I can't tell you how excited I was when Krista asked if I wanted to join her for lunch and then told me she was making artichokes with hollondaise sauce. I have never cooked or eaten an artichoke and I was eager to learn. I have had it in dips before, but never in it's original form and it can look somewhat intimidating!
The website Simply Recipes gives a great instruction on how to eat them, so you will find tips there very useful. When I got there the artichokes were boiling away madly. Their stems and tops had been cut off and the tips of the bottom petals that were sharp had been trimmed back. They boiled for about 45mins. Only once I was eating them and said I could taste something citrussy did she tell me that she had put a half lime and tangerine into the water as they were boiling. Genius! I think Simply Recipes calls for a lemon, you can add all manner of things to help flavour it. The hollondaise sauce was egg yolks and melted butter that she whisked over a steaming pan. You can also just dip them in melted butter, I think this would be delicious too!
This is what the artichoke looks like before you start eating it. You take it apart a petal at a time and eat the fleshy, lighter part at the base of the petal. You do this by scraping it between your top and bottom teeth. Sounds strange but I love the kind of food that you have to work for, crab being a prime example!
You keep peeling the petals away and eating them.
The very centre is pink/purple. The closer to the centre you get the more of the petal you can eat.
In the very centre you will find this. The artichoke is a thistle after all! Using a spoon scrape the wispy part out (called the choke) and you will be left with a basket or bowl shape. You can see half of it exposed here. This basket is actually the heart of the artichoke. Eat the basket! Yum!
And if eating the artichoke wasn't good enough, look at the absolutely stunning pile of petals that was left behind after. So beautiful! What a glorious Summers' day lunch.
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