artichoke gratin toasts

As someone who claims that her favorite food on earth is artichokes, it’s strange that this cooking website boasts so few recipes that feature them, that the last one was over 5 years ago, and I came to the conclusion years later that I liked it better without the artichokes. Something is not adding up. But while I like to believe that I cook what I want — it’s all about me, me, me, baby — and not solely that which will please a real or imagined audience, the reality is that it’s not much fun to make food that few people get as excited about as you do. It would be like inviting everyone you knew to a viewing party on the latest Science Channel documentary on, say, how rolling luggage is made only to find that all of your friends were simultaneously, apologetically busy that night. (WTH, you want us to return to the dark ages of lifting luggage by hand?)

When it comes to artichokes, most people are divided into a few camps: those that do not like them and are wrong (uh, in my opinion) and those that have tasted their delicious magnificence for what it is. But, even in the pro-artichoke camp, very few people have the patience required for all of the pesky trimming, paring, thorns and fuzzy chokes of preparing them for a relatively small yield of heart for the price. Sure, you can buy prepared artichokes, either oil-packed in jars or brine-packed in cans, but neither taste like much more to me than their respectively slick/tinny confines.

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deb perelman

artichoke gratin toasts