[Sca-cooks] Cardoons vs. artichokes

[Mark Hendershott]

Our garden has a couple of cardoon plants.  We've tried to eat the stems a 
couple of time but found them extremely bitter.  What are we doing 
wrong?  Secondary use:  cut hte flowers with a long stem as soon as they 
are fully open, place dry in a vase or hang upside down.  They dry quickly 
and last for a long time.

Simon Sinneghe
Briaroak, Summits, An Tir

At 02:36 PM 9/20/2004 -0700, Cariadoc wrote:

>>What's really confusing for me is that my Sicilian grandmother 
>>interchangeably used "artichoke" and "cardoon" to refer to the 
>>globe-style vegetable we are familiar with. But with cardoons, you eat 
>>the stems, not the bracts.
>>
>>Gianotta
>
>The cardoon plant looks like an artichoke on steroids--similar 
>configuration, but a bigger and more vigorous plant. It has flower buds 
>that are miniatures of the usual globe artichoke. You can cook them and 
>eat them like artichokes--my kids thought they were cute when we did 
>so--but there isn't much on them other than the heart. So it isn't 
>surprising to have the same word used for both--to think of them as two 
>variants of the same basic plant.
>
>Anyone in the SF bay area who is interested is welcome to come by here 
>next spring--I have both cardoons and artichokes growing.
>--
>David/Cariadoc
>www.daviddfriedman.com
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