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Artichoke Bottoms, for Garnish
The trimming of artichoke bottoms for garnish should be done in this way: Choose a very sharp knife; lay the artichokes on their sides, and cut right through the leaves about two inches above the stalk ends. Trim off the leaves all round the fronds, and plunge them into boiling salted water sharpened with a tea-spoonful of vinegar. As soon as they are sufficiently cooked to allow of the scooping out of the chokes, lift them out, drain, let them get cold, remove the chokes, trim the fronds neatly, and use according to directions.
A preparation rather than a finished dish: artichoke bottoms, cooked and hollowed, were a standard garnish element in the elaborate service Cassell's assumes. The method holds up, with a few clarifications.
- What is being cut awayCutting through the leaves two inches above the stalk end removes the whole leafy cone and leaves the fleshy base with the choke still in it. Everything above that line is discarded, or boiled separately for eating leaf by leaf.
- "Fronds" here means the base"Fronds" here appears to mean the base -- Cassell's seems to use "fronds" for the trimmed artichoke bottoms rather than in any botanical sense. Pare away the ring of leaf stubs and tough green skin with a small sharp knife until only pale flesh remains, and level the stalk so the bottom sits flat.
- DiscolourationCut artichoke blackens within minutes. Rub each surface with a cut lemon as you go and hold the trimmed bottoms in acidulated water until they go into the pan; the teaspoon of vinegar in the cooking water serves the same purpose.
- Pan materialCook in stainless steel or enamel. Aluminium and cast iron react with artichokes and turn them grey.
- Cooking timeMedium bottoms take roughly 15 to 25 minutes at a bare simmer. They are ready when a knife tip meets no resistance at the thickest point; the choke then lifts out cleanly with a teaspoon.
- Cooling before scoopingCassell's has the bottoms cooled before the choke is removed; the flesh firms as it cools, which can make the hairy fibres easier to lift away cleanly, though the choke is often scooped while the bottoms are still warm.
- Holding and yieldCooked bottoms will keep a few days covered in their acidulated cooking liquid in the refrigerator, and freeze acceptably. Count one bottom per plate as a garnish, two if they are being filled as a first course.
- A shortcutFrozen artichoke bottoms, and jarred ones packed in brine, are sold ready trimmed and blanched. They are softer than freshly prepared ones but adequate when the bottom is only a cup for a filling.
The artichoke bottom, or fond d'artichaut, was one of the workhorses of nineteenth-century garnishing: a neat edible cup that could be filled with purée, or a poached egg, and set around a joint or a mould to give a dish height and repetition. It is treated here as a component, learned once and used in dozens of preparations, in the manner of French professional practice as it filtered into English kitchens through cooks such as Francatelli and Soyer. The globe artichoke itself is a cultivated thistle, grown around the Mediterranean since at least the late medieval period and long associated in England with kitchen gardens of some ambition.