Difficult vegetables

Many years ago, I was a vegetarian. I gave it up for a lot of reasons, way to complicated to go into here, but one of the things I realized when I stopped, was that as a vegetarian, I didn't really eat many vegetables. You can be a vegetarian and live, and live quite well, on things like pasta and salad, and have tofu with peas, or corn on the cob, all kinds of things like that. But what about, well, VEGETABLES? You folks know what I mean.

In considering this question recently, and why so many people say they don't like vegetables generally, I realized two things. And they both have to do with ease of preparation.

If you go to an "average guy" kind of restaurant in New York, or, better, anywhere in the US except NY and SF, and maybe some other cities like that, or to one in Europe, you know, places where you don't want to spend a lot of money, you won't get many vegetables with your dinner. The reason why, as David Lebovitz pointed out on HIS blog, is that vegetables are very labor intensive. You can take a steak, pat it dry, salt it, put it in a pan and you're essentially done. Even a vegetable as well loved as green peas, however, takes work. Unless you're buying the frozen variety (which aren't bad, for the most part), you have to work. And when you get to some vegetables like beets, or kale, or turnips, or the subject of this piece, artichokes, there is labor involved. Labor increases the cost of food. And who wants to pay more for a plate of well cooked beets than for a steak (well, there ARE some of us, but we're talking globally here).

And at home, where let's face it, we're all looking at balancing jobs, obligations outside of work, cleaning the house, sleeping, and getting dinner on the table. When you look at the time commitment to preparing a bunch of carrots, with peeling, slicing and cooking, to opening that convenient box of frozen green beans and dumping them into a pot, for many people, it's a no brainer.


Bottom line is: "you gotta wanna" as George Carlin put it in describing mortal sin. And to "wanna", the vegetable has got to be pretty darn good.

I was thinking of all of this last week when I was emailing back and forth with an old friend, Karen. Karen was my minister for years. And a sermon she gave, over twenty years ago, still rings in my head. She said "having faith is like cooking vegetables. There's a lot of work involved, a lot of preparation, and you often wind up throwing out more than you keep. But when you're done, it's awfully good."

Brava, Karen. You hit it on the nose. And she used, as her example, one of the most labor intensive of all vegetables, artichokes.

I love artichokes. I could eat them every day. But honestly, I do not have the commitment to cook them every day. So I make them once in a while, expecially when Sandra B. the Queen of artichokes, sends me some from her family's farm. I' m going to describe how I make them here, and it DOES take some time. But I beg you to try them. This is one of the most satisfying recipes I will write about and I would love it if you tried them.

First though, let me give you some advice about buying and keeping artichokes. You have to keep in mind what they are: artichokes are unopened flower buds. You have to treat them accordingly. yes, they look sturdy, and scary, but they are thistle buds. You wouldn't buy a wrinkled, dried out looking flower in bud, and you wouldn't store it in a way to dry it out. Think that way with artichokes, and you'll be just fine.

Ok, onto cooking. Get four, nice big plump beautiful artichokes. Finding them may be the hardest thing you do for this recipe. When you have them, put them aside while you make stuffing. My stuffing calls for a couple of tablespoons of chopped thyme, and maybe some basil if you have it, as well as six cloves of garlic, chopped fine. Mix this up with about two cups of bread crumbs, the unflavored kind. Add some salt, two large eggs, and a glug (real scientific here) of olive oil and mix the whole thing together with clean hands. Taste it. Need more salt? Go ahead. Want some pepper? Absolutely. Now, get to work on the artichokes. Cut away the sharp ends of the leaves, all around the beast. Then, turn it upside down and bang it on the surface top to open it up a little. This is FUN. With your hands, a knife or anything that works, get that core out as far as you can. You'll be pulling out little furry things. Those are the thistle flowers. When you don't have anymore, then you rinse the artichoke out. As you do this, put them into a bowl of water, with some lemon juice or vinegar, to keep them from browning.

When you're done - and this is the part I love best (next to eating them), start shoving the stuffing into the leaves, into the center, everywhere. Try to estimate so that you have enough for all four, but if one gets more than its fair share, hey, you're the cook. When they're done, trim the bottoms so that they fit into a big, heavy pan, snuggled next to each other. Pour in about a cup of water and a quarter cup of olive oil, cover the pot tightly, turn on the heat to low, and go away for forty five minutes. Then, try to pull a leave from the outside. If it comes away nice and easy, they're done. If not, try in fifteen minutes. And so on.

These are too hot to eat right out of the pan, so you should let them sit for at least ten minutes. You can eat them hot, at room temperature (my favorite) or even cold right out of the fridge when you have the midnight munchies (NOT that I've ever done that....).

One of these is satisfying enough for a lunch, or a light dinner, or when you come home and just can't look at anything too serious for dinner. And if you make them on the weekend, you have them waiting for you. And of course, since you've made four.... well... didn't you just want to invite someone over for a quick bite?