Home › The World's Kitchen › Artichokes, Barigoule
Artichokes, Barigoule
Cut off the stalks and under leaves of three good-sized young French artichokes. Trim the sharp points with scissors, then plunge in a small saucepan with a quart water and boil for ten minutes. Drain on a sieve and let cool off. Remove the inner leaves and scoop out the artichokes. Brown six finely chopped shallots in a teaspoon butter for three minutes. Grate two ounces larding pork and hash six heads of mushrooms. Place shallots, pork and mushrooms in a bowl, adding a teaspoon freshly chopped parsley and quarter teaspoon chopped chives; add one level teaspoon flour and a tablespoon butter, season with two saltspoons salt, one saltspoon white pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg. Mix well, and with this fill up the artichokes evenly. Arrange a thin slice fat pork on top of each, tie them with string to their perfect forms, line the bottom and sides of a saucepan with thin slices larding pork, lay in the artichokes, pour a teaspoon oil on top of each and add to the pan two branches parsley and a clove sound garlic. Season with two saltspoons each salt and pepper, moisten with a gill white wine and half pint white broth. Cover the pan and set in the oven for forty minutes, frequently basting with its juice. Remove, dress the artichokes on a hot dish, untie and remove the slices of lard. Strain the gravy into another saucepan, skim all the fat from the surface and add one and a half gills demi-glace. Reduce the sauce on an open fire to one gill, then pour it over the artichokes and serve.
A Provençal braise dressed up in professional French kitchen language. The technique is sound; the obstacles are the vanished measures, the pork, and the fact that no oven temperature is given.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the stuffing takes 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp white pepper and 1/4 tsp nutmeg, and the braising liquid another 1/2 tsp each salt and pepper. A gill is 1/2 cup: 1/2 cup white wine, 1 cup broth, and 3/4 cup demi-glace reduced down to 1/2 cup.
- Oven heatThe original gives none and assumes you know. A moderate oven, somewhere around 325-350F, is a reasonable modern choice for a covered forty-minute braise; the liquid should barely bubble, not boil hard.
- Larding porkThis is fresh pork fatback or unsmoked salt pork, not bacon. It lines the pan, caps each artichoke and is discarded before serving, so buy a piece you can slice thin. If you substitute bacon the smoke will dominate everything.
- Scooping outAfter the ten-minute parboil, pull the tough outer leaves back, twist out the inner cone of leaves, and scrape away the hairy choke completely with a teaspoon. Any choke left behind is inedible and will not soften in the braise.
- White brothA light unbrowned stock, veal or chicken, unsalted or barely salted. It is reduced twice over in this recipe, so a salty commercial stock will finish harsh.
- Demi-glaceA reduced brown veal stock thickened with tomato and once with roux. A good jarred demi-glace or a strongly reduced homemade brown stock both work; the point is body, so avoid anything that tastes primarily of salt.
- TyingWrap each artichoke in kitchen string like a small parcel to hold the stuffing and pork cap in place. Do it before the pan gets crowded, and leave the ends long enough to find.
- DonenessForty minutes suits medium globe artichokes; a knife should slide into the base with no resistance. Larger, older specimens need an hour or more, and the raw pork in the stuffing wants that full time to cook through.
- YieldThree artichokes, three servings, as a first course or a light main with bread. It does not scale gracefully in one pan; use two pans rather than stacking.
Barigoule is a Provençal word for a mushroom, generally traced to barigoulo, the local name for a wild cap gathered in the hills, and early versions of the dish are usually described as artichokes stuffed with chopped mushrooms and pork fat, then braised. That is very close to what this recipe preserves. Over the twentieth century artichauts à la barigoule drifted toward a lighter braise of small purple artichokes with carrot, onion, white wine and olive oil, and the mushrooms and pork often disappeared altogether, so this text sits nearer the older form than most modern menus do. Its vocabulary, with demi-glace, white broth and a pan lined in larding pork, marks it as restaurant cooking transcribed for the home, which is broadly what The International Cook Book aimed at: giving the American household the professional French repertoire in ounces and saltspoons.