Jacques Pépin Preps an Artichoke

Usually when you do an artichoke bottom

you use artichoke which are all discolored

older, less expensive.

That's when you do artichoke bottom.

Usually not with a beautiful artichoke like this.

This you cook whole, you trim the end of the leaf

with your scissor.

Cook them all, take the choke out,

and serve the whole artichoke.

But if you do it with this,

you can break this at the base

and that would tell how fresh that artichoke is.

That artichoke is pretty fresh

otherwise there is a lot of little thread

coming out of the artichokes.

This you can keep, actually the center

of the artichokes here.

If you remove enough of a layer here

it's a little bit like the artichoke bottom.

I will cook that with the artichoke bottom.

(knife peeling)

Yeah, that will be tender after it's cooked.

(knife cutting)

Now, the artichokes here there is different way of doing it.

I like to do it this way going around here

(knife cutting)

to get that type of dome here that you have.

Okay, this is old as you can see

the leaves are cut at the place where you suck

the flesh of the artichoke.

So there we take the center out here

(knife cutting)

and this, the end of it

there is some (foreign but otherwise

maybe the center, the rest of it,

that will be cooked with the artichoke bottom too.

Now, comes the turning of the artichokes.

We call turning an artichoke.

That is, we go

as you can see my hand is straight here.

(knife cutting)

I go all around like this

until I come here

then my knife go this way and I continue turning.

Don't stop.

(knife cutting)

And now me and my knife go flatter

and I continue turning.

This is really the process of what we say

turning an artichoke.

Then you trim the top.

Those are very small artichoke bottom

and they grow them now with almost no bottom.

They grow much faster.

But this artichoke bottom now

you cook it in the salted lemony water, a bit of olive oil.

When it's cooked you take the choke out of it

and now that become a receptacle

to put a potage in there or a puree of mushroom

or something like that.

Artichoke bottom, cook that together.

(piano music)