Stoved Jerusalem Artichokes

18th September 2012 - Sunday.  We really like the routine of a Sunday.  Tea and coffee, then porridge, maybe an egg.  Lunch, pretty much always a roasted joint or chicken, then a movie on the sofa.
We had roast beef - a piece of topside - not a joint that I'd usually want to roast, from City Meat on the King's Road.  It was nearly black - maybe hung 6 weeks?  The butcher was most insistent that it would be great and that I mustn't cook it for too long.  I guess it weighed 24oz, and was wrapped in a piece of pork fat. 

Preheat the oven to 250C fan.  Into the roasting tray goes an onion, a peeled carrot and a couple of sticks of celerey, all in chunks and tossed with olive oil.  Beef on top.    Put the beef into the oven and immediately turn the oven down to 150C.  35 minutes, then out, covered with foil and several teatowels to keep it hot to rest for 40 minutes.  It was red pink throughout and carved very thinly; it was a bit chewy, perhaps, but great flavour.  I took the carrots out and put them in with the roasting potatos to finish them off.
Brocolli, roast potatoes (Yukon gold - not convinced) and..... the reason for this post......  

Stoved Jerusalem Artichokes.  Mostly Jane Grigson from her Vegetable book, but no garlic or parsley, which I think would fight with the beautiful flavour of the artichokes.  Choose the least knobbly ones and make sure that they are stone hard - if there is a tiny bit of give - cook something else.

Jerusalem artichokes
dash olive oil
1/2 oz + of butter per pound of artichokes, but 1/2 oz is the minimum if only doing a few.
Salt, pepper, nutmeg
1/2  a lemon

Squeeze the lemon into a bowl of cold water.  Peel the artichokes as far as possible to a uniform, roundish size, dropping each one into the acidulated water as they are done.  In a saucepan in which they will loosely fit (you are going to need to shake/turn them) put a splash of oil, the butter - if in doubt use more - a couple of turns of the salt mill, several of pepper and about 6 scrapes of a nutmeg down the grater.  Put over a low heat, add the artichokes and cover the pot.  Cook as slowly as you can (I use a gas hob - a small burner at the lowest heat - just sizzling) for about 40 minutes, giving them a firm shake everyso often, and gently turning them every so often if the shaking isn't doing so.
Mine didn't go the crusty brown she suggests, but were utterly delicious.

Word of warning - artichokes are fickle things and similar looking ones will cook at entirely different speeds.  I cooked 10, a bit smaller than a golf ball.  Only one collapsed to mush (still yummy).  Maybe I was lucky. 

The star of the show was a bottle of Vieux Telegraphe, Chateauneuf du Pape, 1995.  I opened it at 10pm the night before and put the cork loosely back in the bottle.  By 1pm on Sunday it still had a touch of tartness and iron filings, the fruit was struggling to get to the top.  At 5pm when we had lunch, stunning.