Jerusalem in the Spring

Spring has certainly arrived here since my last post. This is traditionally a difficult time of year for living off the garden. Stored potatoes, neeps, kale, cabbage, broccoli and winter salads are all going strong but carrots and celeriac are gone and it'll be a while before there's anything to freshen up the repertoire in the kitchen. Bring on the hard-as-nails jerusalem artichoke which could easily feed the five thousand from sowing one tuber... although they might not eat it.

I'm yet to be convinced about its merits. Some eulogise about its flavour but it is blessed with high concentrations of the tentatively identified compound, inulin [C6H11O5(C6H10O5)nOH], which most people can't digest. For once I am in the majority and it can lead to a most unchristian flatulence. But there is nothing holy about this root. It is in fact a tuberous perennial sunflower (girasole) from North America, getting its name from a mangling of a foreign language not seen again till I did italian at O level. It is a good samaritan in the garden, oblivious to weeds and providing, ironically, a good windbreak but you will need a Herod-like determination to root out those baby tubers to stop it evangelising in soft fruit patch. For all its virtues, if you're looking for the promised land to provide something at this time of year, for me it is the leek that shall inherit the earth.