Taste is highly personal.
Case in point: a sunchoke dish that I recently ate at Cold Beer on a rainy Saturday night. It’s a dish that I am about to spend 1,000 words babbling about. Yet, it is the same dish that a dissatisfied diner ate at Cold Beer that same rainy Saturday night, and complained about.
The story that I’m going to tell you is not a tit for tat. That diner is as much entitled to despise the dish as I am to revere it. You can judge it for yourself.
If you tried the crab 'nduja with corn on the menu when Kevin Gillespie's Cold Beer debuted on the Eastside Beltline this past summer, you've tasted an earlier iteration. Chef Brian Baxter has given the dish a winter makeover, replacing the corn with 'chokes.
Funny thing, sunchokes aren’t supposed to be the star. That would be crab — deviled crab, made with bonito flakes and bacon, a nontraditional flavor profile for crab, to be sure.
<<REVIEW: Kevin Gillespie's Cold Beer is much more than the name implies
First bite. First thoughts. These shreds of seafood almost taste like barbecued pulled pork.
A pause, to admire the plate. Such a lovely scattering of itty bitty potato chips.
Second bite. Second thoughts. Oh, but these aren't potatoes. They're sunchokes! Seasoned with Old Bay and powdered malt vinegar, they're like smoky salt and vinegar chips. A perfect pairing for that crab.
Another bite. Another thought. More sunchokes! This time, finely diced, then roasted to coax out their sweetness.
One more spoonful. One more discovery. Sunchokes pureed, then swirled into mayo to make a fine bed for a mound of devilishly tasty seafood.
A big scoop of everything, all together. Oh, sunchokes. I'd forgotten just how much I loved you.
Why did a bowl of sunchokes prepared three ways arouse such emotion? Because it reappeared like a long-forgotten paramour who showed up suddenly, unexpectedly, out of nowhere. And the entirety of our former relationship came back to me like quick bursts of film flashbacks.
Mind experts estimate that somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000 thoughts pass through our brains in a day. I think I experienced at least that many the night I ate sunchokes at Cold Beer.
I should have expected as much. It was a night ripe for thinking. Horrid weather was predicted: a deluge of rain and thunderstorms. The forecast held true. As I sat on Cold Beer’s covered patio, spooning that warm sunchoke and crab into my mouth, the spitting rain turned into a downpour. I’d forgotten my umbrella in the car. Time to linger, to remember.
When did my affair with sunchokes begin?
Oh, yeah. Josh and Anne Marie. Josh is a chef from Louisiana who moved to St. Louis after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans and knocked that dining scene off its feet. Anne Marie is the mother of twins who’ve been best friends with one of my sons since grade school. I guess we’ve been friends for as long as our kids have. I can’t remember whether it was Josh or Anne Marie who gifted me a few of those root veggies to plunk into my community garden plot, but I know that they are the ones who taught me to appreciate the unsung sunchoke.
Oh, sunchoke! Or, Jerusalem artichoke, sunroot, earth apple — call it what you will. This species of sunflower (ah, that's why chef Baxter added pickled sunflower as a component to the creation at Cold Beer) is earthy, nutty root vegetable and crunchy, sweet apple rolled into one.
Once it takes root, it is prolific. What to do with so many knobby sunchokes growing below the ground? That’s a home cook’s delightful conundrum. I talked about cooking applications with Josh and Anne Marie. I pondered how I’d handle the harvest each fall, when I took shovel to dirt and dug up most of the tubular-shaped chokes, always leaving behind a few that were guaranteed to rise again, come spring.
“WE’RE WORKING TO RESTORE A TIME.”
My phone lit up with a text message from Georgia Power. Severe weather had caused widespread outages affecting my address. More reason to linger, to remember.
I miss that garden plot.
When I visited family in St. Louis during the Christmas holiday, I made a point to check on my old plot. The sunchokes aren’t there anymore. Neither is the horseradish. Too bad. Those were some good roots. It makes me want to head to Pitch Pine Farms in Penrose, North Carolina, Cold Beer’s current sunchoke purveyor, and ask them for a few plants to bury in my backyard.
Yeah, sunchokes are easy to grow. But, don’t forget, they can be a pain to clean.
Sunchokes are so knurled, you really have to scrub the thin skin to flick off all the grit that hides in those nooks and crannies.
But, once they’re clean, there’s so much you can do with them.
Roast, fry, boil, steam, grill, mash, puree …
How come we don’t see sunchokes on more menus?
I don’t know.
I’d lapped up every smear of sunchoke mayo. There was nothing left but an empty earthen bowl. The rain pelted me as I ran back to my car. I arrived home to a blackened streetscape. Georgia Power hadn’t yet serviced my block. It was dark, but not late. And, I wasn’t tired. Too many thoughts swirled in my head. I needed to work them out. I needed more time to linger, to remember.
The lack of power offered a rare moment to light a couple candles, both for need and want. They were already burned down to stubby little sticks. I’d write until the wax melted to nothing. I grabbed pen and paper and began.
Taste is highly personal.
Case in point: a sunchoke dish that I recently ate at Cold Beer on a rainy Saturday night.
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