You’ve been asking! And finally we can announce: sunchokes are here, starting tomorrow, 3/1. Thanks to Pete’s Greens in VT for getting us local sunchokes.
At breakfast we’ll be making The Sunchoke Truffle: fluffy house-baked pita, creamy truffled butter, caramelized onions, a 6.5 minute egg, and thin, crispy sunchoke slices. At lunch and dinner: The Sunchoke Mushroom: scallion-black-pepper mayo, fresh arugula, roasted crimini mushrooms, fried brined onions, and roasted sunchokes.
What is a sunchoke? You may know it as a Jerusalem Artichoke. It is the (very adorable) tuber part of a plant in the sunflower family. It only comes into season in the fall and winter, when it’s dug up from the cold ground. I think it tastes like a three-way-cross between a potato, an artichoke, and a slice of bacon, but I am sure you will have your own description of what it tastes like to you!
It’s full of vitamins and minerals, especially potassium and iron, and it holds up well to full-flavored ingredients, which is why you’ll see us pairing it with truffled butter, and peppery arugula, and deep, roast-y mushrooms.
The sunchoke has literal roots right here in Massachusetts! The Nauset tribe were cultivating and harvesting them on Cape Cod when a French explorer saw this, and wrote about them in 1605. The sunchoke traveled across the Atlantic to Europe and was farmed in a fancy garden in Rome, where it was named “girasole,” meaning “turning toward the sun” in Italian. When it made it to England, “girasole” became “Jerusalem.” So the sunchoke is not an artichoke, nor is it from Jerusalem, but we are so happy to have it on our menu from sun-up to sun-down : )
