“It’s easier to write about artichokes than to cook them,” writes the cook and author Joyce Goldstein in her book Cucina Ebraica: Flavors of the Italian Jewish Kitchen. I should know - this is my second time blogging about them in less than a year. The first time was last summer when Nichols Farm in Illinois managed to grow some. Right now, in southern Italy, in regions like Campania, the artichoke season peaks. From the Midwest, it’s hard to imagine ground not just unfrozen but yielding carciofi, with those spiny, outer space-looking celadon leaves.
To the Midwest-born cook and writer David Tanis, artichokes seemed totally foreign when he moved to California. In Heart of the Artichoke, his 2010 book, he writes, “What is an artichoke, anyway? An unusual yet common vegetable that has been around for a very long time. We call it a vegetable, but actually it is the flower bud of a thistle.” He continues, “The artichoke is ripe with metaphor and parable possibilities. Getting past the thorns to the sweet center, all of that. Not at all like reaching up and harvesting a sweet peach, eating an artichoke requires a bit of work.”
By this virtue, Midwesterners are artichoke cooks. A cold season of layering up and down in many garments teaches us the patience to peel back tough outer leaves, to depod fava beans, to top and tail.The extra work involved in preparing artichokes is integral to their culinary history. Inside the walled ghetto to the east of the Tiber River where Pope Paul IV forced all the Jews in Rome to live, vegetables were readily available, whereas access to fish and meat was more restricted. Jewish cooks, Goldstein says, found ways to make vegetables feel extra special for celebrations. And carciofi alla giudia, fried artichoke hearts, “became an architectural showpiece: a bouquet of blossoms so dramatically splayed and browned, they looked like copper-dipped chrysanthemums” in the words of Goldstein, from the same book.
To me, the slightly squished sunflower look of the beautiful carciofi alla giudia evokes Van Gogh, the way the frying holds the petals bent askew. I can compare the sense of motion trapped in a moment achieved by both painting and frying. I also think about a print of the Diego Rivera painting, Muchacha Con Girasoles, that hung in the waiting room of my first therapist’s office. It was summer and I was 19 running around Manhattan crashing at friends’ places, hiding from my parent’s house, and when I got to that tiny air conditioned waiting room and collapsed into the chair across from Muchacha, I could sit still. Just before the door opened.
The act of preparing artichokes is called turning, which is kind of life wood turning - you are carving away as you rotate the material in your hand. There’s a special knife called a coltello da carciofi curvo, which has a hooked blade with a curved point. You can use this tool or simply a paring knife to shape the artichoke. Traditionally, the heart is shaped into a rose. I thought of how Em showed me the floral design technique of peeling back some petals from a rose to give it shape and dynamic life. Artichokes are sculptural, shaped by the gesture of a hand.
I really love to deep fry foods for my dear ones, to me expending the resources (money, mostly in the form of oil, more on that in the recipe) and care (sometimes it gets messy, you have to be careful not to burn yourself) to cook in an abundance of hot fat shows the utmost affection.
The thing is, we almost never have artichokes, and when we do, they’re usually very different from the kind Romans use, which have long stems and no choke. I wanted to take three artichoke elements - lavishing of labor, gesture and textural contrast between a custardy center and crispy exterior - and find a way to express them.
Consider the onion. It has petals to peel, lends itself to carving by hand, and loves to be fried. So I made, basically, a blooming onion, but cut it asymmetrically, and fried it in olive oil. It’s really fun to play around with the peeling back of the layer. With a sprinkle of lemon juice and plenty of coarse salt, these onions feel special and worthy of my loved ones, a humble vegetable lavished in all the attention I want to give it.
Onion in Bloom
each onion serves about two people as an appetizer/snack, increase the measurements as you add onions, except for the oil, which you can use the same amount of and just work an onion at a time
8 ounces extra virgin olive oil (does not need to be an expensive kind)
8 ounces grapeseed oil
You can save this oil for use on other fried foods, and it will last for 2 months or up to 3 uses. Strain it before storing. For more on frying in olive oil check out this earlier blog
1 medium - large yellow or vidalia onion
¼ cup all purpose flour
Sea salt
1 egg, beaten
2 tablespoons buttermilk, milk or water
Sprinkle of lemon juice
Make your blooms. Peel the outer layer of onion skin. Keeping all the leaves attached to the hairy button of the onion, carve petal-like slices using a paring knife. Remove long strings from the roots but be sure to keep it intact- don’t trim it off. Fan out the petals. Toss the onion in flour and season with a little salt too. Make sure you get flour in all the crevices. In a separate bowl, beat the egg with the liquid. Then coat onion in the beaten egg, before returning it again to be thoroughly tossed in flour. Shake off excess. Wrap your battered onion in plastic wrap or in a sealed bag and place in the freezer for a minimum of 15 minute and up to 1 hour.
Heat the oil to 350 degrees in a saucepan. You want a saucepan with sides that are high enough to contain some splashing, but not so high-sided as a stock pot (this can cause oil to burn). You can check the oil temperature with a candy thermometer if you have one, or you can gauge it by sprinkling a little flour in and seeing if it sizzles.
Submerge the onion right from the freezer in the oil. Fry until golden brown, about 10 minutes. Move the onion around to make sure all of it gets fried. Drain on a paper towel or wire rack. Dose in salt immediately. Serve right away with a squeeze of lemon juice.
Sauce
I made a dipping sauce with mayonnaise, water, hot sauce and lime juice…be as creative or keep it as easy as you like! Creamy works well. This is also really delicious with just the lemon and salt.
We have some fresh and bright new Alpine wines in store from ça boit libre in the Savoie. It would enhance the experience of artichoke or onion turning and carving to have something to sip on. I’m imagining a glass of the Chasselas would be excellent to keep the cook company.
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