Stewed artichokes
( Carciofi stufati )

Stewed artichoke recipe

Preparation and cooking

• - Prepare artichokes.
  Clean every artichoke removing its outer leaves and cut its end.
  Leave every artichoke whole as you can see in the photo.
  Immediately plunge cleaned artichokes into the water where you've squeezed half the lemon.
  Please, leave a piece of stem attached as you can see in the photo.
• - Cooking.
  Look well at the photo for more details.
  Prepare a little pan.
  Put in artichokes with stem facing up.
  Prepare cooking liquid: mix olive oil with remaining lemon juice and the amount of water needed to cover at least half or more of your artichokes.
  Pour this liquid into the pan and add garlic too, after peeling it. Season to taste with salt according to your taste.
  Bring to a boil, cover with a lid, reduce heat and simmer until tender.
  Time required: 25-30 minutes. Do not let cooking liquid reduce too much.
  Add more boiling water if necessary.
  Cooking times depend a lot on your personal taste and artichoke size.

Just before serving

• - Your stewed artichokes is ready to serve. If you want, you can sprinkle the dish with very finely chopped parsley just before serving.

Note

Tips

• - Obviously this is the basic recipe. This cooking technique is very healthy. Once stewed your artichokes, you can further dress them with olive oil and herbs you like. But it isn't structly necessary according to me.
• - If you don't like garlic don't worry! Replace garlic with a fresh onion or fresh herbs (parsley, chives or mint are particularly suitable).
• - Someone prepare the cooking liquid by combining water and olive oil with white wine. I do not agree because the combination artichokes-wine often gives bad results.

Menu planning

• - This artichoke side dish may accompany meat (with no tomato sauce according to us), fish (baked or boiled or steamed), eggs and cheeses

Healthy eating

• - Stewed artichokes is a complete and interesting dish as you can see reading its nutrition facts. First of all it is a very low calorie dish. Then it isn't rich in fat and sugars and so is ideal for everybody.
  But you must be very careful on the amount of fat in cooking. A tablespoon olive oil is more than enough. Don't increase the amount of oil. There are 90 kCal and 10g additional fat in every tablespoon olive oil. I mean a tablespoon as the spoon with which you eat your soup.
  
• - Please, keep in mind artichokes are rich in water and fiber too.
• - Artichokes have a lot of cynarin too. It is located especially in the pulp of the leaves but also in dried leaves and stems. Cynarin increases the bile production, makes easy the digestion, helps the liver function, lowers HDL/LDL ratio. This reduces cholesterol levels which diminishes the risk for arteriosclerosis and coronary heart disease.

Loretta

What's the right wine for " Stewed artichokes "?

Please, don't match wine with artichokes. It's better a beer.