It’s spring time in #gigatownoamaru (sorry Abdo!), so it’s the time of year when my thoughts turn to artichokes. I have always adored artichokes, even as a kid, and used to love it when my mom would make them for dinner, usually served on special plates that had a spot for the artichoke in the centre, and a sort of track for the spent leaves to be placed in around the perimeter. Sometimes she’d fill the centre of the artichoke with pasta salad or something, but that always seemed like gilding the lily to me, since all that I really cared about was scraping the flesh from the bottom of the leaves, and then getting to the delicious heart. We usually used a vinaigrette to dip into, though I understand that others use butter. Perhaps our vinaigrette habit emerged from my father’s aversion to butter in all its forms, but regardless, that’s what I grew up with, so that’s what I like now. The very idea of dipping an artichoke in butter seems bizarre to me now.
One of the things that I liked the most about the lodge when we first saw it, surprisingly enough, was the existence of a very healthy-looking artichoke plant in the vegetable garden. Unfortunately, J2 did not like its location, so he insisted on moving it, though the quid pro quo was that he replaced it with several additional plants, so that today I have four or five plants where before I only had one or two. In the past, I would go out to the garden and see that there are artichokes ready to be picked, and would mean to bring out a knife next time I came out to harvest them, only to forget. After losing several good artichokes in this way to overripeness, I got in the habit of carrying a pocket knife just so that I could harvest artichokes whenever I find one ready (I carry the knife around year-round, even though artichokes are not really likely to be ready in the winter, but hope springs eternal, I guess).
My fondness for artichokes is known to several of my cooking acquaintances, and one recently told me that he has begun to work for a guy who last year said he could supply me with artichokes for the kitchen. That guy never did come through with the goods, though, so my friend said he’d make sure I got some this year, only then to quit that job (partly because the boss was so addle-headed) and to leave me in the lurch again. But then he phoned a few weeks ago to say that he was visiting a farm in Marlborough that had a huge number of artichoke plants that they were planning on removing, so they were interested in off-loading the artichokes. He’d have taken them himself if he were working in a kitchen, but instead he put them in touch with me, and on Friday a package arrived from them with around 70 kg (150 pounds!) of beautiful artichokes. Some of them were well in excess of a pound in weight, while others were somewhat more petit, but all were in good shape and ready to use. I did not think I could profitably use all of them, though, so I phoned a friend and she came round to help herself to a dozen, leaving me with probably around 85 to 100 to tend to.
So what to do with a surfeit of artichokes? Naturally, some were simply steamed to eat the way I enjoyed them as a child, but that would not do for all of them. Others I fried up in the Roman Jewish style, served with just a bit of lemon juice and salt (delicious), and a few others I braised together with some fennel out of the garden, some olives and tomatoes to make a delicious side dish for last night’s dinner of homemade pappardelle with chicken liver ragù. Still others I decided to preserve, cleaning them of their tough, outer leaves and then boiling them in a vinegar and wine solution together with some spices, and then putting them in a sterile jar and covering them with oil (this is “carciofi sott’olio”), while others I marinated, also to be stored in olive oil until ready to put in a salad or on a pizza or served as an antipasto. That left me with around 15 more to contend with, so those I cleaned up down to the heart, boiled till tender, and then froze so that I can use them in something later on.
The process of cleaning close to 100 artichokes has left my hands still smelling artichoke-y even a day later (yes, I have washed them), and the tips of my fingers stained black. But it’s a lovely reminder of the wealth of artichokes that I have to look forward to consuming over the coming months. And by the way, our plants are just now starting to produce their own crop of ripe artichokes, so the pleasure is looking likely to extend a bit longer!
#gigatownoamaru
