What's that coming over the hill?

[venta]

Last weekend, ChrisC and I were wandering through the greengrocer's. Suddenly he looked over my shoulder with an expression of vague terror and exclaimed "What's that!?"


"Er," I said vaguely, "I think it's a globe artichoke."

There followed further questions. What do you do with it?

Well, actually, I have no idea. Approach it carefully and try not to make it angry, by the looks of it.

Anyway, we bought one and took it home in the hopes of finding out.

Some recipe-book browsing later, I had come to a conclusion: everyone expects you to be way more informed about artichokes if you're contemplating cooking them. Most started "trim the artichoke, and remove the hairy choke".

The who with the what now?

"Trimming" involved, I presumed, cutting off the long stem. How about the tough outer leaves? Er, probably not - removing them revealed tough inner leaves, and I started to suspect that I might have unravelled the whole thing before finding anything that wasn't tough.

I chopped the thing into wedges, and it became immediately obvious what the "hairy choke" was. Globe artichokes are full of... well, fluff, basically. In fact, given that the wretched thing seemed to be made entirely out of inedible, spiny leaves and fluff I was beginning to wonder if it was the greengrocer's idea of a joke.

Still, having de-fluffed it, I daubed the wedges with olive oil and put them in the oven. The leaves still seemd distressingly tough and rattly, and not like something that would soften on cooking. I dutifully left them in for 40 minutes and made some aioli in the blind faith something approaching food was going to come out.

Now, I'm sure you're smart, vegetable-aware people so you all know the punchline: the outer leaves (and indeed inner leaves) aren't edible, they end up baked all crispy. You peel the leaves off one by one, and scrape the tiny chunk of yummy real-artichoke from the bottom with your teeth. In the middle (one might almost say at the heart), there is a sensible-sized lump of roast artichoke. The leaf-scrapy bits are nice, but I can't help feeling that they're the vegetarian equivalent of kippers: lovely taste, but just that bit too much fannying around to be truly great.

On the plus side, a conversation I had with (I think) secretrebel over a decade ago suddenly made sense. We were chatting about what you call that extra plate you put on the table onto which to deposit the detritus of a meal... in our house it's a "bit plate" and is most commonly employed along with roast poultry dinners, so the bits and bones don't clutter up eating plates. In her[*] house it was known rather more sophisticatedly as an "ossuary".

But what call, I asked, did vegetarians have for an ossuary? One of the answers was "artichokes". And you know what? She's right. Just one globe artichoke between two[**] and suddenly we're hip-deep in bits of leaf. Leaves everywhere. We had to deploy an emergency bit plate halfway through.

[*] or, of course, possibly not her house. Possibly the house of someone else whom memory has confused with SecretRebel.
[**] we did have other stuff as well, that wasn't the whole meal, by the way.

Comments

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Mmm, delicious artichoke. It is quite a lot of faff, but there are times when that's a bonus (like when you're not really hungry, but faffing about with an artichoke will eventually convince your stomach that it's eaten).

[venta.livejournal.com]

Actually, I quite liked the picky, picnicky aspect of eating it. Probably no good if you're starving and in a hurry, mind ;)

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

If you are trying to stave off imminent starvation with globe artichoke, then yes, you are Doing It Wrong :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I dunno... if you're facing imminent starvation and all you have access to is globe artichokes, then I feel it'd be foolish not to ;)

[skorpionuk.livejournal.com]

My mother used to cook globe artichokes sometimes as a treat. I never picked her brains as to how, but I seem to recall boiling/steaming rather than roasting. She would serve it with various dips for the leaves, which makes the whole things even more picnicky. And may account for my life-long obsession with dips.

We called the choke "hair", and I don't think my sister ate the heart. Moar for me, yay!

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I use a separate plate for boiled-egg shell fragments. Otherwise they find their way back.

[venta.livejournal.com]

And does your plate have a name? By function, I mean, not as in "and today I'm using Henrietta".

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

no, though now I feel it needs one.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I used to have a face-flannel called Charlotte.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I am under the impression that one can stuff and bake globe artichokes, too, though I have no idea how that works. Maybe it's basically just a container, and you eat the stuffing and just the heart. Maybe you have to deconstruct the entire thing to eat it.

Any thoughts/experiences welcome :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Did she have a backstory?

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

She was named in a hurry in an attempt to generate pathos during an argument with a housemate in which it was threatened that Charlotte be used to clean the bath.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Poor Charlotte! Most importantly, did it work (as an argumentative device and pathos-generator)?

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Ossuary is great. Doesn't cover non-bony uses, though, which as well as artichoke detritus include the shells of shellfish, tea bags, inedible seasoning (e.g. bay leaves, cinammon sticks), and even plastic serving containers or paper wrappers. The latter use doesn't crop up that often in my experience, since few restaurants are simultaneously sniffy enough to provide a special receptacle for such things and relaxed enough to serve food in individual plastic packets.

In my Francophile extended family, such a thing is always a poubelle, implicitly understood to be short for une poubelle de table, which AIUI is the ordinary, boring name for it in France. Because obviously the French have more need of such things. "Table bin" doesn't really work as a translation. One of the many great things about English is simply stealing words wholesale from other languages when we lack a good one ourselves. I feel schadenfreude for speakers of less entrepreneurial languages.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ossuary is great. Doesn't cover non-bony uses, though

As far as I'm aware, being vegetarian, she used it exclusively (if technically incorrectly) for non-bony uses.

few restaurants are simultaneously sniffy enough to provide a special receptacle for such things

I don't believe I've ever met such a receptacle in a restaurant, I was talking about home-use. I think of it as being practical, rather than sniffy, and had no idea there even was a dictionary term for such a thing. In fact, I was all prepared for an outcry of "a what? is this another stupid custom from your family?" when I mentioned it.

I feel schadenfreude for speakers of less entrepreneurial languages.

:)

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

I think I've seen things-that-fit-this-category at some hotel breakfast tables - sometimes actual mini bins with flip-top lids and everything. I've definitely encountered them in pubs/restaurants in a debone-it-yourself fish context (though a plate is often provided to serve this function, which is more practical). And surely any sit-down restaurant serving moules frites would have to give you somewhere to stick the shells? Though come to think of it I'm not sure I've seen that served in the UK. Or crab, or lobster. Not that I eat such things myself (being vegetarian) but I do dine out with people who do.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

I do dine out with people who do. ... which I do every other night, of course.

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I had moules mariniere only last week in a UK restaurant; they came in a bowl, with another bowl upturned over the top which could then be used for the shells. I think I've had them elsewhere in a bowl on a large plate, which was big enough to accommodate the empties.

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

I love artichokes. So much so I used to grow my own in Oxford and Liverpool as they were so difficult to get hold of except for a tiny 2 week window. (See icon! That's a photo of one of my home grown artichokes.)

Now I'm in North London, the local grocers sell massive ones most of the year, though I'm still toying with the idea of growing my own as they're very low maintenance.

I cook mine whole in a steamer, then eat bit by bit, dipped in oil and vinegar (that's how my French mum raised me to eat them.) Minimal cooking faff, a certain amount of fiddling to actually eat.

I love them though, and buy them fairly regularly as a cheap, easy to cook food treat.

[venta.livejournal.com]

If you cook them whole, what happens to the fluff?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm familiar with a specifically messy meal (like moules frites) having its own bowl for the empties, I'm talking about a communal, general-purpose plate/bowl. Which I (possibly unreasonably) see as a different thing.

Mini bins with flippy lids I associate with the sort of low-rent joint that would give you things in paper wrappers, so I hadn't classed them in the same bracket either.

Certainly debone-it-yourself fish in pubs I'm used to trying to juggle the rest of my meal with a skeleton trying to get in on the act. The only course of action is to try and do it tidily, so it looks like something from a Tom & Jerry cartoon. Which doesn't really help with the problem, but makes me feel better (until someone drops an anvil on my head).

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

You eat your way into them, starting from the outer leaves and working inwards. Eventually you reveal the choke, at which point you pick that off (as it's cooked, it will be soft enough to peel off with your fingers) and throw it in the bowl with the discarded teeth-scraped leaves. Then you're left with the heart, which is scoffed as the final treasure!
I think this is the least faffy way to prepare and eat an artichoke, short of getting someone else to prepare it for you obviously.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, once I knew what I was meant to be doing, I don't think the way I did it was that much faff in the cooking. Yours is clearly less, though :)

Our of interest, how long do you steam them for? Is there a timescale, or is it just prod-it-and-see? I'm not sure I'm familiar enough yet to be on prodding terms.

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

My steamer instuctions say 40-45 minutes, though I generally do them for 50 minutes to be sure they're soft where it counts. They'll be bloody hot when they come out though, so they have to sit for a bit to cool before eating (that's the bit I find the hardest!) This is ok if you have one of those electric steamers with a timer, as you can set it off and go and do something else while it cooks. My mum used to boil them for at least 40 minutes, but there you probably have to have half an eye on your hob.
I'm a very lazy cook - so you can see how I favour extreme faff-free cooking, even for rogue vegetable matter!

[triskellian]

In my house, it's usually 'a Cobweb' which might be coming over the hill. Occasionally 'a Puckster' if there isn't an available Cobweb to be sung to. Artichoke wouldn't scan ;-)

(Oh, and secretrebel does indeed say 'ossuary' for such porpoises, so it probably was her.)

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

My apologies for not introducing you to artichokes in your childhood; way too much faff and, IMHO, served as a trick dish by people who want to find out if you know what to do with them or not (in a U or non-U kind of way).

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's how the Singers used to serve them, too - oil and vinegar. *So* delicious. But tons of effort.

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

GrotPot - but it lives by the sink for the scraping of plates, not on the table.

Is also often not actually a pot, but a chipped plate, plastic tray that once held chicken portions, or other such improvised container that is itself on the way into the non-recyclables(*), so can be chucked out all in one, rather than washed up!

* Kent is a bit poo for recycling, compared to Greenwich who were fantastic. They won't let you put kitchen scraps in the green bin, and only take a couple of categories of plastic. Asda is poo and does not /label/ its plastic packaging by category, so even probably recyclable plastics get jettisoned. I have contacted them and told them this, and they have promised me it will be passed on to their packaging design people...

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh no, a GrotPot is quite a different kind of animal :) My parents' house has one of those too but (unusually) I don't think it has a name.

I'm very confused about recyclables in Ealing. We used to be on the green box/white bag scheme, which had one set of instructions for what plastics you could put in (most, excluding a few specifics). Now we're on the clear plastic bag scheme, into which you can put bottles (and nothing else, regardless of plastic-type). The advice given by people at the tip for the plastic recycling there is quite strange and variable (eg "any plastic so long as it's not too flexible").

I can understand that "bottles only" is a simple, headline way of explaining what can be recycled. But given that there is a perfectly decent numbering scheme for plastic-types already in existence, why on earth can't any recycling scheme use it (for those who care about the details).

And given that Ealing patently does recycle things that aren't bottles, why can't I put them in my clear plastic sack? (Up til now I have been doing, but a new leaflet tells me that any non-bottles will lead to the whole sack being chucked in with the rubbish...)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, we didn't know but we worked it out :) Whether we did it in a U or non-U style is open for debate...

[venta.livejournal.com]

Separate dippy dishes for oil and vinegar, or mixed as you would for bread?

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

As you would for bread.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

The best thing about artichokes¹ is, if you don't pick them at globe stage but instead leave them on the plant, they reveal their true nature as giant thistles:

---

1 apart from being delicious to eat…

[venta.livejournal.com]

Mmmm.... thistles :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Good enough for Eeyore!

One time in Spain we ordered a mystery tapa which turned out to be pickled thistle stems. That was quite odd… they tasted a bit like celery.

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

We have clear sacks for what I tend to call 'dry' recycling - paper, card, tins/cans, & types 1 + 2 plastic. Glass is verboten, and has to be taken to the bottle bank (I think this may well be because the plastic sacks aren't that strong, and the combined weight & fragile nature of glass could lead to problems - why they don't just have a recyclables wheelie bin I don't know)

Green bin is for garden compostable waste only - I do tend to put raw veg peelings in there too (especially if the veg has come from my garden to start with, damnit!) but per the blurb, it shouldn't have kitchen waste - so I assume they don't have the high-temperature municipal composter that Greenwich did.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ealing does do food/kitchen waste, but not for people who live in flats.

(This isn't as mad as it sounds. Technically, it's "blocks of more than 12 flats", and it's all to do with how long it takes the collectors to sort it all out. So people on the green box/white bag/food recycling scheme put out three different receptables, all of which are sorted/dealt with at the roadside.

By the time they'd sorted three containers each for our block of 30 flats, there'd be a tail-back halfway to Perivale. So we're only allowed the clear plastic bags which are thrown straight into the wagon, allowing it to move on quickly, and then sorted elsehwere.)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

We do have a recyclables wheelie bin, but we still aren't allowed to put glass into it. This is apparently because the council aren't allowed to thus infringe their pre-existing contract with the bottle bank operators.

[ar-boblad.livejournal.com]

Monster by the Automatic. If more of your titles were from Guitar Hero tracks I'd earn a lot more kudo.

[metame.livejournal.com]

We always steam them too, but probably for quite a bit less time. 20-30 mins maybe? I pick off an outer leaf or two and sample it to decide on done-ness.

I've always eaten them leaf-by-leaf, then heart.

PS secretrebel's family dinners included at least one non-veggie, so bones would have been in evidence.