Saturday, May 15, 2010

prosciutto-stuffed artichokes

Here is last night's Prosciutto Stuffed Artichokes.

I was really looking forward to eating this recipe. I love the flavour or artichokes but have always been nervous about prepping them. I've seen them prepped on cooking shows before and it seems like a daunting process. But I was up for a challenge yesterday so into it I dove.

After cleaning the artichoke you trim off the stem and lop off the top, trim off every leaf's spiky edge and then scoop out the purple feathery interior. Not to mention, artichokes brown super fast when exposed, so you have to keep them submerged in lemon water. Once complete I was pretty pleased with my effort. I had a Julie and Julia moment where I felt accomplished for taking on a new experience, learning from it and nailing it. I've felt this several times since cooking from Everyday Food including the roast chickens, egg poaching and cornbread soufflé-ing.

I'm confident I did everything correct for this recipe, but I had no idea eating an artichoke was such a difficult task. I can only compare it to eating shellfish. You have to pull back layers to find the edible parts. I found myself finding very little edible parts but enjoying the stuffing off of the leaves until you arrive at the delicious heart which makes it all worth while.

So I have to end up categorizing this recipe as one I'll never make again. It was a lot of work, very messy and hardly any pay off. The recipe for the stuffing is a great one and I'll probably use this same recipe to stuff peppers, but I'll never again go to the effort for artichokes again.

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