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French Artichokes
The artichoke consists of three parts: the bottom, the leaves and the choke. The choke is not eaten and may be removed or not, as preferred. If it is to be removed, cut out the stem and save it; then with the point of a sharp knife cut around the base of the choke and draw out the latter. Cut across the top of the artichoke to trim it. Then wash it and soak it for half an hour in salted water, using one tablespoon of salt to two quarts of water.
After removing the choke and soaking as directed, press the stem back into the head, lay the whole head downward in a kettle and cover with boiling water, adding one teaspoon of salt and two teaspoons of lemon-juice for every two quarts of water. Boil gently until tender. Then take the artichoke from the water and drain. Serve hot with Béchamel sauce or Hollandaise sauce, or cold with a French dressing or well-seasoned mayonnaise dressing, or with Russian dressing.
A sound set of instructions that assumes you already know how long an artichoke takes and what a Béchamel is. Two things need filling in: the cooking time and the reason for all that lemon and salt water.
- "Boil gently until tender"For a medium globe artichoke, expect 30 to 45 minutes at a bare simmer; large ones can take closer to an hour. It is done when an outer leaf pulls away with no resistance and a knife slides into the base without drag.
- Use a non-reactive potArtichokes turn slate grey in aluminium or bare cast iron. Stainless steel or enamel, plus the lemon juice the recipe calls for, keeps the flesh pale.
- Why the acid and the soakCut artichoke surfaces brown within minutes. The salted soak is intended to draw out grit and any insects from between the leaves, and the lemon in the cooking water helps hold the colour.
- Removing the choke rawCutting the fuzzy choke out of an uncooked artichoke, as directed here, is fiddly work with a paring knife or a sturdy spoon. It is markedly easier after cooking, when the centre lifts out in one plug — the trade-off is that you cannot then use the stem trick below.
- The stem plugPressing the reserved stem back into the hollow would keep the head from collapsing and stop the cavity filling with water, though the recipe does not say why it is done. Trim the stem's woody outer layer first; the inner core is as good eating as the bottom.
- Head downwardThe recipe has you lay the artichoke top-down in the kettle and cover it with boiling water, so the whole head is submerged.
- Salt quantitiesOne tablespoon per two quarts for the soak, one teaspoon per two quarts for the boil. The soak is deliberately saltier; do not carry the larger figure over to the cooking water.
- YieldOne artichoke per person as a first course. Serve with a shallow bowl for discarded leaves and one for the sauce, whichever of the five the book suggests you choose.
The globe artichoke is a cultivated thistle, eaten around the Mediterranean since antiquity and generally traced in its modern form to Italy, from where it reached French kitchens in the sixteenth century. Calling them "French artichokes" here distinguishes them from the Jerusalem artichoke, an unrelated North American sunflower tuber that appears elsewhere in books of this period. That the editors felt obliged to open by explaining that an artichoke has a bottom, leaves and a choke says a good deal about how unfamiliar the vegetable still was to the American household cook.