The Vegetable From Hell

 Artichokes. Has a nice ring in Italian: carciofi. (car-chee-o-fee)

There will probably never be a post on this blog for an artichoke recipe. Having grown up in an Italian American family one would think that I would have encountered an artichoke or two at some point in my life (besides the little artichoke hearts in a jar - those don't count). 

I think that maybe my paternal grandmother might have made stuffed artichokes but I have no clear memories of ever seeing her make them. I vaguely remember someone taking a leaf off the cooked, stuffed artichoke and scraping it against his or her bottom front teeth to get the morsel of the edible part of the vegetable. 

It seemed considerably less rewarding than cracking open lobster parts to get at the meat.

More to the point I never saw artichokes being prepared except by TV cooks like Lydia Matticchio Bastianich and MaryAnn Esposito.

My confession:

Bless me father, I have tried preparing artichokes three times and all three times I have thrown out every bit of them without ever actually cooking them.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.

Today was the third time.

I found some nice big artichokes at Sprouts, 2 for $5. I was game for the challenge.

I came home with my artichokes and watched two videos of Lydia preparing artichokes and two other videos of other cooks preparing artichokes.

I decided on braised artichokes rather than stuffed.

I got a bowl of lemon water to keep them from going brown.

I pealed the outer leaves. Down to where they began to look pale green.

I trimmed the stem.

I peeled off some more leaves.

I cut off the top.

I cut them in half. They did not look like Lydia's artichokes.

I looked for the choke to remove. It was three times the size of the choke in Lydia's artichokes.

I removed the choke. The rest kind of fell apart.

I sliced what was left.

I watched another video.

The part I had left was the part that the other YouTube cook discarded along with the choke.

I threw out that part.

Then there was nothing left.

Which was exactly what I had left the last two times I tried preparing artichokes.

My recipe for artichokes: 

Take entire artichoke. Throw it in the compost bin. Peeling, trimming, removing choke: optional.

Artichokes are the vegetable from hell as far as I am concerned.