Fried Sunchoke Chips with Rosemary Salt

I was first exposed to sunchokes (also known as Jerusalem artichokes) through one of the nutrition newsletters I received and thought it looked like such a strange food. Last week, I was in Athens, Georgia and happened to find some when I visited a farmers’ market. Naturally, I had to buy them.

Funnily enough, Jerusalem artichokes are not artichokes nor from Jerusalem. Englishmen could not pronounce the Italian name for them, so they called them Jerusalems and then added artichoke to the name because of the taste resemblance.

The sunchokes sliced easily and fried well. They had an unusual but very pleasant flavor. My friends ate them up within minutes.

Pumpkin and Apple Soup

On a whim, I bought a sugar pie pumpkin. It has been staring at me for the past two weeks and today I decided to use it in this soup. It was small enough to give me the perfect amount and a few seeds for an attempt at roasting pumpkin seeds (recipe to follow shortly, I’m sure).

Whenever I cook pumpkin, I have the hardest time cutting it open, until recently. A friend pointed out that we use flimsy saws to carve pumpkins all the time, and so I used a steak knife– the struggle is over. I carved out the top, as if I was making a Jack-o-lantern, scooped out all the guts, and then cut the pumpkin in half. Luckily my peeler was sharp enough to peel the skin off, which came rather speedily once I got the hang of it.

I didn’t have any vegetable broth so I used chicken instead and I don’t recommend it. The chicken broth gives the soup a richness that just isn’t right for the other ingredients. Still, I think this is a very rich soup no matter which broth you go with. As far as serving goes, I like to eat squash soups with some diced Haas avocados and a good sourdough toast.