Artichokes have been one of my favorite vegetables since I was a kid. The pleasure of going leaf by leaf until I got into the heart, to the heart of it, is something that cannot be repeated with any other vegetable. There’s a particular pleasure in the tardiness of eating, in the slowness that the vegetable forces you into.
I used to eat them just boiled with mayonnaise.
Then I grew up and didn’t know how to cook, but yet, among my cookery ignorance (one day I’ll write how I knew nothing of nothing of how to do anything in the kitchen), I did know how to make artichokes. Slowly, with love, I developed this recipe.
In México City artichoke season starts around March. Men come from outside the city with massive artichokes on their shoulders, they walk the streets, going from car to car, from sidewalk to sidewalk, selling these flowering delicacies. I had my ‘artichoke guy’, year to year he would ring my doorbell every week to bring me my artichoke dose. He’d leave me with artichokes so big and juicy they wouldn’t fit in my pot. Sometimes he’d surprise me with a flowering artichoke that would last for months and months in my barren home.
I lived by myself and I was quite lonely in those times, with a want and need to love so profound, it would hurt. Artichokes became a way of getting into a heart, albeit a vegetable one, and finding love, for myself, gifting me with delicious, healthy food.
Friends knew cooking artichokes was my thing for a few months of the year, and they knew when the season started, so they would either call in advance to ask me when they could join me for an interminable artichoke dinner, or they would actually drop off their own artichokes for me to cook.
(A few weeks before I left México and that life I wrote down this recipe, in poem form, I’ll leave it at the bottom of the recipe since it is in Spanish.)
I miss my artichoke guy but I don’t miss that life. Now my heart is full of other hearts to love, my daughter’s, my son’s, my husband’s, my dog’s, but cooking artichokes reminds me of loving myself first, of finding my own heart, leaf by leaf, slowly and carefully, until I hold it in my palm and can look into the mirror of the life I have.
Ingredients
6 Artichokes
1 green Lemon
10-16 Cloves of Garlic
2 Handfuls of Parsley
1 Tablespoon of dried Oregano
1 Teaspoon of fine Sea Salt
Some Black Pepper
4 Tablespoons of Avocado/ Sunflower / Grapeseed oil
Directions
Wash the artichokes as best you can (between leaves and such) and cut off the dried part of the stem. Get a pot for which you have a lid and that will fit all of the artichokes.
Mince the garlic cloves and chop the parsley. In a medium size bowl mix garlic, parsley, oregano, salt, pepper and oil of choice.
Cut the lemon in half and caress all of the artichokes with it. Take the garlic, parsley mix with your hands and with passion, stroke the artichokes with it, penetrating between the leaves, leaving marks all over. Do this over the pot so that if some of the sauce falls, it will remain there. Repeat this with all of the artichokes. If you have any of the sauce left over, just drop it on top.
Add a cup and a half of water to the pot. Take it to the stove and set it a medium flame. Cover. Leave it for approximately half hour. It depends on the size of your artichokes. If you can take a leaf off easily, they are done, if you struggle, they need a few more minutes of steam. Check to see there is water at the bottom of the pot. If it is running out, add half a cup more.
Enjoy!!! Share!!! and Comment!!!
P.S. This recipe is delicious right off the pot, but it also lasts two to three days in the fridge and is quite yummy when eaten cold.
Here is the poem from years ago… in Spanish…
Instrucciones para cocinar alcauciles
A petición de varios, me permití escribir las instrucciones para cocinar alcauciles, también conocidos como alcachofas o flores de tiempo.
- Nunca se debe de preparar una alcachofa sola, se vuelve triste y solitaria. Las alcachofas platican mientras se encuentran en el horno o en la olla.
- No se le debe tener miedo a las espinas, uno debe recordar que dentro de las queridas alcachofas, existe un corazón que pide a gritos ser comido.
- Pensar muy bien con quién se compartirán; el desmenuzarlas es un proceso tardado e íntimo, así que no se comparte con cualquiera.
- Al momento de la preparación, uno debe comprender que cada una de las hojas terminará siendo destrozada, por ello, se le debe de dar cariño y caricias.
- Recordar que las alcachofas son las primas terrestres de las jacarandas, sólo que las primeras salen del suelo para elevarse, y las otras se elevan para caer.
- Limpiarlas bien, una tina a temperatura cálida hará que se aflojen y no les dé miedo entregarse a los condimentos que se preparan para su unción.
- Picar, finamente, muchos dientes de ajo. Es fundamental recordar que las manos con olor a ajo es uno de los grandes afrodisíacos de la edad antigua.
- Poner, si se quiere, las hojas de perejil a nadar junto con las alcachofas. Así encontrarán un diálogo de encuentro y querrán estar más tiempo unidas.
- Picar, finamente, el perejil. Permitir, antes que esto, que la hierba se despida, brevemente, de las alcachofas.
- Mezclar ingredientes secretos junto con sal de mar, pimienta recién molida y aceite de oliva.
- Añadir el ajo y el perejil a la poción.
- Tomar, delicadamente, una de las alcachofas. Tomar medio limón y frotar, como si fuera un amante nuevo, a la alcachofa, cada una de las hojas, el tallo, para que crezca en la boca, el tronco, para que llegue al corazón.
- Introducir la poción dentro de las hojas y todo alrededor. Todo esto, obviamente, con las manos desnudas.
- Introducir, una a una, las alcachofas dentro de una olla grande.
- Cuando la poción se haya terminado, junto con los alcauciles seductores, llenar el frasco con agua y bañar a las fervientes alcachofas con ella. Una o dos unciones será suficiente.
- Tapar la olla, mirándolas fijamente, sabiendo que ahora se transformarán en manjares, en flores del tiempo que se desflorarán.
- Prender fuego. Prender el fuego. Prenderse.
- Oler.
- Mirar.
- Comer.