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.

March 12th, 2009 at 4:36 am
Always loved artichokes but just didn’t know how to cook ‘em. Never really ate them growing up.
Did you take a picture of the final results?!
Sounds like it looked and tasted great!
March 12th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Neruda’s odes to foods are indeed amazingly vivid.
If you really like him, check out Red Poppy at http://www.redpoppy.net/pablo_neruda.php. It’s a non-profit set up to create a documentary about Neruda, publish his biography, and translate his works into English. To see our blog on Neruda’s literary activism, go to http://www.redpoppy.net/journal/Pablo_Neruda_Presente.html.