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Globe Artichokes
Remove all the hard outer leaves; cut off the stems close to the leaves, also the top of the bud. Drop the artichokes in boiling water and cook until tender, from thirty to fifty minutes; take up and remove the choke. Serve hot with melted butter or cold with French salad dressing.
A plain boiled artichoke, and the method still works. The two things the original leaves out are acidulated water and the test for doneness.
- Trim and acidulateCut surfaces blacken within minutes. Rub each trimmed artichoke with a cut lemon and hold it in water with a squeeze of lemon juice until all are ready, then add a good splash of lemon juice or a spoonful of vinegar to the cooking water.
- Cut the top of the budTake off the top inch or so with a serrated knife, and snip the thorny tips from the remaining outer leaves with scissors. "Close to the leaves" for the stem means flush, so the artichoke sits flat on the plate.
- Thirty to fifty minutes is a wide range for a reasonIt depends on size. A small artichoke will be done near the bottom of the range, a very large globe can take the full fifty minutes. Test by pulling an outer leaf: it should come away with slight resistance, and the base of the leaf should scrape off soft against the teeth.
- Keep them submergedArtichokes float. Set a plate or a round of parchment on top of them in the pan so the exposed tops cook at the same rate as the rest, and salt the water well.
- Pan materialUse stainless, enamel or another non-reactive pan. Cast iron and unlined aluminium will turn boiled artichokes grey.
- Removing the chokeDo it while they are still warm but cool enough to handle: spread the centre leaves, pull out the pale inner cone, and scrape the hairy choke away from the heart with a teaspoon. It lifts out cleanly at that stage and is a nuisance once cold.
- Melted butterPlain melted butter separates as it stands. Warm it with a little lemon juice and a pinch of salt, or serve drawn butter in a small pot set over hot water.
- YieldOne artichoke per person as a first course. Cooked and cooled, they keep two or three days covered in the refrigerator and are better for the French dressing treatment than freshly boiled ones.
Globe artichokes are the immature flower buds of a cultivated thistle. Commercial artichoke growing took hold along the central California coast in the years around the First World War, largely through Italian immigrant growers, and the crop was shipped east by rail. Before that the vegetable was uncommon in much of the country, familiar to cooks who read French cookery books but not a fixture of the ordinary market. The two serving suggestions here — hot with melted butter, cold with a vinaigrette — were both standard in French practice of the period. The terseness about the choke assumes the reader already knows the hairy centre is inedible; the popular explanation that the bristles catch in the throat is folk etymology rather than established derivation.