What's that coming over the hill?

[venta]

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

Comments

[lanfykins]

Mmm, delicious artichoke. It is quite a lot of faff, but there are times when that's a bonus (like when you're not really hungry, but faffing about with an artichoke will eventually convince your stomach that it's eaten).

[venta]

Actually, I quite liked the picky, picnicky aspect of eating it. Probably no good if you're starving and in a hurry, mind ;)

[lanfykins]

If you are trying to stave off imminent starvation with globe artichoke, then yes, you are Doing It Wrong :)

[venta]

I dunno... if you're facing imminent starvation and all you have access to is globe artichokes, then I feel it'd be foolish not to ;)

[skorpionuk]

My mother used to cook globe artichokes sometimes as a treat. I never picked her brains as to how, but I seem to recall boiling/steaming rather than roasting. She would serve it with various dips for the leaves, which makes the whole things even more picnicky. And may account for my life-long obsession with dips.

We called the choke "hair", and I don't think my sister ate the heart. Moar for me, yay!

[venta]

I am under the impression that one can stuff and bake globe artichokes, too, though I have no idea how that works. Maybe it's basically just a container, and you eat the stuffing and just the heart. Maybe you have to deconstruct the entire thing to eat it.

Any thoughts/experiences welcome :)

[pseudomonas]

I use a separate plate for boiled-egg shell fragments. Otherwise they find their way back.

[venta]

And does your plate have a name? By function, I mean, not as in "and today I'm using Henrietta".

[pseudomonas]

no, though now I feel it needs one.

[pseudomonas]

I used to have a face-flannel called Charlotte.

[drdoug]

Ossuary is great. Doesn't cover non-bony uses, though, which as well as artichoke detritus include the shells of shellfish, tea bags, inedible seasoning (e.g. bay leaves, cinammon sticks), and even plastic serving containers or paper wrappers. The latter use doesn't crop up that often in my experience, since few restaurants are simultaneously sniffy enough to provide a special receptacle for such things and relaxed enough to serve food in individual plastic packets.

In my Francophile extended family, such a thing is always a poubelle, implicitly understood to be short for une poubelle de table, which AIUI is the ordinary, boring name for it in France. Because obviously the French have more need of such things. "Table bin" doesn't really work as a translation. One of the many great things about English is simply stealing words wholesale from other languages when we lack a good one ourselves. I feel schadenfreude for speakers of less entrepreneurial languages.

[venta]

Ossuary is great. Doesn't cover non-bony uses, though

As far as I'm aware, being vegetarian, she used it exclusively (if technically incorrectly) for non-bony uses.

few restaurants are simultaneously sniffy enough to provide a special receptacle for such things

I don't believe I've ever met such a receptacle in a restaurant, I was talking about home-use. I think of it as being practical, rather than sniffy, and had no idea there even was a dictionary term for such a thing. In fact, I was all prepared for an outcry of "a what? is this another stupid custom from your family?" when I mentioned it.

I feel schadenfreude for speakers of less entrepreneurial languages.

:)

[drdoug]

I think I've seen things-that-fit-this-category at some hotel breakfast tables - sometimes actual mini bins with flip-top lids and everything. I've definitely encountered them in pubs/restaurants in a debone-it-yourself fish context (though a plate is often provided to serve this function, which is more practical). And surely any sit-down restaurant serving moules frites would have to give you somewhere to stick the shells? Though come to think of it I'm not sure I've seen that served in the UK. Or crab, or lobster. Not that I eat such things myself (being vegetarian) but I do dine out with people who do.

[drdoug]

I do dine out with people who do. ... which I do every other night, of course.

[motodraconis]

I love artichokes. So much so I used to grow my own in Oxford and Liverpool as they were so difficult to get hold of except for a tiny 2 week window. (See icon! That's a photo of one of my home grown artichokes.)

Now I'm in North London, the local grocers sell massive ones most of the year, though I'm still toying with the idea of growing my own as they're very low maintenance.

I cook mine whole in a steamer, then eat bit by bit, dipped in oil and vinegar (that's how my French mum raised me to eat them.) Minimal cooking faff, a certain amount of fiddling to actually eat.

I love them though, and buy them fairly regularly as a cheap, easy to cook food treat.

[venta]

If you cook them whole, what happens to the fluff?

[motodraconis]

You eat your way into them, starting from the outer leaves and working inwards. Eventually you reveal the choke, at which point you pick that off (as it's cooked, it will be soft enough to peel off with your fingers) and throw it in the bowl with the discarded teeth-scraped leaves. Then you're left with the heart, which is scoffed as the final treasure!
I think this is the least faffy way to prepare and eat an artichoke, short of getting someone else to prepare it for you obviously.

[venta]

Well, once I knew what I was meant to be doing, I don't think the way I did it was that much faff in the cooking. Yours is clearly less, though :)

Our of interest, how long do you steam them for? Is there a timescale, or is it just prod-it-and-see? I'm not sure I'm familiar enough yet to be on prodding terms.