Home › The Principles of Cookery › Cardoons, Stewed
Cardoons, Stewed
Prepare the cardoons as above. Then put them into a stewpan and cover with a little good gravy, and stew very gently till tender. When sufficiently cooked, thicken the gravy with a little flour and butter, season with cayenne and salt, and add a glass of sherry. Put the cardoons on a dish, and pour the gravy over them. Sufficient, five or six for a dish.
A straightforward braise, but it depends entirely on a preparation step the book gives elsewhere and on two vague Victorian measures: "good gravy" and "a glass of sherry."
- "Prepare as above"The earlier preparation is not reproduced here. Standard practice for cardoons is to strip the leaves and the coarse strings from the ribs as you would tough celery, cut them into lengths, and drop them straight into water with lemon juice or vinegar, since cut cardoon discolours quickly. Blanch in acidulated, salted water until a knife meets slight resistance -- the time varies considerably with the age and thickness of the ribs -- before they go into the stewpan.
- "Good gravy"Not gravy in the modern sense of a floured pan sauce, but the clear brown stock or reduced meat jus a Victorian kitchen kept on hand. A well-made beef or veal stock is the right substitute; a stock cube will read as salt and little else against a vegetable this delicate.
- ThickeningFlour and butter kneaded cold in equal parts (beurre manié) whisked into the simmering liquid in small pieces, then cooked two or three minutes so the flour loses its raw taste. Adding dry flour to the pan at this stage will give lumps.
- A glass of sherryIn cookery of this period a wine glass is roughly 2 fl oz. Add it with the thickening rather than at the end and let it simmer briefly; the harsh edge of the alcohol needs a minute or two to cook off. Dry or medium sherry, not cream sherry.
- "Stew very gently"The hinge of the dish. Cardoon ribs shred and fall apart at a rolling boil; keep the liquid at a bare tremble and expect 20-30 minutes if the ribs were blanched first, longer if they were not.
- Buying themCardoons turn up in Italian and Middle Eastern markets in late autumn and winter, sold as heavy bundles of pale grey-green ribs. Choose firm ribs; limp outer ones are often stringy or hollow and are usually discarded rather than trimmed.
- Yield"Sufficient, five or six for a dish" states the quantity of cardoons needed to make one dish, not the number of people served; the recipe gives no serving count.
Cardoon is the same species as the globe artichoke, Cynara cardunculus, grown for its thick leaf ribs rather than its flower buds, and blanched under earth or wrapping to keep them pale and mild. It was a kitchen-garden vegetable in Britain from the seventeenth century onward, and it fell out of English use over the twentieth century while remaining a fixture in Italian, Spanish and southern French cooking, where it turns up in bagna cus and in gratins. The plant's flowers also carry a vegetable rennet long used in Portuguese and Spanish cheesemaking, a use quite separate from the table.