Gnarly, Prickly Pleasure

My Beloved is a traveling salesman - he normally drives about 600 miles per week, all over Northern California and Northern Nevada (he even has responsibilities in Hawaii - I go with him on those trips!). He represents upwards of a dozen different factories so he's on the road quite a bit. If you ask him what he does for a living, he will say with a twinkle, "I drive around and talk to people."

It's the perfect job for a car guy who has never met a stranger. It's also the perfect job for bringing back edibles from all over our area.

When he goes to Fresno, he comes home with fresh nuts from the Valley, big bags of pistachios or mixed nuts. When he goes to Sacramento, sometimes he stops in Davis to get olive oil from the university. Carson City in Northern Nevada has a wonderful butcher. When he goes down to Monterey, he has a standing order from me to stop at Pezzini Farms for artichokes.

This week, we are eating Pezzini's best, the frost-nipped artichokes. Bob Peckham, our grocer for the first several years that I lived here, taught us that frost-nipped artichokes are the best. They look gnarly like this, with a haze of white over the fresh green leaves and they are prickly little suckers, but they taste like they have been blessed by the patron saint of artichokes. They are sweeter than a normal artichoke, something that apparently the frost brings out. Pezzini knows this, too, and they charge a little extra for the frost damage. That always makes me smile - only in America.

When we get these wonderful ones, we don't gussy them up, we just steam them for about 20 minutes, sometimes in water with wine vinegar added, and serve them with a little dish of lemon butter, then savor them leaf by meaty leaf until we reach the heart. Dipped in the lemon butter and popped in the mouth, the heart of a frost-nipped artichoke is as close to heaven as a vegetable can be.

My fourth and final career, and my most satisfying one, was as a career counselor; I loved my work for more than 20 years. It's no wonder, then, that I am content knowing that My Beloved is in the perfect job for him. Especially when he's been foraging and bringing home treats.

Bargain For Dinner

I am a cheapskate. There's no getting around it, I'm a cheapskate. I love it when I can make a meal out of nothing and have it taste like something special.

Artichokes. I know they are local because a) pretty much nowhere else on earth grows them and b) I learned in my botany class that there are varieties that bud in fall as well as in spring. Plus, you can't get them for 79 cents if they aren't local.

Italian sausage. I've been on an Italian sausage kick recently and had half a sausage left from another dish I made a few days ago - I call that almost free.

Rice. I had to cook more of that for Cora's lamb-and-rice dinner anyway (yes, her tummy is still unsettled), so just sneaked out a little to stuff the artichokes.

Onion. Found it hiding in the very bottom of the vegetable bin in the fridge. Definitely a freebee.

Shallot. Ditto.

Lemon juice. My Beloved's daughter Katie gave us a huge bag of lemons - a bonus!

Herbes de Provence. I always have it on hand and only used a healthy pinch. Can't count that cost.

Olive oil, just a driz for browning the sausage and softening the onion/shallot. Hardly worth mentioning.

But, combine them all together and they make a pretty nice meal.

I cut the top third off the artichokes with a big, sharp knife, hollowed out the centers and removed the chokes with a metal tablespoon, then stuffed the mixture of sausage, onion, shallot, rice, lemon juice (to taste - mine was pretty tart) and Herbes de Provence into the middle. Steamed the whole thing for about 30 minutes, until the bottom of the artichokes was easily pierced with a knife.

Not bad for a budget dinner.

Flattery

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that's true, then Peter from Cookblog must be feeling pretty darn flattered right now. I stole -oops, I mean imitated! - his idea.

I already had a dab of beans in the fridge from a previous meal and, when I saw that he put a sizzled artichoke on top of his beans, I realized that I could do the very same thing with mine, although my beans were very different - his bacony to my lamby.

I had never fixed an artichoke this way before, snapping off each leaf while leaving the meaty part at the base of each attached, trimming the smaller inside leaves, scooping out the choke with a spoon once I got down to the bottom and simmering the artichoke in a mixture of water and olive oil until it sizzles and caramelizes. A whole new artichoke experience for one who thought she'd pretty much been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt.

I was uncertain about whether or not I had enough to make a meal, so I served the beans-and-choke alongside half a pork chop that My Beloved and I shared. I needn't have worried, the veggies alone would have been plenty filling. In fact, Cora got the last of my pork chop.

You oughta try "borrowing" your next meal from Peter, too. He has all kinds of cool ideas and techniques with a sophisticated palate and an artist's eye for beauty. Every now and then he has one that's simple enough for a copycat like me to try.

The Battle of the Dipping Sauces

When I returned from back East, on my kitchen counter I found a little dish of a mysterious, garlicky-smelling sauce. My Beloved explained that while he was entertaining his brother and wife with fresh California artichokes, his daughter Katie had rejected his offer of lemon butter in favor of this olive oil-based sauce of her own concocting.

I decided to do a side-by-side taste test of the two sauces with the remaining artichoke. I have always been a fan of lemon butter - what's not to like? Melted butter, fresh lemon juice and a tender artichoke spells heaven to me. But, dipping my leaves into this combination of olive oil, lemon juice, minced garlic, black pepper and herbs, I had to admit that she had my lemon butter beat. The extra flavor and lower cholesterol are a bonus. Olive oil actually has more calories than butter but they are well worth it when doctored up so tastily and served next to one of my favorite veggies.

This seems like the best kind of detente to me - both are winners!

Upscale Artichokes

One of the many pleasures of a getaway weekend to the Monterey Bay area is driving through the farm fields and inspecting the crops as you whiz by. I'm always interested to see what's growing and how far along it is. Watching the workers in the fields, too, I get a heightened appreciation for the hard physical labor that goes into producing my food.

In Gilroy the air wafting through the car windows smells of garlic as you pass the neat green rows. Around Watsonville the scent changes to ripe strawberries at this time of the year. In Castroville near the ocean, artichoke fields take precedence. Coming home from Monterey, My Beloved and I noticed a roadside sign advertising Pezzini Farms fresh artichokes for sale. We both love these thistle buds so it was easy to cajole him into turning off the highway.

Artichoke plants are funny, untidy things with long, floppy, gray-green leaves and a serious case of bedhead. Because the artichoke field is immediately adjacent to the farm stand, we were certain of their freshness. The farm offered 'chokes ranging in size from petite little buds that you might use for pickling or eating whole to prickly behemoths that could play the lead in Little Shop of Horrors. We chose the middle-of-the-road size that would fit comfortably on a dinner plate next to the filet mignon we discovered at our local market.

Steamed and served with melted white truffle butter, an extravagance that we heartily recommend, they were a fitting ending to a splendid Father's Day.

The Artichoke That Ate Chicago

Doesn't this remind you of Audrey II, the carnivorous plant from Little Shop of Horrors?

She was a gift from My Beloved's daughters, Sarah and Katie, who harvested her from a garden up near Boonville where they were spending the weekend celebrating a significant birthday. Fiercely purple and green, Audrey II was large enough (fully 8 inches across - I could fit only one in my largest pot) and looked ferocious enough to be a maneater.

Instead, Audrey was meaty herself, with huge leaves tipped with thorns but based with rich, flavorful tidbits. The heart was as wide as my hand - perhaps we should have saved it as the base for a wonderful poached egg but I didn't think of that in time. Instead, we added olive oil and red wine vinegar to the water, steamed her for nearly an hour before she sighed and softened, then dipped each leaf and each bite of the heart into mayonnaise thinned about 1-1 with Meyer lemon juice, and savored it all.

Best of all, there are three more of these monsters lurking in the fridge! Thanks, girls!

Happy Artichoke

I'm probably anthropomorphizing too much to say that this artichoke was happy, but that's the word that sprang to mind as I peeled back the layers of leaves to find its earthy heart.

Steamed first, I think with some olive oil in the water as it was gleaming, then grilled to near-blackness, it was one of the best thistles it has been my pleasure to consume. The grilling imparted a smoky depth to each leaf and the heart was especially rich in flavor. A squeeze of lemon was all that was needed - it was served with some kind of mayonnaise-y sauce but the oil with which it was steamed gave it plenty of richness.

We found this preparation at The Village Fish House restaurant in the Carmel Valley. I'm going to try making it at home as soon as we have a good grilling day. I could steam extra artichokes one day and grill the leftovers the next day, two happy pleasures for the work of one.

Ratty Touie

Not being a lover of eggplant, still I love the rest of ratatouille, so sometimes I fudge it a little and make what I call Ratty Touie, a bastardized version of the real thing. The ingredients change a little each time - there's not a lot you can do to ruin Ratty Touie!

This time, I got a little creative, mostly because I didn't have all the ingredients in the house but had some other stuff that sounded fun and Mediterranean-ish - so, what the heck?

I sliced fairly thinly zucchinis, pattypan squash, fresh tomatoes and marinated artichoke hearts, the kind that come in a squat bottle, and peeled the papery skins off some of my slow-roasted tomato* halves.

I quartered some large shallots through the root end and minced two big cloves of garlic. After sauteeing the shallots and garlic in a little olive oil, I skimmed the bottom of a deep, lidded casserole with more olive oil, then layered the veggies in it one by one, alternating the shallot-garlic mixture with the other layers and sprinkling each layer with herbes de Provence. When I got to the top layer, I poured about half the vinaigrette from the jar of artichoke hearts over the whole thing, put on the lid and baked it in a 350 degree oven for about an hour - you'll know when it is ready as the whole house smells of the perfume.

All the veggies relaxed against each other and mingled like guests at a good party where everyone knows everyone else and no one is out to dominate, except perhaps those slow-roasted tomatoes - they are such showoffs! Sweetly oniony and softly savory, it was one of the best things I've made this summer, even if it is a little ratty.

*If you don't have slow-roasted tomatoes on hand, I think sun-dried ones might work but I'd layer them toward the bottom of the casserole where the juices from the other veggies would moisten them.

Weather Report From Heaven

Two blissfully warm days in a row - it must truly be spring, Time to start barbecuing again. Oh, we've sneaked in the occasional charcoal-grilled meal during the slightly cooler months that Californians call winter but now it's serious, so we hauled out the Weber grill that My Beloved's generous mother gave us years ago. It lights the charcoal using a bottled gas boost - easy as pie.

I had a pasture-raised tri-trip roast from Marin Sun Farms and half a pot of leftover coffee so, taking a leaf from Cookblog's book, I made a sort of bastard teriyaki sauce with soy sauce, ginger, brown sugar, garlic, wine vinegar and coffee and marinated the beef in that for several hours before throwing it onto the grill. Served with My Beloved's contribution of artichokes and some of the leftover gooey rice, we basked in the flavors and the warmth of the late-setting sun.

Sometimes, life is so good that no words will suffice.

Green Garlic Aside

A little advice from sad experience; green garlic is better steamed than roasted. When roasted alongside our rack of lamb, the outer layers turn crisp and stringy, rather than relaxing and turning tender. You can still strip off the outer layers and find the tender middle but when I butter steamed it a week or so ago, it was tender all the way through.

Just an aside. Butter steaming. Yes.

Mayon-ease

The artichokes in the market were just so beautiful this year that we had to buy more! Serendipitously, Molly's latest article in Bon Appetit magazine had to do with making one's own mayonaise. Since she was brave and tried, it, I figured I could, too.

Following her directions, which were pretty darn simple, I beat the egg yolk with the vinegar/lemon juice mixture, then added the oil drop by drop until the mixture got stiff, after which I could add the oil a little bit faster. It made a lovely, smooth, earthy, softly yellow mayo that was scrumptious with the steamed artichokes.

This one was made with olive oil and a mixture of lemon juice and vinegar - next time, I'm going for all lemon juice and I might try a milder oil for things that won't stand up to its fruity smell and taste. But, with spring artichokes, MB and I agreed it couldn't be bettered except, just possibly, by melted butter with lemon!