tummy tues #4: roasted whole artichokes

all steamy from the oven :D

A couple of weeks ago, I cooked and ate whole artichokes for the first time! They were on the sale at my local town grocer, and I was roasting a big pan of veggies already, so roasted artichokes it was. (Feels funny not saying "is," huh?)

I had looked up how people ate them before, out of curiosity, but had to search again to refresh my brain and make sure I was doing it right. The recipe's from John's Simply Roasted Artichokes, and I looked at a post from food blog Pinch My Salt for the lovely step-by-step photos detailing the process (and following the same recipe).

I also referenced this article from Simply Recipes for information on how to actually tackle the things after they're done cooking. Very nice pictorial eating guide. :D

When eating, I found that all my lemon juice and seasoning sank--duh--to the bottom, saturating the bottom leaves with flavor and leaving the inner ones not as tasty. Will have to work on some technique for that. Next time I think I'll be more liberal in seasoning, maybe rubbing between the layers with a mix of herbs, minced garlic and lemon juice in oil.

For the more tasteless (but still fun-to-eat) leaves, I ended up dipping them in a little balsamic vinegar. I guess the traditional route is mayonnaise, but. Well. Eating mayo. Hm.

Roasted Whole Artichokes

Cut off top quarter to third, discard. Cut off stem and trim if you want to roast and eat (I did!).

Place artichoke face up and "pouf" the layers, to get it to open up.

Center artichoke in the middle of an aluminum foil square. Drizzle with lemon juice and grapeseed oil. Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste. Stuff each with pieces of bruised garlic clove.

Fold up corners of tin foil to bundle up your little dearies. So cute!

Place in oven at 400F for ~1 hour (my oven seems kind of hot when roasting, so I usually go a little lower than the recipe says). Once time's up, you can take out and unfold your steaming beauties!

The eating process is fun too, more intricate than the cooking process with lots of pulling and teeth and scraping. I think swallowed a few leaves in the process. Bon appetit!