Un buon pranzo

 

You may have read my account of a weekend in Rome last October. The weather was apocalyptic, I had a full on head cold, but the day of artichokes at Latteria Studio learning so much from Carla Tomesi and Rachel Roddy, was an antidote to everything.  A feast of knowledge and a bloody good lunch to boot.  I have written at length and often about my unseemly love of artichokes, so I shall spare you a repeat here.

In some ways, it was a kind of a torture – spending that weekend surrounded by most loved vegetable flowers; everywhere I looked, they were on offer. And knowing that when I came back to Birmingham, it would be to an artichoke drought, broken only when (and as it turns out, if) I could get down to London’s markets, or when my young allotment plants decide to throw up their own flower buds (I’m still waiting for anything that you could tentatively call a ‘glut’).

I went to be shown a myriad ways to cook with artichokes, in the full knowledge that buying the quantities needed for some the recipes would bankrupt me, especially if I had to get them singly and cellophane wrapped from Sainsbury’s.

One dish in particular stuck in my food brain,  niggling away with thoughts of “will I ever have this again?”  Artichoke lasagna.  A vegetarian layering of pasta, cheese and artichokes.  Spanking hot and with a glass of teeth achingly cold white wine, this will be my death row meal (well, one of them).  Whilst it’s a dish for winter and early spring in Rome, here, if you’re reliant on your own crop, it’ll be a summer treat.  I have been missing this dish since October, dreaming of a day when I am rich enough to not care how many artichokes I have just bought, or somehow, have managed to persuade someone to give me gainful employment in Italy, so I can move there, just for the artichokes.

But then in the perverse way of the world, the UK want into lockdown, the panic buying stripped the shops, and bafflingly, this provided me with the wherewithal to finally break my lasagna fast.  I was told of delitalia, an Italian catering supplier that a) had flour, a lot of flour and b) was now doing domestic deliveries to Birmingham. Of course there was a small catch, just a minor detail; you still had to place catering size orders.  My cupboards and freezers are already overflowing with food from the allotment and ingredients I thought I ‘needed’ at some point.  And it’s not that I’m a hoarder, just that I’ve always regarded Best Before dates as mere guidance for the wise.  So, whilst the product list was temptingly extensive, I had to restrict myself to things that I really would use, and would buy anyway over the next year.  Flour yes, I’m already a third of the way through it (and have turned into the go to ‘flour man’ for my isolating neighbours), oil yes – 5 litres of olive oil will see me through the next year.  And then there they were, jumping out at me as though lit in neon; frozen artichokes, prepared and raring to go.  Minimum order, 5kg.  Yes, I am that much of an idiot.

A freezer drawer was cleared (I had to eat a lot of ice cream that week, a hardship) and now I have what should be a year’s worth of my favourite vegetable, but realistically, I don’t think they’ll see out lockdown.

As they arrived, my first artichoke flower formed on one of the allotment plants.  This I prepped, battered and fried – I wanted to memorialise its perfection.  It was literally a taster, for the main, the lasagna.

I urge you to find a way to make this (even if it means having to buy catering quantities of flour and olive oil).  The version I ate in Rome was Rachel’s, and my memory of the details is not perfect.  So when I get hold of the real thing, I may come back and do an update.  The potatoes were an addition suggested by Italianhomecooking – and he is right, the additional texture brings another bauble to this dish.

As I write this, I am reheating the half I did not eat last night, for my lunch.  There will be some bread too (I have to get through that flour after all) .  It will be just as good second time round I know. All sweet anaesthetic on the tongue artichoke, cheese and carbs.  Un buon pranzo.

Artichoke Lasagna

(This made enough for two large portions)

The recipe will get refined over time – as I was making this up as I went along.  If you are lucky enough to have access to abundant and affordable fresh artichokes, substitute those for the frozen ones, prepped into quarters, as shown in the photos below.  If using frozen ones, check them, some may still have a few tough petals attached, which can take all the fun out of them.

 

Artichokes

A cereal bowl’s worth of prepared artichoke hearts (defrosted)

One small onion, chopped.

1 garlic clove

Salt and pepper

Glug of white wine.

Oil

Put the oil into a large frying pan (which has a tight-fitting lid) and as it warms, add your artichokes,  onion and crushed garlic, and once they start to fry, throw in the wine, quickly turning down the heat, and slipping the lid on.  These need to cook until the hearts are tender and yield easily when stabbed with a knife.

Remove from the heat and blitz 2/3 of the artichokes into a puree with blender (check the seasoning), keep the remaining third whole.

Bechemel Sauce

Flour 25g

Butter 25g

Milk (I used 700ml)

Salt and pepper

Melt the butter, and then add the flour, cooking it, but not allowing it to brown.

Gently, very gently, add milk.  A tiny bit at a time to begin with.

The starch in the flour will suck upon the milk and swell like something from a sci fi film.  If you add too much milk, it’ll be impossible to get rid of any lumps.

When all the milk is absorbed and and you’ve beaten the flour paste into smooth submission, add a spot more milk. Repeat the process patiently, and you’ll end up up a smooth, glossy white sauce the consistency of expensive emulsion paint.  Seaso again, this is vital, as this sauce, together with the ricotta, could make a bland filling if you’re not brave with the salt here.

The rest

Lasagna sheets (I used premade, dry, as I had some in the cupboard, left by a former lodger (the wonderful Simon, who named his son for me), but if you prefer to make your own fresh, go ahead).

3 floury potatoes (peeled, boiled and sliced)

Ricotta (one tub)

50-75g (or as much as you like) Parmesan or Pecorino if you can get it.

Assemble your Lasagna

In a deep pie dish, place a third of your potatoes, artichoke hearts, and the puree.  To this add a third of the ricotta and grated parmesan. Pour over a quarter of the bechemel, season. Add a layer of lasagna sheets.

Repeat another layer of vegetables, cheese and sauce, top with more lasagna sheets.

One final layer, and then pour the last of the béchamel over the lasagna sheets.  You can grate some more parmesan over this if you like.

Into the oven at gas mark 4, for 30-40 minutes, until it is bubbling and golden.  Ideally some of the lasagna sheets will have started to curl and crisp up, for another layer of crunchy texture.

Eat straight from the oven, or reheat the next day (assuming you have leftovers).

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Roman Holiday

I’ve not long come back from Rome, my first visit.  Yes, it overflowed with art, history, architecture, treasures, but, let’s be totally honest, I went there for artichokes, globe artichokes, by the bushel.

Heaven

It vexes me that they are treated with such apprehension and confusion in the UK, that you can’t buy them easily or cheaply (even though their season is nearly six months long). We can fly insipid blueberries and asparagus in from South America, year round, but seldom manage to haul a few loads of thistle heads the short distance from southern Europe.

Not that they even need to come that far, mind. They can grow perfectly well here in the UK, if you pick the right spot and the right variety. And I do grow my own on the allotment, across a shorter season and in constant fear of hard, claggy winters; but they are temperamental and I’m definitely a long way from self sufficiency. Consequently my knowledge on how to prepare and cook these most delicious of never-to-blossom flowers, is woefully inadequate.

So I went to Rome.  Needs must, and all that.

Two Roman cooks, Carla Tomesi and Rachel Roddy, do many wonderful things with words, food and people, one of which is a day devoted to the artichoke.  The buying of, the prepping of, the cooking of and, oh my, the eating of.  I have been waiting for this day to reappear in their calendar since I first spotted it last spring, right at the end of the artichoke season.

And I have been squirrelling my pennies away into a special artichoke piggy bank, and raiding the replacement car fund (again), for the sake of my peculiar passion. And so, finally, two weeks ago, I jumped on a plane and found myself in Testaccio, the old slaughterhouse district of Rome; I am full of cold and anticipation.

The weekend was apocalyptic – storms and rain the like of which I’ve never encountered. The kind that blows open the windows and billows the curtains of your AirB&B. Gothic, sprang to mind. And given that I was staying two minutes from the Protestant Cemetery, with its slew of Romantic Poets, all seemed very appropriate.

Rome with a view

It being Italy, I feasted on the first night; artichokes, of course, braised with lemon and butter; pasta with crab, wonderful parmesan by the chunk and grapes of Canaan. But this was just a prelude. The antipasto before the Saturday, which dawned with me overflowing with cold, deaf in my right ear and missing both my senses of smell and taste. A great start to a day of cooking and eating.

Purely by chance, I’m staying less than a minute from the mercato di Testaccio, where we’re meeting. So, I’m there, early of course, brimming with excitement and influenza. It is, as to be expected, a grotto of wonderful things. The market is, let’s be kind, late century modern, I’m guessing 90s. Purely functional, a hollow box in the terracotta shadow of the Monte di Testaccio . But inside is the meat and the marrow. Charcuterie, cheese, bread, vegetables, flowers, fruits, wines, oils. There is mundane, there is high end. It’s not huge, but, Lordy, it is bountiful.

Dogs in Markets; two of my favourite things

And we meet up – six artichoke fans, and Rachel, who is all height and exuberance, and we buy bags of artichokes, taste olive oil (I sneak in a couple of Citrons to fill up my hand luggage; another story, another day), and then make our way through the old abattoir, over the Tiber

to the Latteria Studio – a cookery school that is also, as near as damn it, my perfect kitchen. And if I can have a resident Carla, all knowledge, droll and raised eyebrow, I shan’t complain.

In a laid back whirl of prep and information, we trim and tidy 36 artichokes. These then are chopped and sliced to be braised, pureed, battered, soused. Carla makes focaccia, and makes it look easy, studding it with sweet grapes and dusting with cinnamon. Rachel pours cocktails, Cynar (more artichokes) and Prosecco. My cold improves instantly. There are eggs and oil to be whipped for mayonnaise, pasta to be rolled for lasagna. A caponata of artichokes emerges, all agrodolce Sicilian, and wonderful. A jammy cake of polenta and oranges from the oven, joined by buttered, drunken pears baked in their own steam.

A day of cooking is always fun, but cooking in good company, being taught by cooks whose knowledge and enthusiasm is endless, followed by a late and long lunch together, is definitely worth travelling to Rome for. Hell, it may even be worth moving to Rome for.

As dusk unfurled, and in the ceaseless rain, we tripped our way back down the hill, over the river and went our separate ways, six very contented and dedicated fans of the artichoke. There was, I knew, still a little room in my hand luggage. So I stopped at the supermarket, and bought just a few more artichokes, to squirrel back to Birmingham.

Favourites and more frying

Artichokes encapsulate in their tight buds, the divergence of British and Sicilian food.  Here they are seldom seen, priced as a luxury but rarely treated with respect.  We are charged a fortune for an unopened flower, all too often a bashed and wilted version of its youthful self.  There’s a terribly chi chi store in Mayfair that likes to arrange them in vases, for which conceit you can add on an extra three quid.  And then when it comes to the cooking them, we seem to be impossibly wedded to boiling and effeteness, painstakingly dipping individual petals in hollandaise, until the precious heart has gone cold and clammy.

In Sicily, (and throughout Italy) on the other hand, they are ubiquitous from new year to easter (their season is earlier than our’s).  They are abundant and cheap, the markets pile them high and you buy carrier bags full of them for a few euros.  And there are different varieties and sizes; small elongated purple ones for braising, choke free varieties, swollen steel grey green spheres.  There is even a festival dedicated to artichokes in the village of Cerda, east of Palermo.  They are a delight of spring and central to the food of Easter festivities.

They are my favourite vegetable, unequivocally.  Even asparagus or freshly podded peas can’t compete.  Sweet and minerally, they also create a physical tingle on the tongue – almost as though temporarily anaesthetising it.  But equally, many people remain unimpressed.  The leaf tearing mundanity never compensated for by the merest mention of flesh from their bases, and then the itching powder nastiness of the choke that has to be dealt with before that stone cold heart.  This is why other recipes might convert, ones that don’t demand such investment of time for relatively little reward (if you don’t love artichokes as I do).

Unless you have the luck and finances to be able to shop at Borough Market, the only way most of us in Britain can guarantee enough artichokes to allow culinary frivolity is to grow our own.  As plants they can be ferociously temperamental weaklings, or verdant to the point of being rampantly intimidating.  When young, they can be mown down by slugs, drained of life by blackfly and succumb to trench foot in a cold and damp winter.  But, established clumps are an impressive thing, up to two metres of silvered, scrolling serrated leaves, topped with spiky, prehistoric flower buds, that, unpicked, explode into an imperial purple inflorescence of bee magnet. 

My experience has mostly been of the weaklings.  I have struggled to get them growing on the allotment.  It is exposed high on the side of a valley, and few make it through the winter.  I think the problem has been that I’ve been relying on bought, seed-raised plants.  Which I have discovered, are unreliable and widely variable in vigour and hardiness.  So, the best plan of action is to seek out a friendly fellow enthusiast who has a clump that has proven its worth in both longevity and productivity, and in the spring (March and April), take a cutting of the shoots that appear around the sides of the clump, leaf and root together.  These small clones will still need some love and devotion in their first year.  But good genes should kick in, and if raised in a fertile, sunny, well drained spot, kept free of strangling weeds, and protected with a winter mulch from the worst of the wet and cold, begin to reward in a couple of years with a reliable bounty of loveliness.

Back to the eating of them then.  This is a simple Roman, not Sicilian recipe.  It involves deep frying, which as you know I am very fond of, and salt (ditto).  The name is supposed to come from the time when Rome’s Jewish community was confined to a limited area of the city, and with space at a premium, fried their food on stoves. Artichokes were disdained by their Catholic neighbours, and so the dish, and its cooks conjoined. All a bit tenuous I know, but I’m sure there’s a kernel of truth in there somewhere.

Carciofi alla guidia (Jewish artichokes)

Fill a fryer, or large, deep saucepan with oil 5-6cm deep and heat.  Olive is expensive, and this requires a profligate amount, so unless you’re determined to be authentic, a milder vegetable oil will be just fine, but make sure it’s clean, as old, well used oil can make the food taste bitter and burnt.

  

At this stage, you don’t want chip pan hot, so keep it on a low to medium heat.

Ideally, you want a variety of artichoke that is not spiny, and if all you have are very large and tough ones, they may need steaming beforehand, for maybe 10-15 minutes.

Leave the stem on your artichokes that they come with, taking off just a few millimetres at the base if they’re very dry.  You can also peel very large and stringy stems, just to make them a little more edible.  Trim off the very toughest outer petals and if they’re very prickly, take a sturdy knife and trim the tops off.  

Take your artichokes slide them into the oil.  If you get a ferocious and explosive sizzle, it’s too hot, so take them out and turn down the heat. The artichokes need to cook gently, poach almost, in their bath .  A steady stream of small bubbles is the desired effect, rather than Yellowstone hot spring.  This slow process penetrates through to the heart of the artichoke ensuring it’s cooked throughout.

After ten-fifteen minutes, remove them and let them cool and drain on kitchen paper.

Now it’s chip shop time.  Turn the heat up and open all the windows.

Take your cooled artichokes and splay the petals out to open up the flower.  If they contain an inedible choke, remove that now.  Turn them upside down, and press them down to flatten them out.

Wipe all the oil off your greasy hands, and generously season the splayed out bloom with salt, getting into all the nooks and crannies.

When the oil is hot enough (I have an old fashioned jam thermometer that handily has “Deep Fry” marked on it), return your artichokes to their doom.

This will only take a few minutes, between three and five.

The hotter, faster oil takes the cooked artichokes and turns them to a crisp thing that you can eat in its entirety, no faffing around breaking off individual petals, no overflowing bowls of detritus.  If you’re able to find, or grow them, I urge and implore you to try cooking them this way.