Foraging Recipes: Roasted Garlic Jerusalem Artichoke Soup

This is one of my favorite vegan soups this time of year. Easy to prepare, smooth of texture, and filled with flavor, Jerusalem artichoke soup with roasted garlic has been a hit with us and our guests for years. 

Better still, it's another great homesteader recipe that cooks up with little oversight, keeps well and can be easily adapted. We often make a batch at the beginning of a week, add coconut milk and curry spices midway through and then even use the remainder as the base for a curry sauce. It freezes well, and can be made into ice cubes for a quick sauce. 

Jerusalem artichokes make a fine native vegetable for a home forest garden, but they're also quite abundant in the wild. I know of three places in downtown Kalamazoo to find large stands, and I frequently see them along roadsides and at the edges of farm fields. This time of year, they're easily identified by last-years stalks. After the winter thaw, they're at their sweetest, and between the chokes and the sweetness of roasted garlic, we've often had guests ask if we used honey to sweeten the soup. 

We've also made this recipe with roasted field garlic and it tasted great. Make a stock with wild thistles, burdock, wild carrot greens, and foraged mushrooms for a 100% "wild" foraged staple dish. (Later, I'll post my recipe for a foraged vegetable stock.) This time of year, add a salad of foraged spring greens for a complete foraged meal. 

Roasted Garlic Jerusalem Artichoke Soup

Ingredients:

5 lbs Jerusalem artichokes, washed. 

1clove of garlic. (Substitute field garlic)

1 container of vegetable stock. 

Place Jerusalem artichokes in a pot, cover with water and place on high heat to bring to a boil. Boil for 3 minutes, then turn down the heat to a slow boil. Now, the wait begins. The inulin in Jerusalem artichokes breaks down with long cook times, and 4 hours is often recommended. After cooking, pour off water and let chokes cool down slightly. We'll be putting them in a blender, and hot ingredients in a cold blender can crack glass.

As the chokes cook, turn the oven to 400 degrees, wrap the garlic in tinfoil and add a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, then put it  in the oven while it heats, for 10 minutes. I've found this is a reliable way to get perfect roasted garlic. 

Combine roasted garlic, chokes in blender with enough broth to blend them, in small batches. Blend to a smooth puree in batches and return them to the pot. French sources often say that Jerusalem artichokes make the smoothest of all veloute soups, so you're looking for a silky smooth texture. Add broth or water to thicken to the desired texture, then add salt and pepper to taste. 

I like to garnish with finly chopped spring greens, such as pepper cress, parsley, and field garlic greens. 

Serve with warm, crusty french bread. 

Foraging Recipe: Fast Easy Pita Pizzas with Goat Cheese, Pepper Cress and Roasted Field Garlic

These quick pita pizzas feature one of my favorite late-winter flavor combinations with the crispy crust of classic Roman-style pizzas, and go yard-to-table in about 15 minutes. For busy homesteaders, these pita pizzas are a workhorse, turning home-grown and foraged produce into quick and easy meals with few dishes and little clean-up. 

But this is slow fast food. The flavors of pepper cress and roasted field garlic, tempered with mild goat cheese are a combination fit for gourmet restaurants.  

Biding its time underneath the snow for the first thaw, Cardamine Hirsuta is everywhere this time of year. It goes by many names, peppercress, shotcress (as I was taught) and hairy bitter cress, though it is neither hairy nor too bitter.

It's especially fond of damp places, but I've found it in almost every type of environment throughout the Great Lakes region, from woodlands, gardens, and waste sites, to sandy soiled barrens, and lawns. 

 

It looks, tastes and has a very similar delicate texture to its close gourmet relative, watercress. It forms a small rosette in fall and grows over winter. Though most of its look-alikes are other edible cresses and "little mustards," for beginners honing their plant eyes, it bears a very slight resemblance to some poisonous plants of the carrot family, including poison hemlock, pictured below, which lacks the rounded leaflets seen above. 

(Ooooh, not this one! This one's poison hemlock!)

The next ingredient in this recipe is field garlic, allium vinaele, another plant that's nearly universal around the Great Lakes region this time of year. 

It's often found in grasslike dense clumps that have outgrown your lawn over winter and have a strong garlic aroma when crushed. The greens and the bulbs are edible and have no poisonous imposters. 

The bulbs can be roasted in a hot oven just like garden garlic. Together with the peppercress, the two form a nice flavor combination. 

Recipe:

Ingredients 

1 Lebanese or other thin pita (not Greek pita.)

1/1 - 1 C chopped pepper cress

1 clump field garlic (12 bulbs)

Pasta or pizza sauce to taste

Goat cheese to taste

Fresh mozzarella to taste

Pinch dried italian herbs (fennel seed, oregano, basil)

Pinch sea salt

1 T olive oil 

Remove the greens from the field garlic and set aside. Wrap the clean bulbs in tinfoil and add a few drops of olive oil, a sprinkle of salt and a crack of pepper. Place in the oven to cook while the oven heats and turn the oven to 450 degrees. Garlic should roast in about 15 minutes. 

Sprinkle the bottom of the pita (you decide which side will better hold the ingredients) with olive oil and then italian herbs and sea salt. Turn it over and give the edges of the crust the same treatment. 

Spoon dolops of sauce onto the pizza, then a light crumbling of goat cheese and pieces of mozzarella. Don't over-do it. To many ingredients will keep the pizzas from getting crispy. 

Add 1/4 - 1/2 Cup of chopped pepper cress, keeping some aside for the finished pizza. 

By now, the garlic should be ready and the oven hot, so remove the garlic and put it on the pizza. 

Then put the pizza in the oven, directly on the rack. At this point, I often switch the oven to "broil" to finish the top of the pizza. It should cook up in about 5 minutes. 

Voila! Sprinkle some more fresh pepper cress on top and a drizzle of olive oil. A quick gourmet meal from your yard months before the first annual vegetables will be ready!