This recipe for braised artichokes in a broth of lemon and garlic works whether you want to trim the artichokes so people can eat them with a knife and fork or have everyone pull off their own leaves.
Prep Time: 40 minutes
Cook Time: 45 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients:
- 4 to 6 large artichokes
- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (1/2 cup if you’re cleaning them)
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus 2 tablespoons
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 clove garlic, minced
- 12 sprigs mint, leaves minced
Preparation:
- Trim the stems of the artichokes and clip off their thorns, or go ahead and trim them into fully edible specimens: set up a bowl of cool water with 1/4 cup of lemon juice in it, trim stem, pull off outer leaves until a solid 2-inch section of them are very light green (really almost yellow), cut off green tops of the leaves, use a paring knife to cut off all the dark or medium green stuff around the stem and heart, cut in half lengthwise and scoop out the heart, put in the lemon water and repeat with the remaining chokes (this guide to cleaning baby artichokes shows everything except scooping out the choke; this step of cleaning artichoke hearts shows scraping out the choke).
- Put the 1/4 cup lemon juice, 1/4 cup of the olive oil, salt, garlic, and half the mint in a saucepan large enough to hold all the artichokes with 2 cups of water and bring to a boil. Add artichokes, stem-end down (or in whichever way you can if you’ve cleaned and halved them), cover, and reduce heat to maintain a steady simmer. Cook, undisturbed, until the bottoms of untrimmed artichokes or the entire cleaned artichokes are tender when pierced with the tip of a knife, 20 to 30 minutes.
- Lift artichokes out of the cooking liquid. Transfer trimmed artichokes to a baking or serving dish and full artichokes to individual serving bowls.
- Increase heat to boil the liquid left in the pan is reduced to about 1/2 cup. Add remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Pour evenly over artichokes and sprinkle artichokes with remaining mint. Serve warm, at room temp, or even chilled.
