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Artichokes with Sauce
(Carciofi in salsa) Remove the hard leaves of the artichokes, cut the points and skin the stalk. Divide each artichoke into four parts or six if they are big, and put them on the fire with butter in proportion, seasoning with salt and pepper. Shake the saucepan to turn them and when they have absorbed a good part of the melted butter, pour in some broth to complete the cooking. Remove them dry, and in the gravy that remains put a pinch of chopped parsley, one or two teaspoonfuls of cheese grated fine, lemon juice, more salt and pepper if needed, and, mixing the whole, make it simmer for a while. Then remove the sauce from the fire and add one or two yolks of egg, according to the quantity and put back on the fire with more broth to make the sauce loose. Put the artichokes in the sauce this second time to heat them and serve especially as a side-dish for boiled meat. 105
A braise finished with an egg-yolk liaison, from a book that gives no quantities and no times. Two things decide the dish: how far you trim the artichokes, and whether the yolks are allowed to boil.
- The hinge: the yolksOnce the yolks go in, the sauce must never reach a simmer or it will scramble into curds. Pull the pan from the heat, whisk the yolks with a ladle of warm broth first, then return it to the lowest heat and stir until it thickens slightly, no hotter than about 160-165F.
- Trimming"Remove the hard leaves" means pulling away the tough outer layers until you reach pale green, then cutting the top third off. Modern globe artichokes are mature and have a fibrous choke: scrape it out of each wedge with a spoon or paring knife. Small young artichokes can be left whole-cut.
- DiscolorationCut artichokes brown within minutes. Drop the wedges into water with the juice of a lemon as you work, and drain them well before they meet the butter.
- "Butter in proportion"For four medium artichokes, about 3 tablespoons. Enough to coat and lightly fry the wedges, not to deep-fry them.
- Broth and cooking timeAdd broth in small amounts, roughly half a cup at a time, and expect 15-25 minutes for the wedges to give to a knife point. Larger, more mature artichokes will take longer than small young ones.
- The cheese"Cheese grated fine" here most likely means a hard grating cheese of the Parmesan or grana type. Taste before adding more salt: the cheese and the broth both carry it.
- Yield and servingFour medium artichokes serve four as a side. It is meant alongside bollito, boiled beef or veal, where the lemon-and-yolk sauce does the work of a condiment.
The Italian Cook Book (Maria Gentile, 1919) was published for American readers and draws on the Italian domestic tradition of its period, of which Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina is the best-known codification; Artusi treats the artichoke at length and in the same register: no weights, no clock, an instruction to shake the pan and judge by eye. The dish belongs to the family of Italian sauces thickened with egg yolk and sharpened with lemon rather than flour, a technique that survives in things like fricassea. Its role as a side for boiled meat is telling: bollito yielded a broth and a main course from the same pot, and the broth left over is precisely what finishes the artichokes here, so nothing in the kitchen is wasted.