This is a rich and complex winter salad, perfect for accompanying grilled meat. Jerusalem artichokes are neither artichokes, nor from Jerusalem, so they probably win the prize for the world’s most confusing vegetable name. In America, they are called sunchokes, but to be honest that sounds more like the name of Bond villain to me. Sunchoke could try to match Blofeld’s plans to destroy British crops by destroying the sun, and possibly be funded by some kind of shady neo-con climate change denial organisation. He would wear a lot of fake tan.
Clearly, I have very little to say about this salad, except that it really is lovely, and should the Ian Fleming Estate wish to contact me to commission a novel, my contact details are on the about page. I am sure I can give Sebastian Faulks a run for his money. Serves 4 as a side dish.
Ingredients
- 400g Jerusalem artichokes
- 75g feta
- 75g hazelnuts
- 50g Pomegranate seeds from 1/2 pomegranate
- 100g baby salad leaves
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 1/2 teaspoon allspice
- 1 1/2 teaspoon honey.
Method
- Wash and trim the artichokes of all the weird nobbly bits.
- Toss in 1 tbsp olive oil and roast at 190C for approx 30 minutes until tender inside.
- Leave to cool.
- Roast the hazelnuts in the oven on a baking sheet for 5 minutes (watch closely at the end, they go from nicely roasted to horribly burnt very very quickly).
- Make the dressing by combining the final four ingredients.
- Roughly chop the hazelnuts once cooled.
- Put the washed salad leaves in the bottom of a large bowl.
- Toss about 3/4′s of the dressing.
- Add the artichokes, pomegranate seeds, crumbled feta and hazelnuts on top.
- Pour over the remaining dressing.
I love Jerusalem artichokes but have never tried making a salad with them. This sounds delicious – wonderful combinations. I must try it!