Jerusalem Artichoke recipe thats not soup!A Simple French stapleTopinambours à la BarigouleA great winter dish.

One of the perennials I planted back in 2011 has kept going strong with no attention whatsoever - as has the cordoon etc.

With this meal, unfortunately I left my stick with photos at home, so I will upload some on my return.

You will have to make do with the rather pretty botanists painting above.

There are many variations, this is simple, peasant food - but once it starts to caramelize, it starts to become the food of Kings. First time I saw it was on a UK site from a Welsh lad called Alan Refail - so thanks to him, I have something other than a soup or puree option.

Jerusalem artichoke is hardy, and is suited to the Irish climate. After it was established it has required no weeding or care.

In terms of sourcing tubers, after my experience, I would, unfortunately, not recommend Mr Middleton's.

Try looking about, or contact me. I have quite a stick of them.

Mind you, when I did put it in, a lot of seaweed and manure went in as the base of the bed.
Since then I have had strong, healthy plants.

The fresh tuber tastes like a water chestnut and is used in salads. They are better cooked though as they will give you wind if raw - and I really mean that  - as did John Goodyer in 1621 when he was quoted as having said "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."

Dont let that put you off, it is a bit harsh. The flavour of Jerusalem artichoke is kind of sweet and smokey. If lifted and stored for any length of time, they become sweeter - so if using this recipe, dig the tubers up a few days in advance, it really helps with the caramelizing process.

This recipe Topinambours à la Barigoule, is a staple of Provence in the south of France, it's cheap, easy and different.

I like to keep it simple, and the recipe here is fantastic with roast pork.

INGREDIENTS (serves 4)
500 grams Jerusalem artichokes, scrubbed and peeled
1 Lemon
100ml white wine

100ml of water or stock
2 garlic cloves finely chopped
12 Black olives, stoned
Handful of Parsley

Chop up the Jerusalem artichokes and cut into about 1 inch / 2 cm pieces.
Put them in a pan that just fits them and add two or three tablespoons of rapeseed or olive oil, the juice and grated zest of a lemon, about a dozen black olives, 100ml water (or veg/chicken stock) and 100ml of white wine.

Add water to barely cover them tightly, bring to the boil then simmer till the artichokes are tender. 

Uncover and let the liquid evaporates and the artichokes are just starting to caramelize. 

Season with pepper, no need to use salt normally the olives are salty enough.

Add a good handful of chopped parsley before serving.

Great side dish - enjoy

As always, please take the time to comment - I really appreciate the time and effort.

April fool surprise!

Being the fool I am, some Nicola were left in the ground last year and with the mild winter had even started to crop!
Turning up the new brassica bed this year for rotation, my work was rewarded with a nice little surprise, a box of lovely earlies. It was great to be able to share them with friends this early in the year.

Also growing is Cardoon, cooked it - not all that mad about the favour but will experiment further. It is a perennial so that means I have years.

Also, a nice find was some small but sweet parsnips

Still coming from the garden are winter and spring cabbage, leeks, scorzanera, salsify and endive chicons, or witloof.
Radar winter onions planted during the winter seem to be doing well.
Goes to show, a bit of planning and a lot of luck gives food from the garden all year round.

Winters end, Springing into action

Well, just got home and turned over one of the beds, some nice surprise parsnips.
A bit skinny, but a fair few of them so that was nice. It really goes to show with a bit of planning you really can have food from the veg patch all year round.

The Russian kales, while small, have survived 8 weeks of neglect and are coming along. Nice little winter cabbage in the garden that was used up in champ yesterday.
The dwarf curley blue kale is a virtual perennial, still producing abundant and good quality leaves.
Sea kale did not make it through the winter, so need to start that again.
Fruit trees coming into bud - just came back to Connemara via Cork, down there a few fruit trees were already in bloom!

Cordoon is coming on very well, and that was the one perennial I was worried about!

Now Spring is here. Saw a couple of wild bee's yesterday :-)
Just preparing beds, a little later than usual but better late than never.
Manure was dug in last December in most beds.
First job, as with the last 2 years is to use the superb Irish made product, SuperNemo's, and apply that.
It is a broad spectrum, pest specific and super effective way of dealing with garden parasites.
I use Nemaslug as well for slugs, but when it comes to things like caterpillars, thrip, wireworm and leatherjackets Supernemo saves a lot of money and time in comparison with the nemasys programs that require pest specific doses, and Supernemo are an Irish developed company.
In actual fact, Supernemo this year wereshortlisted for the Irish Times innovation awards - I think they should have won the damn thing.

Leek nursary looking good, transplanting small leeks tomorrow.
Ready to put potato's in the ground, latest I have ever planted them.
Bed for turnips ready, this year again concentrating on Tipperary Turnips from Irish Seed Savers as the main crop.
Cabbage seedlings ready to go in as soon as the ground is turned.

Put in a new herb bank with potted plants from Dangan Garden Centre and will be cleaning that bank up using ground cover to supress weeds. Main thing is to get the herbs themselves established, apart from the bay tree they are all ground hugging types, so the idea is to get them to spread out and take over the area.

Nothing fancy this year as yet, making paper pots for some seeds to go in the ground later in the year, e.g. squash etc.
Folks, if you use this blog for recipes, best advice I can give you is grow a few bits and pieces for the year, even an ornamental kale, it is really rewarding.

New Winter Veg - Growing Endive Witloof chicons in Ireland

Having lived in Holland, there is an influence from Belgian cuisine there. A very useful, easy to care for veg that tastes delicious grown there is chicory, or endive.
The plants greens when sliced finely and mixed through mashed potato while still raw is pretty much their version of champ and give a lovely fresh bite to otherwise plain mash.
It also gives a very nice, slightly bitter garnish to contrast with sweeter veg like carrots or parsnips, and gives a great dash of colour to winter lentils or stews.

Another recipe for use with forced chicons can be seen here for later in the year.

Winter Puy lentils with Endive & nasturtium greens and marigold & nasturtium petals

Chicory is probably best known in Ireland as a coffee substitute or blend, roots are roasted and blended with coffee.

My favorite version of endive is the forced winter Chicon. The technique for growing chicon, or blanched endives was apparently accidentally discovered in the 1850s in Belgium when according to one story a few pots with roots were left down a coal mine and grew the famous white chicon.
Another story says that in 1830 Jan Lammers returned from the Belgian War of Independence to his farm near Brussels, where he had stored chicory roots in his cellar while he was away, intending to dry and roast them and use as a coffee substitute.
But his chicory roots, resting for months in the dark, damp environment, had achieved a different result. They had sprouted small white leaves. Curious, he tried the leaves and found them to be tender, moist, and crunchy, with a pleasant, slightly bitter taste. Thus, a new vegetable was discovered — winter endive, or chicon.

Already this year I have had at least three cuts of greens from the plants, and now its time to force them for the witloof, a Belgian variety for which I found the seeds for Witloof from highly recommended Irish based company Gardenplansbypost.com - And they were not all that easy to source.

The main thing that is required is the total lack of light when forcing, otherwise the winter endive will go green and be bitter.

I grew the greens as a catch crop, like spinach or radish, between slower growing plants like leek, parsnip or cabbage.
After the last harvest I lifted the roots. It is said that they should be grown indoors, but with the mild climate we have on the west coast and a bit of insulation they can grow outdoors here.

After harvesting the last green leaves the roots are lifted and replanted in a way that light can be excluded. If you only have a few and decide to use only flowerpots, then the drainage holes must be blocked to stop light getting in.

The roots are lifted as gently as possible and re-planted using a dibber or a deep stick, then dropped gently into the hole.

 Next thing is, with a clean, sharp knife, the last remaining green chutes are trimmed to the nub, right down to the base. Don't throw them away - use them to garnish any meal.

After that the roots are watered with a general fertilizer, or in my case, a nettle and seaweed tea. Smells not so good but it feeds, and in my opinion, puts off parasites as well.
Add to that a dose of organic slug pellets from the Irish Seed Savers Association. The great advantage of course is that being covered and protected from direct rain means that the pellets only need the one application for the season.
At this point I start covering them with old pots. With winter coming it also makes a good, accidental storage space and with the system I use adds extra protection against light ingress.

Next thing I do personally, because of the weather here, is over lay a fish box. This helps to further exclude light and will give the chicons extra winter protection against frost, snow, storms and ice.

After that to totally exclude light and also to offer a layer of insulation, I use an old blanket. This has its edges pushed into the earth to secure it over the winter, and is weighted down as an extra measure. It also has the added advantage of being a warm perch for Vladimir the cat.

Chicons are a great veg, they can be used in salad or wrapped in ham and served with a cheese sauce. I love the fact that from one seed I get three crops, and with a bit of research I am beginning to wonder how many years I can keep getting winter and summer veg from this versatile and easy to care for plant?

I hope you found this posting of use, and please do take the time to comment or leave feedback - I really appreciate it

Winter Garden Work

So, things are running out, and in the first year of this garden I have learnt a lot.
I will be expanding the plot with two more beds, and cutting surrounding trees to provide more light to the veg patch.

I think the best idea I had last year was the pathway preparation, with the pine needles and ash, it did help against the slugs.

It also gives room to dispose of stones in the beds, a problem we have here in the west.
I am currently renewing the path ways, building them up with needles and ash, to further develop the passive anti-slug barrier.

I already wrote about some of the winter plantings in a previous post.
Other work has been to use the recent cold snap to my advantage, turning the soil to expose the earth to the frost, which breaks it up and I hope it will also kill of some parasites.
Certainly the birds appreciate it when the earth is turned over, as the go in and pick off insects.

I will also start to put down traps for wireworms as well, early in the season to get as many as possible.
From what I have read, the longer the garden is established - the less of a problem they will be as they are worst in new gardens after grassland has been converted to cultivating veg.

Its also time to start thinking about enriching the soil. Along with seaweed I have found that Delaney and Delilah have quite tidy toilet habits - not something I expected from Donkeys, but most of the manure is centred in a few places.

So, with seaweed and donkey doo-doo dug in, I hope that will be enough for my fertilizer needs for 2011.

Weeds growing on the path edge are a pain, there is nothing for it but to hoe them out and backfill with ash and needles.
I am tempted to treat the paths with organic weedkiller, but I'm fairly concerned about salt leaching into the beds.
I do expect to be away a lot more next season, so the garden will have to be low maintenance.
One thing for certain, one of the beds - the one with the rhubarb - is being converted to a different type of bed, with Jerusalem and Globe artichoke, asparagus, herbs, fruit bushes and other annual plants that will be there on a permanent basis, not rotated.

So that's it, my Irish winter vegetable patch - still producing food and getting ready for 2011.
As always, please take the time to comment, I really appreciate the feedback.