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Artichokes in Mold
(Sformato di carciofi) Remove the outside leaves of the artichokes, the harder part of all leaves, and clean the stalks without removing them.
Cut each artichoke into four parts and put them to boil in salt water for only five minutes.
If left. longer on the fire they become too soaked in water and lose their taste. Remove from the water, drain them, grind or pound and rub them through a sieve. Season the pulp so obtained with two or three beaten eggs, two or three tablespoonfuls of Balsamella (No. 54) grated cheese, salt and a taste of nutmeg, but taste the seasoning several times to see that it is correctly dosed.
Place in a mold with brown stock or meat gravy (in that case use a mold with a hole) and cook in double boiler. 97
A sformato is a savory custard-bound vegetable mold, closer to a crustless soufflé than to anything baked in a modern casserole dish. The recipe assumes you already know béchamel and a bain-marie, and it gives no quantities beyond the eggs.
- Quantities and yieldThe recipe gives two or three eggs and two or three tablespoonfuls of Balsamella; the number of artichokes is left open, so reckon on perhaps 6 to 8 medium globe artichokes, filling roughly a 4-cup mold and serving 4 to 6 as a first course. The mixture should be thick enough to mound on a spoon; if it slumps, add another spoonful of béchamel rather than more egg.
- The five-minute boil is the hingeThe instruction not to overboil is the whole point. Waterlogged artichoke turns the custard loose and washes out the flavor, and no amount of extra egg will rescue it. Drain the quarters well and press out moisture before pounding.
- Trimming, and the chokeThe small, tender artichoke varieties common in Italy may have had negligible chokes. With supermarket globes, scoop out the fuzzy choke after quartering; it will not break down in a sieve. Acidulated water keeps the cut pieces from blackening.
- Grind or pound and sieveA food processor does the pounding in seconds, but still pass the purée through a sieve or food mill. Artichoke has stringy fibers that a blade chops rather than removes, and they are unpleasant in a custard.
- BalsamellaThis is béchamel: butter and flour cooked together, then milk whisked in and simmered until thick. Make it stiff, not pourable, since it is here as a binder.
- "A mold with a hole"A ring mold or savarin form. The hole is so the brown stock or gravy can be poured into the center after unmolding; if you have no ring mold, use a plain buttered charlotte mold or individual ramekins and spoon the sauce around the base.
- Cooking in the double boilerThe direction is for a bain-marie, most likely the covered mold set in or over hot water rather than baked dry. A modern equivalent is a water bath in a 325F oven, water reaching halfway up the mold, for roughly 40 to 50 minutes, until the center is set and a knife comes out clean; the book itself gives no oven temperature. Do not let the water boil hard or the custard curdles and weeps.
- UnmoldingButter the mold generously and dust it with fine dry breadcrumbs or grated cheese. Let the cooked sformato rest 10 minutes before turning it out, or it will crack.
- Cheese and nutmegGrated Parmigiano, 2 to 3 tablespoons, and no more than a scrape of nutmeg. The advice to taste repeatedly is sound: artichoke purée is bland and needs more salt than seems reasonable.
Sformato comes from sformare, to turn out of a mold, and the form is often said to have been a fixture of Italian middle-class cooking in the later nineteenth century, when a molded vegetable dish could be sent to table as its own course rather than as a garnish for meat. Recipes of this type run all through Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene (1891), and the cross-reference here to "Balsamella (No. 54)" shows the same numbered-recipe habit. The dish, then steamed rather than baked, gave a way to serve something delicate; the artichoke itself was a long-established Italian kitchen garden vegetable, grown around Rome and Naples and treated with the wariness about waterlogging that this recipe insists on twice.