Nanny Rose Salad

When I was growing up, my grandparents on my dad’s side had a house on the Jersey Shore. The family would gather there every summer, sometimes for a week but mostly just on the weekends. My grandfather, Joe, would bring out the grill and cook up heaping plates of burgers and steaks. For appetizers we’d have kosher hot dogs on a slice of Jewish rye fresh from the bakery down the street (the only way to eat a hot dog, in my opinion). He made his own barbeque sauce and it went on everything. It was all so good and we still refer to any outrageous barbeque as a Poppy Joe meal.
We did eat some veggies at those carnivorous feasts. There would be fresh corn on the cob (Jersey corn and tomatoes are by far the best, I know it’s hard to believe, but there is a reason it’s called the Garden State) and my grandmother, Rose, who wasn’t much of a cook, would always make a salad. This was no ordinary salad. Sure there’d be some lettuce in there, but mostly it was other stuff like cucumbers and carrots and tomatoes and celery. Lots of crunchy stuff. Then she’d dress it with, I’m guessing, bottled Italian dressing. The small amount of lettuce would get kind of soggy and you wouldn’t even really notice it was there. This came to be known affectionately as a Nanny Rose Salad. It wasn’t very good, but it was very memorable, and to this day, when I make a salad with not very much lettuce but lots of other stuff, it’s a Nanny Rose salad.
I’ve had salad on the brain lately now that fresh local greens are here and we’ve been eating salad at least once a day. Of course, the word salad can be used to describe all sorts of dishes including those made with pasta, or potato, or fruit, or (scarily) Jell-O.
My American Heritage dictionary defines salad as “a dish consisting of green, leafy, raw vegetables, often with radish, cucumber, or tomato, served with a dressing”. Using that definition, I guess you could consider anything cold that is served with a dressing (even if the dressing consists solely of Cool-Whip) a salad.
But right now, all I care about are green salads. They define spring for me and I live on them for as long as the fresh lettuce is available. This has probably been the case since ancient times when people realized they could eat dandelions, watercress, and chicory and were pretty excited to do so after a winter of eating stored grains and little else.
Those greens were much bitterer than they are today. We’ve been working on breeding the bitter out ever since and probably had our greatest success with iceberg lettuce (that flavorless, but easily transportable lettuce which may be responsible for Americans thinking we can eat salad all year long). Interestingly, the tide is turning back to bitter and salad mixes often include bitter greens like radicchio, endive, mizuna, and escarole.
Not every culture embraced these first delicious signs of spring. Some cultures took their time in deciding that green salad was a good thing to eat. The English wouldn’t touch the stuff until the early 1700s. And even then, it took an entire book (Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets by John Evelyn) to convince them that lettuce wasn’t just for their farm animals and wouldn’t kill them if they ate it.
The Greeks and Romans were big salad eaters. The word itself comes from ancient Latin and is derived from the word for salt. I’m not sure why salt, which was a key ingredient in the dressing of ancient salads, should come to be the definitive ingredient from which the word stems. Maybe it’s because those ancient bitter salads were made more palatable by the addition of salt, since salt balances and even suppresses our taste of bitterness.
Today, we have what seems like unlimited possibilities of greens to put in our salad. The salad mix I bought from Solstice Farms last week has red and green leaf lettuce, spinach, kale, tatsoi, mizuna, and edible flowers in it. It is has so many flavors and textures all by itself that you don’t need to add anything else except a light dressing (since without the dressing it wouldn’t truly be a salad).
Whatever type of greens you build your salad with, always wait until you are going to serve it to add any oil-based dressings (instructions my Nanny Rose never followed). Oil can easily penetrate the leaves of your salad and turn them dark and soggy. If you must dress your salad early, use a water-based cream dressing, like Jon’s Favorite Blue Cheese dressing.
As the season progresses, those leafy greens will be overtaken by fresh cucumbers, peas, carrots, tomatoes and who knows what else until the creation in my bowl is a true Nanny Rose salad. Right now, I’m happy with just eating leaves.

Vicki Reich eats, writes, and gardens in Sagle. She is also the Market Manager for Six Rivers Market. You can contact her at wordomouth@yahoo.com.

Vicki’s Vinaigrette
Makes 1 cup

½ c Balsamic vinegar
½ c good quality extra virgin olive oil
½ t dried oregano
¼ t. dried thyme
¼ t. dried basil
1 t. Dijon mustard
½ t. salt
Fresh ground pepper to taste

Place all ingredients in a jar with a tight fitting lid. Shake vigorously. Serve.

This is vinegary vinaigrette. If you want a milder dressing reduce vinegar to ¼ c and increase oil to ¾ c.

Jon’s Favorite Blue Cheese Dressing
Makes 2 ½ cups
1 c. sour cream
8 oz. Blue Cheese, crumbled (start with a block of cheese and crumble it yourself rather than buying crumbles, the flavor is much better)
3 cloves garlic, minced
½ c. mayonnaise
¼ c. plain yogurt
1 T. chives, finely chopped
½ t. salt
2 T. apple cider vinegar

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Add more vinegar if dressing is too thick. Spoon into a jar and refrigerate. If possible, wait one day before using, but it’s hard to resist.

What's in a Name

If you ask some people where their food comes from, they might tell you the grocery store. They might have no idea what a potato plant looks like and might be completely surprised by the large green leafy thing growing over their tubers. They would never believe you if you told them the four foot tall billowing fern-like plants they see in the fall were once the asparagus they prized in spring.
I like to think I know all about the food I eat. However, my confidence was recently shaken. I just learned that growing over those gnarly, misshapen, but deliciously versatile Jerusalem artichokes that I relish in the spring are 6 foot tall stalks with bright yellow flowers (that are rumored to smell like milk chocolate, I must find out if it’s true) and they’re relatives of the sunflower. I don’t like being in the dark about my food. I needed to know more.
To start with, I had to know about the name. Why in the world was a New World plant named for an ancient Old World city? And why was it named for another vegetable that it wasn’t related to?
It turns out at least the Jerusalem part of the name derives from a failed game of Telephone. When explorers first brought Jerusalem artichokes to Italy, the Italians called them girasole, which is Italian for sunflower. Over time girasole was misunderstood to be Jerusalem (I guess I can see how that could happen) leading to the first half of the confusing name we have today.
The artichoke part of the name comes from the fact that when cooked, Jerusalem artichokes do taste a bit like artichoke hearts (and it turns out they are very distantly related).
Jersusalem artichokes (or sunchokes, as they are sometimes called to avoid all the above mentioned confusion) were cultivated by Native Americans for so long before Europeans arrived that scientists haven’t been able to figure out where they originated. What we do know is they were brought to Europe around 1600 and became a staple food there. The French, in particular, love them.
And what’s not to love? These ugly little tubers are good and good for you. You can just slice them up and throw them on a salad for some extra crunch or you can get really creative. Sunchokes can be boiled, baked, fried, or roasted (I even found a recipe for Jerusalem artichoke chiffon pie in Stalking the Wild Aparagus by Euell Gibbons. I plan on trying it soon; it’s too intriguing to pass up.) They are low in calories and high in potassium, iron, fiber, and vitamin C.
Jerusalem artichokes remind me a lot of potatoes in terms of versatility in the kitchen. There is one key difference that you should be aware of when you are creating new dishes with them. Potatoes store energy as starch and that gives sticking power and body to foods made with them. Jerusalem artichokes store energy as inulin. Inulin is a polymer of fructose sugars that’s not digestible by our bodies. It’s actually digested by good bacteria in the gut and helps promote those good bacteria while keeping out the bad guys (it may also promote gas if you are not used to eating it; start off with small servings to avoid embarrassment). The lack of starch makes it difficult to substitute Jerusalem artichokes straight across for potatoes. Mash them and you’ll end up with a soupier mixture than you would expect. Fry them and they won’t be as crisp. But what they lack in starch, they make up for in flavor. I’ll take a gratin of Jerusalem artichokes over potatoes any day and since I developed a recipe for sunchoke pancakes (see accompanying recipe), I might never use potatoes again. They are way more tasty.
They are also easy to grow (maybe too easy). Like sunflowers they will self-seed but they will also grow new plants from the tubers. That means if you leave any tubers in the ground after harvest, you’ll have a fresh batch popping up soon. Amy Spencer (of Vern’s Veggies) warned me that they can take over if you’re not careful. They are planted in spring and harvested early the next year making them one of the first fresh veggies to look forward to. If you don’t want to grown them, you can pick some up at the farmer’s market. I know Vern has some.

Jerusalem Artichoke Pancakes
Serves 4 as a side dish

1 lb Jerusalem artichokes, scrubbed
½ large yellow onion
1 t. salt
2 T whole wheat flour
1 T corn starch
2 eggs, slightly beaten
Salt and pepper to taste
2 T canola oil
2 T butter

Coarsely grate the Jerusalem artichokes and onions. I use a food processor which make a quick and tear-free job of it. Place grated mixture in a colander and sprinkle with salt. Toss and let stand for about 20 minutes. Squeeze as much liquid from the vegetables as possible and place in a large bowl. Add the flour and corn starch. Toss well. Add the eggs and salt and pepper. Mix well and let stand for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile heat 1 T oil and 1 T butter in a large frying pan to medium high. Place 4-5 ¼ cup blobs of the artichoke mixture in the pan and flatten into pancakes with the back of a spoon. These will not hold together the way potatoes do so be gentle. Turn carefully when brown on one side. Cook until brown on both sides. Place in a warm oven and cook the second batch with the remaining oil and butter. Serve immediately.