artichokes?

[Dennis]

Hey everyone, my first post!

I'm interested in this dish that involves atrichoke and sausage. It's a fairly simplistic dish to prepare. Funny thing is, I've not ever eaten an artichoke, let alone prepared one!

I'm just learning how to cut one, and what parts are edible.

So, what does an artichokes flavor resemble?

Do the leaves taste the same as the heart?

Are there any bad things that could come from cooking one the "wrong" way?

Any help is appreciated, and thanks in advance.

Dennis

[Jzone]

Depending on what you are making, canned may be much more suited to your recipe. Preparing aritchoke hearts from scratch is very time consuming. About the only time i use fresh ones is to eat them straight. I just steam them and serve with garlic butter or other dipping sauce. People love dipping and scraping the meat off the leaves with their teeth. very fun appetizer.

When doing fresh ones though be careful of the "choke" in the middle. the fine little threads will realy other teh throught if inhaled etc. must be scraped or cut out before eating the heart.

Canned ones I find best in sauces, with pasta or antipasto, etc.

The flavour is quite unique and I can't really come up with anything similar... they are kind of meaty in the way mushrooms are... slightly bitter, a touch pungent like asparagus, but mostly their own flavor.

One note is they tend to go not so well with wine. There is a mild reaction between artichokes and wine that can range from neutral if lucky to extremely unpleasant. When eating straight it actually goes well with water (lemon or limes go well in the water too) water brings out subtle flavours in the artichokes...

The wine issue is less of a problem when the chokes are mixed into sauces and are not the prodominant flavor provider...

I am a huge fan of artichokes though and hope you have fun with them...

Jason

[Mezzaluna]

Funny you should mention artichokes with sausage, because Tyler Florence just used such a recipe for the Food TV Thanksgiving special. He used fresh artichokes (which might be difficult to find, depending on where you live) and fresh Italian sausage links.

Here is the recipe. I bet you could make it ahead.

[riverrun]

There are many ways to cook an artichoke one recipe i have if your intrested invovles stuffing the centers with sausage but the the entire artichoke is braised in the oven if intrested klet me know.

[KeeperOfTheGood]

Hey oh

Dennis, I will admit that my one and only attempt at these were an unmittigated disaster. What I did wrong was so simple that it wasn't till some years latter relating the story to a friend that I learnt what I did wrong.

Here is the resipie:

Roman Artichokes:

6 large artichokes
1 large lemon, cut in half
1 bunch Italian parsley
2-3 cloves garlic
salt and pepper
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup water
1 bowl large enough to hold all the artichokes, filled with cold water

Essentially, you remove the outer inedible green of the leaves and the inner choke, rub them down with half the lemon juice and set them to stand in a bowl of cold water that has the other half lemon squeezed in it. The garlic and parsley get minced very fine and mixed together.

Then you do them one at a time; rinse in cold water, pat dry, salt, pepper, pack the minced parsley/garlic in and around the leaves, set them stem side up in your pot. Then add the oil and water to the pot, use a very tight fitting lid and cook them till they are done (20 to 30 minutes). Then take off the lid. If there is still a lot of water under the oil, remove the artichokes, raise the temp to hi, and let the water boil off, and then add the artichokes back into the cooking oil and let them brown all the way around.

You serve these hot, with the cooking oil.

Now, what I did wrong in this is, I used an aluminum camp pot. Although I did lemon them, they reacted with the aluminum and turned a really bad purple to grey black. They were simply bad. Do this in a nice stainless steel pot, and be generouse with the lemon juice. Use two mediun ones if you can't get large ones.

I know that that didn't involve sausage.

[Dennis]

That's where I got this recipe mezzaluna, Tyler Florence made it, and everytime I see it it looks like it would taste so good!

Thank you everyone for responding! I'll try the other idea's also.

Dennis

[kthull]

I made that recipe...decent, but I didn't think it was worth the work. My favorite favorite favorite is to do stuffed artichokes Emeril style. mmmmmmmmmmm

[IronChefDE]

They tatse like Chicken LOL Actually Artichokes are one of my favorites, they appear in a large variety of cusines, form marinated heatrs to my fav just steamed with a little drawn butter, however like has been already stated, try the canned hearts this time of year.

Good Luck
Roger