One Ingredient: Artichokes

[in which we resuscitate the occasional series, "One Ingredient"]
Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Photo: minwoo
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When your husband is a chef who happily turns out meals, you don’t have a whole lot of motivation to labor over the stove, but I had to get into the kitchen.

Spending hours at a stretch in front of the computer was getting to me. I wanted to move my fingers in a different way and see if I still possessed any culinary skills of my own.

Saveur, Bon Appetit, Cook’s Illustrated, Food & Wine… they’re food lovers’ porn. I have stacks of old food magazines and clipped recipes stuck in journals; every so often, I get the urge to try one out.

So last week, I sent Francisco off to the grocery with a list: Two artichokes. Creme fraiche. The rest of the ingredients we had.

I displaced him from the kitchen for an hour and puzzled over the directions for Artichoke Fritters with Green Goddess Dip: How was I supposed to trim the artichokes down to usable bits that would become crispy fritters?

As I peeled away the tough outer leaves, I wondered when I’d reach the point of no return–that moment when I’d stripped away too much, leaving nothing to work with. I wondered about a food that produces so many useless parts. I thought about my first memory of artichokes: Mrs. Lemon, my third grade teacher, took a curious pleasure in strange things, like spanking students with a wooden paddle on their birthdays and introducing them to foods they’d be unlikely to know, growing up in a rural community in South Carolina. Artichokes are the only ones I remember.

I thought about Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who wrote an ode to artichokes, comparing the “soft-hearted…warrior suit” with cabbages, which “spent their time/trying on skirts.” I thought about Maria in the poem, who “picks up/an artichoke/fearlessly,” knowing exactly what to do with it. I wanted to be her, as I kept stripping leaves and then made tentative slices with the long knife blade. Though I lacked her confidence, I kept going.

As I fished for the golden fritters floating and crackling in the oil, I still wasn’t sure I’d been successful.

But then we dipped the crispy little fans into the sauce, and I knew, next time, I’d approach an artichoke with her confidence.
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If you attempt the recipe (linked above), I’ll confirm the following:
-It’s just as delicious without the anchovies and chives, both of which I forgot to put on the shopping list.
-Reducing all ingredients by 1/3 produces the perfect yield for two people.
-This recipe seems exceedingly effortful for an appetizer. It is. But if you’re in a writing funk, it’s just what you’ll need.