Recipe(tried): grace: artichoke tips galore

I've grown artichokes for years and my favorite way to fix them these days is in the microwave. Rinse the chokes, trim the bottom so they'll sit upright; if you want you can snip off the tips of the outer leaves too, although the sharp spines will soften with cooking. Wrap each choke individually in microwave-safe plastic wrap and zap them. The water clinging to them from rinsing is enough for cooking. If you do large artichokes one at a time, the timing would be about 6 or 7 minutes for each choke. Then let them sit five minutes. (Experiment with one; timing will depend on age and size of chokes and on the power of your microwave oven). Unwrap and spread out the leaves a bit. You can then serve them plain or pour melted butter or Hollandaise into the chokes, or just set out sauce bowls of mayonnaise for dipping.

One of the nice things about microwaving is that they cook fast enough to remain an attractive color. Boiling or steaming takes long enough for their green to turn to that awful color the kids call "dead vegetable green." Acid like lemon juice or vinegar does the same thing to veggies - turns them a yukky color. In the microwave, they cook fast and plain and stay a prettier color.

Tip: although you can certainly serve them hot right after cooking, chokes are equally good at room temperature or even cold. When you have a lot of chokes, consider cooking them up ahead of time while they're relatively fresh, and serve them over the next few days, either reheated, warmed up to room temp, or cold from the refrig. Overly mature artichokes, picked when they are big and tough, aren't very good no matter what you do to them.

Really fresh, tender artichokes which aren't too large will be so tender you can eat almost the entire leaf of the inner leaves (but perhaps only the tips of the outer leaves). Then, trim away the fuzzy part down at the bottom and eat the "heart," the fleshy bottom of the artichoke. Even the stems are edible and I usually cook and inch or two of them along with the chokes.

Enjoy!