Sunchoke and Radish Tartine

Name: Sunchoke and Radish Tartine
Prep time: 10 min
Total time: 10 min
Yield: 6 as an appetizer
Ingredients: bunch french breakfast radishes (sliced very thin); 1 pint sunchokes/jerusalem artichokes (sliced very thin); 1 tbsp lemon juice; 1 tbsp good quality olive oil; ½ tsp flaky sea salt (plus extra to garnish); 4 oz softened goat cheese; 1 ½ tbsp honey; Microgreens to garnish; 1 loaf crusty bread

So we’ve already pretty well established that I love cheese and bread. I’m really just always trying to find socially acceptable ways to eat more of both. And Tartines feel like a pretty good way to do that while still adding in some vegetables for good measure.

P.S. If you’re looking for some other good ideas, I might suggest baking some cheese IN your bread, resurrecting day old bread in a “salad” or adding eggs to bread & cheese under the guise of breakfast. I got you covered in this department.

Sunchoke and Radish Tartine with Microgreens and Flaky Sea Salt

What are tartines exactly?

Tartine comes from the verb in French tartiner which means to spread – so if you were speaking Franglais you would say something like “I tartine butter onto my toast every morning.”

So the word tartine in the culinary sense is basically just toasted bread with some sort of spread on it. In this case the spread happens to be honeyed goat cheese and crunchy sunchokes, but the beauty of tartines is that you can put anything on them your heart desires.

Whole sunchokes in a colander and french breakfast radishes

And what are sunchokes exactly?

Speaking of sunchokes – I tried a new vegetable! As someone who likes to think they’ve tried a lot of foods in their day, this is a pretty big deal. I had never eaten a sunchoke before, but a couple of weeks ago I went to my favorite Nashville farmers’ market and one of the vendors extended a funny looking tuberous vegetable and told me to try it.

I was apprehensive at first. Do I eat this raw? Is this ginger in disguise? He called it a Jerusalem artichoke before and now a sunchoke – are they the same thing? Is this an artichoke?

Sunchoke and Radish Tartine with Microgreens

The answers: you CAN eat sunchokes raw, they are not ginger in disguise (but they do look awfully similar), they are called both Jerusalem artichokes and sunchokes, and they are definitely not real artichokes.

Sunchokes remind me of a kind of sweet cross between a potato and a radish. They’re really pleasantly crunchy, mildly sweet, and mellow. You can cook them in all the same ways as potatoes, but sunchokes get extra credit since you can eat them raw.

Thinly sliced sunchokes and radishes in a bowl to mixed for Sunchoke and Radish Tartine

Oh yea, and on my way to the farmers’ market that morning and haaaappened to stop at one of the best bakeries in Nashville and haaaappened to pick up a loaf of super seedy sweet potato hearth bread.

So with a near perfect loaf of crusty bread and this fun new root vegetable, I started dreaming up this sunchoke and radish tartine with a honeyed goat cheese spread. And man it did not disappoint.

Sliced Sweet Potato Bread to serve as the base for Sunchoke and Radish Tartine

Sunchoke & Radish Tartine

Here’s what you’ll need:

1 bunch French breakfast radishes, sliced very thin
1 pint sunchokes/jerusalem artichokes, sliced very thin
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp good quality olive oil
½ tsp flaky sea salt, plus extra to garnish
4 oz softened goat cheese
1 ½ tbsp honey
Microgreens to garnish, optional
1 loaf crusty bread

The hardest part about these tartines is making sure your goat cheese is softened (take it out of your fridge before you go out to run errands) and slicing the radishes and sunchokes. A mandoline makes super quick work of the slicing and is worth getting out if you have one.

Sliced Radishes
Sliced Sunchokes

You can always slice this super thinly with a knife too, so no worries if you don’t have a mandoline. I ended up with about a cup of each vegetable once they were sliced.

Combine both the radishes and the sunchokes in a bowl and mix with lemon juice, olive oil, and 1/2 tsp sea salt or kosher salt.

Sliced sunchokes and radishes mixed with homemade dressing for Sunchoke and Radish Tartine

Next, make the tartine part of your tartine by combining the honey and the softened goat cheese in a small bowl and mixing thoroughly so the honey is fully combined.

You can always buy goat cheese with honey at the store, but unless I know I’m making something like this in advance I usually don’t buy it. It’s easy to make your own so I go for the plain stuff for versatility.

Now, almost everything is ready to start assembling the tartines. The last things you need are microgreens and flaky sea salt to finish.

Now you can buy microgreens in most grocery stores now, but in the wintertime when the rest of my garden is dormant, I love to grow some in my kitchen windowsill.

Microgreens sprout up really quickly – they are just the beginning of common lettuce and herb plants – and are easy to grow in small spaces. Plus microgreens at the grocery store can be crazy expensive, but growing your own is a simple as buying a seed packet ($2 at most garden centers) and some soil!

If you’re not sold on or don’t have access to microgreens, some thinly sliced chives would be really nice here as well.

Flaky sea salt from Maras, Peru to top on sunchoke and radish tartines

And the second garnishing ingredient for these sunchoke and radish tartines is some finishing salt. When my husband and I traveled to Peru last year we visited the Maras salt mines in the Sacred Valley near Machu Picchu.

The salt mines themselves are stunning, but it was most relevant to hear about how un-profitable mining for salt is and all that goes into the process. You can show your support by buying some of the salt mined from the flats, and we jumped at the opportunity to bring some back with us.

Salt mines in Maras, Perus — Maras Salt Mines in the Sacred Valley, Peru

So now you have everything you need to assemble your tartines. Slice your bread into slabs sturdy enough to support the toppings of your tartine. I like to give them a quick toast to make sure they hold up.

Slather the bread with some of the goat cheese and honey.

Honeyed goat cheese slathered on a piece of sweet potato hearth bread

The goat cheese helps to create a barrier between the bread and the dressed vegetables so that the bread doesn’t get soggy. So don’t be shy with the cheese spread 🙂

Next, pile the sliced sunchokes and radishes on top of the bread.

And finally, top everything with some microgreens and a sprinkling of finishing salt.

Resist eating every tartine as you make it. These guys are addictive. The sweet goat cheese with the tangy and crunchy sunchokes is a match made in heaven.

These would be perfect for a brunch spread – you could make up some of the tartines ahead of time or just set out the the sliced bread and ingredients and allow people to assemble their own.

Aaaaand now I’m day dreaming about a Make-Your-Own-Tartine brunch party and all the delicious possibilities that could come from that. I just might have to make that happen sometime.

Bon appétit!