pastry over the top. Trim off excess, and press the pastry down all around the edge to seal. Use the pastry trimmings to make leaves or flowers or whatever takes your fancy, and glue them in place with the egg wash. Make a hole in the centre so that steam can escape. Chill the pie in the fridge for half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 220°C/425°F/Gas 7. Brush with egg wash and place in the oven. After 10–15 minutes, when the pastry is golden brown, reduce the heat to 190°C/375°F/Gas 5. Continue baking for a further 20–25 minutes. Serve hot.

Sometimes the best place to hide something is in a place so obvious that no-one but those in the know think to look there. Jicama is just such a cleverly hidden secret, for sale openly in our towns and cities, if only you know where to look. No point asking for it in supermarkets, in farm shops, in greengrocers, in farmers’ markets. No point in asking for it by this name, either, even if you have the finest South American accent – ‘hee-kah-ma’. You must, instead, replace it with a far duller name: yam bean. This is odd because it is neither yam, nor bean, and bears no resemblance to either.

It looks something like a chunky turnip, with a matt mid-brown skin. In other words, it has a thoroughly undistinguished appearance, which makes hiding it all the easier. The place to look, in this innocent game of vegetable hide and seek, is in the vegetable racks of a Chinese supermarket, where you are virtually guaranteed to discover a plentiful supply of jicama/yam bean.

Apart from the fun of the game, there is a point to tracking down a jicama or two. The point is that they are so good to eat, and so different to most other vegetables. Under the worthy brown skin, the flesh is a clean pure white. It tastes, when raw, something like green peas, and has the consistency of a large radish, juicy and crunchy and refreshing.

If a choice is to be had, opt for medium-sized jicama – larger ones will have begun to develop a mealier texture, which though not unpleasant is less enticing. They should be firm all over, with a matt brown skin. The skin should be unbroken – cuts or bruises suggest that rot may have set in.

In the vegetable drawer of the fridge, a jicama will last for up to a week, even when cut (cover the cut edge with clingfilm to prevent drying out). To use, you need do no more than cut out a chunk, pare off the fibrous skin, and slice or cube the white flesh.

Raw jicama is a brilliant addition to a summer salad, but my favourite

way to eat it is Mexican style. In other words, dry-fry equal quantities of coriander and cumin seeds, grind to a powder and add cayenne to taste. Arrange the sliced jicama on a plate, squeeze over lime juice and sprinkle with the spice mixture and a little salt, before finishing with a few coriander leaves. That’s it. When they are at their ripest, I add slices of orange-fleshed melon to the jicama, which makes it even more luscious. Batons of rawjicama are an excellent addition to a selection of crudités served with hummus or other creamy dips.

Jicama responds well to stir-frying, too, again on its own with just garlic and ginger to spice it up, or with other vegetables. It needs 3–4 minutes in the wok to soften it partially, without losing the sweet crunchiness entirely.