Contributed by thank you to Kyla DiStefano

My husband’s family taught me how to prepare artichokes, we freeze them so we can have them on hand and I just pan fry them in olive oil, paprika, and egg with parmesan. My aunt stuffs them with breadcrumbs and prosciutto, they are very filling. The key to cooking them is to use lots of olive/grapeseed oil, so they can be quite rich.

Ingredients

Here are some directions to preparing artichokes: from a book called: Made in Italy Food and Stories

Take artichoke in one hand and leaving the stalk on (you can eat this part), snap off and discard each outside leaf in turn, stopping when you get down to the pale green-yellow leaves. Next, with a small sharp paring knife, peel off the outside of the stalk and work around the top off the stalk at the base of the artichoke, trimming and scraping away the base and turning the artichokes as you go. Finally, trim off the pointed tops of the remaining leaves, then cut each artichoke in half lengthways and use a small sharp pointed spoon to scoop out and discard the hairy choke from each half (it is very small, almost the shape of a half moon)(sometimes they will feel thistly inside, this must also be removed).

Instructions

To prevent the artichokes from discoloring, rub them with fresh cut lemons and Have a large bowl of water with freshly squeezed lemons ready and keep the artichokes submerged until ready to use them.(or vitamin c tablets, or lemon juice)

I recommend doing one artichoke start to finish at a time so they can go into the water to slow the browning down. Plus as you do more you get better at saving more of the “meat”. If you can bute the bottom of the leaf its worth saving, the tops can be trimmed off (they are ripe from the bottom-up)

To blanche them use a large pot of boiling salted water and cook briefly. (4-8 mins. depending on size) rinse with cold water and freeze.

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