Its Artichoke season now! ~ Mariella

The globe artichoke is a variety of thistle cultivated as a food. The edible bits are the flower buds and their stems when harvested before the flowers blooms. The plants usually bear several flowers. Although the flowers are so so pretty, once you’ve allowed them to bloom they are no longer edible.

I am very excited to announce that it is officially artichoke season right now! We have one plant and it is yielding beautifully and we have our first artichokes for supper tonight along with Broad beans out of the garden fried up with homemade Paneer cheese (recipe to follow!). We don’t share well, so we've waited for the right amount to be ready for the plucking. There are many interesting recipes out there but I always make artichoke the way my mamma taught me, simply!

I leave a 5 cm stem on the Artichoke and try my best to wash it, organically grown Artichoke can sometimes reveal unwelcome creepy crawly surprises! The stem is edible when not too mature; if yours is tough just eat the inside.

Steam the whole artichoke until you can easily pierce the heart through the underside of the flower, ie: from the stem up, with a sharp knife. If it goes in easily, it’s done. Be patient, there’s no fun in short changing yourself by under-cooking it, another way to double check is to pull the base leaves off, if they come off easily, it’s done.

Then we simple tear off the leaves one at a time and dip the base of each leaf into a dip made from olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sea salt and pepper and scrape off with our teeth! So delicious! When we get to the heart we remove the fine hairs and discard as they tickle the throat and shouldn’t be eaten, although my dad used to show off by eating the whole thing! 

Then the yummiest thing ever is to allow the heart to marinade in the mix for as long as humanly possible before eating.  

So simple and there is nothing quite like that sweet taste of fresh artichoke heart melting into your taste buds! Mmm delectable!