Patatas Bravas are the ubiquitous Spanish Tapas. What isn’t to like? It’s fried potatoes with spicy mayo! In this recipe, we show you how to make an aioli and we switch out the potatoes for sunchokes (Jerusalem Artichokes).
For frying:
- 1lb sunchokes cut into half centimeter ovals.
- 2 cups olive oil
- salt
for aioli:
- 4 green garlics (or 2 cloves garlic, or 2 bunches young garlic)
- 2 hot peppers
- 1 Tablespoon Dijon
- 2 Tablespoons sherry vinegar
- 1 cup grapeseed oil
- 1 cup olive oil
- 1 egg
- 1 Tablespoon tomato paste
Heat your oil up to around 325. (If you don’t have a thermometer, it’s ok, just don’t let your oil smoke! This is carcinogenic.) The ultimate test of oil readiness: Drop in one of your sunchoke slices, and if it sizzles, you are good to go. Once you add the slices, just keep an eye on them. It will take a good ten minutes to fry these through. I’ve tried boiling and then frying them. Frying them twice…three times. In the end, I thought the once fried worked the best. So fry until they have gone past golden brown, but aren’t burned… they’ll continue to cook a bit outside the pan. Strain the oil. And set the “Fries” on a paper towel. With fine grain sea salt, season liberally.
Char the green garlic and peppers over you stove top flame until each is black on all sides. Peel off the outer skin and roughly chop. For the chillis, take out the seeds if you’d like less heat. Put the garlic, peppers, Dijon, vinegar, egg and tomato paste in a food processor. Pulse until finely ground. Then turn on the processor and slowly add the grapeseed oil in a fine stream, and then the olive oil. Season with salt. It shouldn’t be too stiff, so either add some cold water to loosen it, or if you’d like more acidity, add a bit more vinegar.
Dip the fried sunchokes in the aioli and enjoy!
