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Steamed Artichokes

Source of Recipe

Cooking for Graduate Students & Other Beginning Kitchen Dwellers (James W. Cooper)


List of Ingredients

4 artichokes
1 Tb lemon juice
a vegetable steamer
a large covered saucepan


Recipe

To prepare artichokes, pull off the first layer of outer leaves which are usually dry and have almost no meat on them. Then, cut off the stem flush with the base of the bulb and, using scissors, trim off the " claws" on each remaining leaf. You can probably remove all the topmost points at once by simply slicing off the top of the bulb with a knife. Place the artichokes in a steamer in a saucepan with 1-2 inches of salted water with the lemon juice added. Cook covered over medium heat for 20-30 minutes, until the outer leaves pull off easily and the bulb seems soft when pierced with a fork.

To eat the artichoke, pull off each outer leaf and pull off the meat on the inside of each leaf on your lower teeth. As the leaves get smaller near the center of the bulb, pull all of them off together and discard them. This reveals the "choke," a fibrous bit of thistle in the center. Using a table knife, lift out the choke. The part underneath is called the heart and is pure meat.