Another soup beauty!

This soup has a very unexpected ingredient—Jerusalem artichokes. 

What the heck are Jerusalem artichokes?

Are they even artichokes at all?

According to Harold McGee’s definitive book On Food and Cooking the Jerusalem artichoke is sometimes called a sunchoke or an earth apple.  It is a sweet and crunchy non-fibrous tuber of a North American sunflower. (Who knew?)  

And, no, the tuber is not related to the artichoke at all. You may notice from the photo below, that a Jerusalem artichoke is a dead ringer for fresh ginger. So…be careful to buy the right root if you make this soup! My local groceries often stock Jerusalem artichokes in the specialty section of the produce counter.

This recipe is from the cookbook Soup for Syria. You can order the book through your local bookstore or on Amazon here.

Here is the soup recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen. 

I was having an “off” cooking day yesterday. A recipe from one of my favorite cooks, Eric Kim, just wasn’t turning out for me. Hate that.

So, I had a Marie Antoinette moment. I let myself eat cake for comfort.

As it turned out, my new cake recipe was excellent and my mood lifted

Point of Digression: As a former high school history teacher, I’m feel obligated to tell you that Marie Antoinette probably didn’t say “Let them eat cake.” The regime of Louis XVI was strikingly unpopular. Marie Antoinette  was a foreigner with expensive tastes (reportedly indulging in 300 new gowns a year while people starved in the streets)  who was denounced broadly as “Madame Deficit.”  That famous  line worked for the opposition to rally the crowds against the regime. While the indictment of the government for corruption and malfeasance was warranted, the use of the quotation to inflame public sentiment  was fake news. End of history lesson.

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Every Sunday (well, almost every Sunday) my friend and I shop the Long Beach Farmers Market. One of the vendors has a special line of  out-of-the ordinary produce. From brilliant orange-red carrots to a many-colored array of colorful radicchio (I’ve pictured one of the radicchio heads below.  How beautiful is that?)  to quirky cone-shaped cabbages, Joyce and I shop his stall with unbridled  enthusiasm. I used his brilliant-hued carrots to make this cake (and home-grown oranges from Joyce’s yard). 

This Carrot-Orange Olive Oil Cake recipe is from The New York Times’ superb cooking page. Here is the link: Carrot-Orange Olive Oil Cake.

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen. 

Every month Blue Cayenne features recipes from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. These recipes are our “Oldies But Goodies.” Today’s Oldie But Goodies recipe is for Eggplant Curry. Here is the link: Stuffed Eggplant With Curry and Coconut Dal. 

Want to dive deeper into our recipe archive? Just click one of the categories at the top of this page or use the category search drop down menu on the right side of this page.

And…here is a link to Blue Cayenne’s main page: Blue Cayenne Food and Photography Blog. If you are in the mood to cook (or eat!), we hope you will take a moment to look at the many excellent recipes we have featured.