[Sca-cooks] artichokes vs cardoon

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Mon Mar 31 02:42:36 PDT 2008


On Mar 31, 2008, at 12:22 AM, Lilinah wrote:
> And one final comment. At a cooking get-together at Duke Cariadoc's
> house, one of they cook prepared some cardoon parts. In that case, he
> used the leaves, which were quite bitter and tough. According to what
> i've been reading about cooking and eating cardoons, one avoids the
> leaves and uses the peeled *stalks*, which supposedly taste rather
> like artichoke hearts (i can't comment on this as i haven't eaten
> cardoon stalks yet). One can also eat the flower head, but i gather
> it isn't as "succulent" as an artichoke... again, no personal
> experience.
>
> I mention this for anyone who has a hankering to try cardoons... it
> helps to eat the right parts. One would be quite physically sorry if
> one ate, for example, the leaves of tomatoes or potatoes, rather than
> the fruits of the former and the roots of the latter.

It might help some of us to see what cardoons look like:

http://www.piccar.com/chokeshots/pages/CARDOONS_jpg.htm

These look a bit smaller than the cardoons I used to see in the local  
markets back when the neighborhood I live in was an old-timey Italian- 
American neighborhood full of little guys smoking little black cigars,  
selling vegetables on the street corners, but this is a decent  
representation.

Note that these don't appear to be especially leafy: there's a long  
rib like celery or Belgian endive, ending in a leafy, spiky tip. This  
may be the bitter, tough leaf you're speaking of. On the other hand,  
artichokes are also intended to be trimmed of their leaf tips (at  
least the larger ones), so it's almost as if you took a globe  
artichoke and stretched it into an oblong shape.

Adamantius






"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter




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