Try my new Fave Winter Recipes!

This first dish was just something I whipped up after discovering that the sale package of chicken gizzards I snagged contained a few chicken livers.   I fished the livers out of the pile and set them aside, but I didn't have enough to make it worthwhile to package them away for another day.   I added them to the dish-in-progress instead.

I don't have much coming out of the garden right now, but I am trying to harvest all of the sunchokes before the gophers get them and before we get another warm spell that causes them to sprout.  They were confused about winter several weeks ago, and I have noticed that some of the recently-harvested roots are sporting sprouts on top and have become a bit pithy.

I seem to have lots more of these puppies, as the gophers and other ground animals take a few and spread them all over the garden.  Oh well, maybe that was me, with my non-standard composting routine. (EPIC FAIL! on turning the windrow 5 times or reaching the appropriate temperature in my in-vessel or static aerated pile system~)

I harvest my sunchokes well after the stems start to dry out, wash and drain them carefully, and pack them loosely in large plastic containers in the fridge.  The bulk cookie containers from Costco work great (after you have thrown away the cookies - you weren't going to eat them, were you?)

Just a few weeks ago I was cleaning out the fridge for Thanksgiving, and discovered a large container of sunchokes way in the back, from last season.  They were still in very good shape, though they were sprouting.  I "planted" them in the ground in an out-of-the way place until I get the time to amend the soil at their final destination.

Sunchokes and Liver Soup

(This is for two servings, and works great if you have purchased a whole chicken and have only one liver.)

1/2 cup chopped Jerusalem artichokes
1 T lard or bacon fat
1 chicken liver
1/4 cup chicken broth
4 T heavy cream
4 T parsley
1/4 t dried thyme
1/4 t dried hot red pepper
salt and black pepper to taste

Fry the sunchokes in the fat until they are tender.  Add chopped liver and cook for a minute.  Add broth, thyme, salt and hot pepper.  Simmer for a short time until the liver is cooked.  Pour mixture into soup bowls, add the heavy cream and top with chopped parsley.

OK, it is a bit grey, and it sounds pretty awful on paper, right?  Try it anyway.  I could eat this every day in the winter.  Really.  I couldn't even tell it was liver.  I like liver anyway anyway and feel no need to hide it, but honestly, if I hadn't made it myself, I might never have guessed.

One serving contains 233 calories, 7 grams carb, 20 grams fat and 6 grams protein.  One of the carb grams is fiber, but I usually count sunchoke carbs as half, since they are mostly inulin.  YMMV on how you react to sunchokes.  The C/F/P ratio is 12.4/76.6/11.   Each serving contains a whopping 11 grams of arterycloggingsaturatedfat, which is why it tastes so good and I didn't eat much else for supper.

Coming up:  part 2:  Hatch bombs