Cooking with Kat: California Artichokes

At my weekly visit to Whole Foods yesterday, I was perusing the produce section only to stumble upon some beautiful artichokes. They were from California, were big, and were on sale. 2 for $3.00. I caved immediately.

So, along with all my other produce and groceries, I went home and unloaded the fridge, and the artichokes were just staring at me.

The problem was that I had never exactly made an artichoke before. I mean, sure I love me some artichoke spinach dip, but I had never cooked an artichoke.

So I did a little research online, pulled out my trusty "America's Test Kitchen" cookbook, and got to work. Ready to see my artichoke? I decided to cook the smaller of the two first, in case something went awry.

Pretty sweet, huh?

So, first things first. Apparently before you cook an artichoke, you are supposed to dip the artichoke in lemon water.

So, I cut a lemon in half, and squeezed all the juice out of the lemon into a large bowl of cold water.

Next, I cut the tip of the artichoke and the base off. The book says you are supposed to cut the thorny tips off all the fins things, but I didn't really see tips, so I didn't do that. Am I missing something?

To me, it looks like the tips were already removed. Oh well. You don't eat that part, anyway, so I just skipped that. But, I did cut off the base and the tip.

So, after this, I set the artichoke in the bowl of water.

Interesting, huh?

Okay, so, once that has been in bowl for a few minutes, it's time to get cookin'!

Artichokes are supposed to be steamed, so I pulled out my trusty steamer thing, put some water in the bottom part, and set the arty on top, and turned the burner on medium heat.

Lookin' good? So, I let the steamer do the rest of the work. I set the lid on top and steamed it for around 30 minutes. Once the leaf/fin/whatever things were really soft, I pulled the artichoke out and set it on a platter to cool.

Doesn't that look so good? So are you wondering how you eat it? You don't eat the outer couple of layers, but you pull off the individual pieces and use your teeth to scrape off the soft white part. We dipped the pieces in butter and ate them. And... it. was. divine. I am so glad we have another one. YUM!!!!

Let's see if Mark felt the same way:

And here's the remnants after we devoured the artichoke:

So, go to your local healthy grocery store, get ya one of these, and eat up! Bon Appetit!


~Kathryn