I have no experience with cooking artichokes. They are not something that was readily available to me as a child nor is it something that I have eaten in my teen and young adult years, aside from the occasional artichoke dip at parties that always gives me a stomach ache. I have one vague memory of my mother preparing an artichoke for me when I was very young, the tenderness of the flesh is the only thing that I remember but it has stuck with me. Over the past few weeks, artichokes at the grocery store began to catch my eye, the strange vegetable so exotic and other worldly next to common carrots or celery. This week I decided to buy two and have a go at it. The artichokes available to be were quite large, a problem that I would run into later in the cooking process. The recipe I selected was one labeled as “Italian-Jewish” by Hazan, something that I was drawn to. Her description of the finished product being, “particularly beautiful, looking somewhat like an opened, dry chrysanthemum” (Hazan, The Classic Italian Cookbook, 332) made it sound too pretty to resist. As I started cooking though, I soon realized that it takes a lot more than I thought to get it looking like a blooming flower. This was my first meeting with artichokes in the kitchen, and while it was certainly not an easy or pleasant one, I am sure it will not be the last.
RECIPE
- 6 medium artichokes
- 1/2 lemon
- 1/2 heaping teaspoon salt
- Freshly ground pepper
- Vegetable oil, enough to come 1 1/2 inches up the sides of both pans
Trim the artichokes exactly as directed in Step 1 of Artichokes, Roman Style (pictured below), but now only leaving a short stump of a stem. Keep the inside leaves progressively longer, giving the artichoke the look of a thick, fleshy rosebud. Make sure, however, to cut off all the tough part of each leaf, because no amount of cooking will make it edible, and remember to rub all the cut edges of the artichoke with lemon juice to keep them from discoloring.
Turn the artichokes bottom up, gently spread their leaves outward, and press them against your work surface to flatten them as much as possible without cracking them. Tun them right side up and season them with salt and pepper.
Heat the oil in a deep skillet (preferably earthenware) over medium heat. When it is hot, add the artichokes, with their leaves facing down. Cook for about five to six minutes, then turn the artichokes, adjusting the heat to make sure they don’t fry too rapidly. Turn them every few minutes as they cook, until their bottoms feel tender at the pricking of a fork. Times vary greatly, depending on the artichokes, but it may take about 15 minutes if they are very young.
When the artichokes are tender, turn them so their leaves face the bottom of the pan and press firmly on them with a wooden spoon to flatten them some more.
Meanwhile, heat the oil in another deep skillet over high heat. When it is very hot, transfer the artichokes from the other pan, with the leaves always facing down. After they have fried at high heat for about 5 minutes, turn them so that the leaves face up, dip your hand in cold water, and shake the water into the hot oil, keeping at a distance from the pan because the oil will splatter.
Transfer the artichokes to paper towels to drain. Serve them piping hot, with the leaves facing up.
Notes
I definitely did not prep this artichoke correctly, so if you are looking to cook this recipe I suggest you do that. I found it to be extremely tough and hard so maybe steaming it would have helped. Watching videos and reading other recipes for this I think would have helped rather than going into it blind.
Afterthoughts
This recipe was a lesson in failure. Too often, I develop a bit of hubris in the kitchen and cooking this artichoke was very humbling. While I did not end with the finished product Marcella Hazan nor I would have wanted, it did show me that it is okay to cook things and have it not go the right way. The leaves were chewy and inedible, the part where I had stripped the artichoke down was too tough to do anything with, and while the heart was somewhat tender that was overshadowed by the choke part of the artichoke which I had unknowingly left in. It did smell delicious which made it all the more difficult because I really couldn’t eat it. I brought this experience up in seminar and was given some good advice for my next try, something that I am extremely grateful for and will keep in mind when I try this recipe again.
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