Vegetables - Sophie Grigson

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and pepper

      Begin with the filling. Fry the onion and garlic gently in the butter until tender without browning. Now add the Jerusalem artichokes, orange zest and white wine and boil down until the wine has virtually disappeared. Sprinkle over the flour and stir for a few seconds so that it is evenly distributed. Gradually stir in the stock to make a sauce. Season with salt and pepper, then stir in the chicken. Now cover and leave to simmer away quietly for some 10 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Then uncover and simmer for 5 minutes, until the sauce has thickened. Stir in the cream and cook for a final 3 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Spoon into a 1–1.5 litre (13/4-21/2 pint) pie dish and leave to cool.

      Roll out the pastry thinly on a floured board. Cut out a couple of long strips about 1cm (1/2 in) wide. Brush the edge of the pie dish with the beaten egg. Lay the strips of pastry on the edge, curving to fit and cutting so that they go all the way around but don’t overlap. Brush them with egg, then lay the remaining pastry over the top. Trim off excess, and press the pastry down all around the edge to seal. Use the pastry trimmings to make leaves or flowers or whatever takes your fancy, and glue them in place with the egg wash. Make a hole in the centre so that steam can escape. Chill the pie in the fridge for half an hour.

      Preheat the oven to 220°C/425°F/Gas 7. Brush with egg wash and place in the oven. After 10–15 minutes, when the pastry is golden brown, reduce the heat to 190°C/375°F/Gas 5. Continue baking for a further 20–25 minutes. Serve hot.

       Jicama

      Sometimes the best place to hide something is in a place so obvious that no-one but those in the know think to look there. Jicama is just such a cleverly hidden secret, for sale openly in our towns and cities, if only you know where to look. No point asking for it in supermarkets, in farm shops, in greengrocers, in farmers’ markets. No point in asking for it by this name, either, even if you have the finest South American accent – ‘hee-kah-ma’. You must, instead, replace it with a far duller name: yam bean. This is odd because it is neither yam, nor bean, and bears no resemblance to either.

      It looks something like a chunky turnip, with a matt mid-brown skin. In other words, it has a thoroughly undistinguished appearance, which makes hiding it all the easier. The place to look, in this innocent game of vegetable hide and seek, is in the vegetable racks of a Chinese supermarket, where you are virtually guaranteed to discover a plentiful supply of jicama/yam bean.

      Apart from the fun of the game, there is a point to tracking down a jicama or two. The point is that they are so good to eat, and so different to most other vegetables. Under the worthy brown skin, the flesh is a clean pure white. It tastes, when raw, something like green peas, and has the consistency of a large radish, juicy and crunchy and refreshing.

      Practicalities

      BUYING

      If a choice is to be had, opt for medium-sized jicama – larger ones will have begun to develop a mealier texture, which though not unpleasant is less enticing. They should be firm all over, with a matt brown skin. The skin should be unbroken – cuts or bruises suggest that rot may have set in.

      In the vegetable drawer of the fridge, a jicama will last for up to a week, even when cut (cover the cut edge with clingfilm to prevent drying out). To use, you need do no more than cut out a chunk, pare off the fibrous skin, and slice or cube the white flesh.

      COOKING

      Raw jicama is a brilliant addition to a summer salad, but my favourite

      way to eat it is Mexican style. In other words, dry-fry equal quantities of coriander and cumin seeds, grind to a powder and add cayenne to taste. Arrange the sliced jicama on a plate, squeeze over lime juice and sprinkle with the spice mixture and a little salt, before finishing with a few coriander leaves. That’s it. When they are at their ripest, I add slices of orange-fleshed melon to the jicama, which makes it even more luscious. Batons of raw jicama are an excellent addition to a selection of crudités served with hummus or other creamy dips.

      Jicama responds well to stir-frying, too, again on its own with just garlic and ginger to spice it up, or with other vegetables. It needs 3–4 minutes in the wok to soften it partially, without losing the sweet crunchiness entirely.

       Kumara

      It isn’t too clever to sell two different vegetables by the same name, even when they look virtually identical. However, for many years that is just what has been happening. When I was a child, the sweet potatoes that my mother brought home as an occasional treat were always white fleshed and we just adored them: roasted in their jackets until tender, then eaten slathered with salted butter.

      More recently sweet potatoes have turned orange and soggy. In truth it is not a miraculous transformation, just that one (in my opinion slightly inferior) variety has replaced t’other. For a few transitionary years, you had no idea which you were buying, unless you scratched away the skin to inspect the underlying colour. Anyone with the slightest bit of sense would have seen that these vegetables should be called by different names, and at last that seems to have happened, with the happy reintroduction of the white-fleshed sweet potato, a.k.a. the kumara, to this country.

      The word ‘kumara’ comes from the Maori name for the white-fleshed Ipomoea batatas. They are, as you might well infer from this, extremely popular in New Zealand, and indeed in many places around the Pacific. Their country of origin is thought to be Mexico, where roast kumara are sold by street vendors, to be anointed with condensed milk and eaten as a pudding rather than a vegetable. Try it some time and see how good it is.

      Kumara is also the sweet potato used widely in the Caribbean for making pies and dumplings. The orange-fleshed sweet potato is not a good substitute here, as the flesh is too watery and lacks the necessary starch to bind ingredients together.

      So the point that I’m trying to make is this: kumara are downright gorgeous and you really should try them if you haven’t already. They are still not exactly commonplace but at least one of the larger supermarket chains is importing them regularly, and you may well find them in Caribbean food stores. Go search and you will be well rewarded.

      Practicalities

      BUYING

      If you have the choice, pick out kumara that are on the larger side, with firm, smooth, dark pink-brown skin. Bruises and soft patches, as always, warn you to steer clear. Cut ends will be a dirty greyish colour, but don’t let this bother you – it’s just a spot of oxidisation, not a sign of something disturbing.

      Kumara like to be kept in a cool, airy, dark spot, which is not the fridge. Over-chilled kumara develop a tougher centre, at least that’s what producers say. In practice, I’ve found that a day or two in the fridge doesn’t make any noticeable difference to the texture once cooked, which is handy if you don’t happen to have a cool, airy, dark spot to hand. Better the fridge, I find, than a warm kitchen where they are likely to start sprouting.

      Longer term storage (they should keep nicely for up to a fortnight) and you really ought to treat them as they prefer – try wrapping them individually in a couple of sheets of newspaper to exclude light and absorb any humidity in the air.

      COOKING

      In terms of preparation, remarkably little is required. Give them a rinse, trim off discoloured ends and voilà, one kumara ready for the pot.

      Or the oven. Which is exactly where you should start if you have never eaten kumara before. Just don’t stall there, as many

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