One of the changes in my diet I'm trying this year is to do a semi-fast once a week (we'll see how long this lasts). On that day, I can eat anything I want as long as it's in a liquid or puree form. Soup, smoothies, and hot tea are in; chocolate cake is out. So I'm doing a lot of soups, which are easy to get in the mood for this time of year and a great way to use the various vegetables I see at the farmer's markets and local stores. This soup plays up the lemony side of sunchokes by sauteeing and cooking everything with two stalks of smashed lemongrass, which are removed before pureeing the soup. It ends up a very elegant, smooth entree or first course. Tip on prepping the sunchokes: if you scrub the sunchokes with a plastic net dish cleaner you can fairly easily remove their thin skins. Then all you need to do is to remove any dark spots with a paring knife. You do not need to remove 100% of the skins - I removed about 75%-80%. Put them in lemon water until you need them to prevent them from turning color.

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