Jerusalem artichokes and prawns

Jerusalem artichokes are such a reassuring vegetable to grow. I once grew 20kg of them in a tiny bed in Battersea that would welcome nothing else! They are not artichokes at all, nor indeed anything to do with that city which the ‘People of the Book’ - as the Muslims refer to Jews and Christians (the book being the Bible) - have fought over for the whole of post-Roman history. They are, in fact, members of the sunflower family.

A sunflower is called girasole in Italian and, with the