Effort

Sometimes the amount of enjoyment I get from a dish is directly proportionate to the amount of work involved in eating it. Something as simple to prep as an artichoke can take more than a half hour to eat. I decided to cook some the other night.

First, I trimmed the leaves of their points. I filled a pot with water, added salt, garlic cloves, a slice of lemon and a bay leaf, and set it to boil. I placed the artichokes in and put a lid on it for about a half hour. So simple! Some people prefer to steam them, but this works just fine if you drain them well when they're done.

While they were cooking, I made an aioli. Egg yolks beaten with a little lemon and mustard, a few drops of olive oil, then a few more, followed by a steady stream amounting to a little over a cup. Vinegar and salt and pepper. Crushed garlic, then in the fridge. Again, incredibly easy.

Twenty-five minutes later, we sat down to watch tv (the series finale of Star Trek TNG, in case you were wondering,) and enjoyed the ritual: Plucking one leaf at a time. Dipping them into the aioli. Scraping the soft flesh from the hard fibers with our teeth. Discarding the remains into a grocery bag (or large bowl, or trash bin, etc.) At a certain point, the leaves became translucent at the bottom. We bit off the entire lower portions. Then the entire leaf except for the pointy tip was edible. Finally, the leaves had shrunk into the fibrous and aptly named 'choke,' a mound of sharp-tipped hairs cradled in the heart of the artichoke. We scooped it out with a spoon and sliced the stem and heart into quarters which were entirely edible and begging for more of the garlicky mayonnaise.

Think about the flavor of an artichoke. It's texture is buttery, but what does it really taste like? If a vegetable could taste khaki, the artichoke does. It's mild and soft and way more work than pretty much anything else in the produce aisle. It's not a flavor unique enough that people make beverages or extracts out of it, and the closest thing to a popular artichoke byproduct in the supermarket is the marinated artichoke heart, which pretty much tastes like whatever liquid it has been suspended in. So why cook one?

There's an immense satisfaction in working at a task over time, seeing progress, and ultimately achieving a goal. If the taste of an artichoke was available with as little effort as a pear or a grape, some globular fruit easily plucked and swallowed, I don't think many people would even eat them. Enough of this world's bounty is that accessible and far more intensely delicious. But there's a satisfaction in the ritual of an artichoke.

-SdJ