Artichoke Bottoms
Cooking, Culinary and Pastry Arts, healthy cooking
Artichoke Bottoms
Artichokes are a humble, yet exotic vegetable and are well known in the Mediterranean cuisines of French, Italian, Greece and Middle Eastern countries. There is more than one way to trim and cook the bottoms and many ways to use them. Here are three of my ways to serve them.
Three ways to use artichoke bottoms for delicious results.
Artichokes are a very healthy and tasty vegetable however trimming them into bottoms and cooking them can be a little tricky. This is how I teach my students how to prepare them and three ways to use them.
How to Trim and Cook Artichoke Bottoms
At this point the bottoms can be used in a variety of ways or stored in the chilled cooking liquid for later use. Here are three ways that I use them.
Artichoke, Poached Egg and Arugula Salad
Wilted arugula salad tossed with sherry vinaigrette with bacon, sauteed shiitake mushrooms, marinated asparagus, artichoke bottom and poached egg. Poached egg, bacon, croutons and Frisée is a classic salad known as Lyonnaise Salad. This is my way of upgrading the dish with a more commonly found salad green, arugula.
Artichoke bottoms on Filet Mignon
Filet mignon topped with brandy flambeed artichoke bottom filled with bacon lardons, portabella mushrooms, gorgonzola blue cheese and port wine demi glaze.
Filet mignon with artichoke bottom filled with sauteed spinach, poached egg and béarnaise sauce. This was one my student’s specials. The béarnaise was little too thin. This is a variation of the classic French dish Tournedos Henri IV.
Artichoke bottoms can be sliced, diced and served in innumerable ways stuffed with crab, and in salads are two other ways that I like to serve this thorny Mediterranean vegetable. They are often served canned however learning how to trim and cook them is a core technique that must be learned for any serious cooks. Happy Cooking my friends.
