What's that coming over the hill?
Last weekend, ChrisC and I were wandering through the greengrocer's. Suddenly he looked over my shoulder with an expression of vague terror and exclaimed "What's that!?"
"Er," I said vaguely, "I think it's a globe artichoke."
There followed further questions. What do you do with it?
Well, actually, I have no idea. Approach it carefully and try not to make it angry, by the looks of it.
Anyway, we bought one and took it home in the hopes of finding out.
Some recipe-book browsing later, I had come to a conclusion: everyone expects you to be way more informed about artichokes if you're contemplating cooking them. Most started "trim the artichoke, and remove the hairy choke".
The who with the what now?
"Trimming" involved, I presumed, cutting off the long stem. How about the tough outer leaves? Er, probably not - removing them revealed tough inner leaves, and I started to suspect that I might have unravelled the whole thing before finding anything that wasn't tough.
I chopped the thing into wedges, and it became immediately obvious what the "hairy choke" was. Globe artichokes are full of... well, fluff, basically. In fact, given that the wretched thing seemed to be made entirely out of inedible, spiny leaves and fluff I was beginning to wonder if it was the greengrocer's idea of a joke.
Still, having de-fluffed it, I daubed the wedges with olive oil and put them in the oven. The leaves still seemd distressingly tough and rattly, and not like something that would soften on cooking. I dutifully left them in for 40 minutes and made some aioli in the blind faith something approaching food was going to come out.
Now, I'm sure you're smart, vegetable-aware people so you all know the punchline: the outer leaves (and indeed inner leaves) aren't edible, they end up baked all crispy. You peel the leaves off one by one, and scrape the tiny chunk of yummy real-artichoke from the bottom with your teeth. In the middle (one might almost say at the heart), there is a sensible-sized lump of roast artichoke. The leaf-scrapy bits are nice, but I can't help feeling that they're the vegetarian equivalent of kippers: lovely taste, but just that bit too much fannying around to be truly great.
On the plus side, a conversation I had with (I think) secretrebel over a decade ago suddenly made sense. We were chatting about what you call that extra plate you put on the table onto which to deposit the detritus of a meal... in our house it's a "bit plate" and is most commonly employed along with roast poultry dinners, so the bits and bones don't clutter up eating plates. In her[*] house it was known rather more sophisticatedly as an "ossuary".
But what call, I asked, did vegetarians have for an ossuary? One of the answers was "artichokes". And you know what? She's right. Just one globe artichoke between two[**] and suddenly we're hip-deep in bits of leaf. Leaves everywhere. We had to deploy an emergency bit plate halfway through.
[*] or, of course, possibly not her house. Possibly the house of someone else whom memory has confused with SecretRebel.
[**] we did have other stuff as well, that wasn't the whole meal, by the way.
"Er," I said vaguely, "I think it's a globe artichoke."
There followed further questions. What do you do with it?
Well, actually, I have no idea. Approach it carefully and try not to make it angry, by the looks of it.
Anyway, we bought one and took it home in the hopes of finding out.
Some recipe-book browsing later, I had come to a conclusion: everyone expects you to be way more informed about artichokes if you're contemplating cooking them. Most started "trim the artichoke, and remove the hairy choke".
The who with the what now?
"Trimming" involved, I presumed, cutting off the long stem. How about the tough outer leaves? Er, probably not - removing them revealed tough inner leaves, and I started to suspect that I might have unravelled the whole thing before finding anything that wasn't tough.
I chopped the thing into wedges, and it became immediately obvious what the "hairy choke" was. Globe artichokes are full of... well, fluff, basically. In fact, given that the wretched thing seemed to be made entirely out of inedible, spiny leaves and fluff I was beginning to wonder if it was the greengrocer's idea of a joke.
Still, having de-fluffed it, I daubed the wedges with olive oil and put them in the oven. The leaves still seemd distressingly tough and rattly, and not like something that would soften on cooking. I dutifully left them in for 40 minutes and made some aioli in the blind faith something approaching food was going to come out.
Now, I'm sure you're smart, vegetable-aware people so you all know the punchline: the outer leaves (and indeed inner leaves) aren't edible, they end up baked all crispy. You peel the leaves off one by one, and scrape the tiny chunk of yummy real-artichoke from the bottom with your teeth. In the middle (one might almost say at the heart), there is a sensible-sized lump of roast artichoke. The leaf-scrapy bits are nice, but I can't help feeling that they're the vegetarian equivalent of kippers: lovely taste, but just that bit too much fannying around to be truly great.
On the plus side, a conversation I had with (I think) secretrebel over a decade ago suddenly made sense. We were chatting about what you call that extra plate you put on the table onto which to deposit the detritus of a meal... in our house it's a "bit plate" and is most commonly employed along with roast poultry dinners, so the bits and bones don't clutter up eating plates. In her[*] house it was known rather more sophisticatedly as an "ossuary".
But what call, I asked, did vegetarians have for an ossuary? One of the answers was "artichokes". And you know what? She's right. Just one globe artichoke between two[**] and suddenly we're hip-deep in bits of leaf. Leaves everywhere. We had to deploy an emergency bit plate halfway through.
[*] or, of course, possibly not her house. Possibly the house of someone else whom memory has confused with SecretRebel.
[**] we did have other stuff as well, that wasn't the whole meal, by the way.