Roasted Stuffed Artichokes

Ann and I, we love artichokes but we rarely eat fresh ones, mainly relying on canned hearts. This is due to two things really: in our mountainous cold region, it is hard to find good quality artichokes and preparing artichokes (other than simply boiling them) is a lot of tedious work. In other words, it is only worth the effort to prep artichokes if they are great quality, which we never find.

Stuffed Roasted Artichokes

I shouldn't say never, because last week when I hit the store, they had a huge pile of giant green globe artichokes that were amazingly fresh. The cut ends were still fresh and green. And they were so new in the store that there were not any price signs displayed yet. I grabbed four huge chokes, price be damned. Looking at the receipt, they were less than $2 each.

Artichokes come from California where spring is the prime season, from March through May, but there is, in some years such as this, a fairly decent winter season as well. These artichokes showed evidence of frost, their outer petals bronzed and slightly blistered from the cold, but I have never been one to shy away from a vegetable because of its looks.

In fact, at the restaurant, we would take bushels of blemished vegetables from our growers to keep them from becoming pig or chicken food. Customers at the farmers markets wouldn't buy the ugly vegetables and fruit, but the look in no way impacts the flavor and it would be a shame to waste all that food.

Anyway, some marketing type at the big artichoke grower decided to turn the frostbitten artichokes into a "thing" and built a somewhat brilliant campaign around them. They're calling them "Frost Kissed" and claim that they taste better because of the cold weather. I could care less. A beautiful fresh artichoke is a beautiful fresh artichoke, regardless of the color of the bits that you have to trim off anyway. But where I win is that their marketing campaign has made it such that our retail grocer is willing to bring them in so that I and other artichoke hounds can buy them.

Boiling artichokes and having each diner peel his own can be fun, but when I have really fresh and beautiful artichokes, I want to roast them to help bring out the nuttiness. I decided that I would trim the toughest parts of the leaves off the artichokes, peel down the stems, and cut them in half vertically.

After using a spoon to scrape out the chokes from on top of the hearts and using my fingers to pull out the prickly inner leaves topped with pink and purple thorns, I stuffed the artichokes with a mix of whole peeled garlic cloves, capers, and chopped Italian parsley, topped with a pat of butter. Then I drizzled the artichokes with extra virgin olive oil and a sprinkling of salt, then put a slice of lemon atop each.

Artichoke Halves Stuffed with Peeled Garlic Cloves, Capers, and
Italian Parsley, Topped with Butter, Lemon, and Olive Oil

After covering the pan with aluminum foil to help steam the artichokes, I put them into a moderate (350F) oven for an hour. Then I mixed up a bit of panko, grated pecorino romano, and a bit of fennel pollen with a glug of olive oil. I spooned this mixture onto the artichokes and ran them under the broiler for a minute or two to brown nicely. Et voilà!

After Broiling the Panko Mix

Artichokes are a lot of work, no doubt. But taking advantage of really fresh artichokes makes that work really rewarding.