Carciofi Alla Giudia Recipes

Carciofi alla Giudia!!! Pure bliss is sitting in a sidewalk cafe in the 460-year-old Roman Ghetto, spring sunshine on your face & shoulders, a glass of amarone to sip & carciofi to nibble. Spring is artichoke season and the carciofi is an ideal Passover Seder dish. They have the crispiness of chips on the outside, but the soft inside retains the pure artichoke flavor, a wonderful combination. This is achieved by the two frys, the first at a lower temp to cook the chokes thoroughly, and the second to crisp them up. Take my word for it, the two frys pay off. You can serve the carciofi whole as a side, or quartered as finger food. Use either peanut or olive oil, as per your taste. The peanut oil is taste neutral, so the artichoke taste is clear. But the olive oil adds a wonderful Mediterranean flavor. Enjoy & sameach Pesach!

Provided by Soma Sengupta

Categories     Artichoke

Time 35m

Yield 8-32 pieces, 4 serving(s)

Number Of Ingredients 5

Nutrition Facts : Calories 2990.7, Fat 324.4, SaturatedFat 54.9, Sodium 3712.2, Carbohydrate 28.9, Fiber 14.4, Sugar 3.1, Protein 8.6

• Ingredients

It was nearly eleven on Saturday and Fernando was standing under the open roof in the rain, tender, silvered glissades of it plashing quietly, as it has for two thousand years, onto the black and white marble of the temple floor. He, not minding, stood directly in the puddle, its depths caressing the tops of his shoes, looking up at the sky like a child in wonder, the water settling in fine mists on his cheeks and eyelids. He turned fifty that morning in the Pantheon. His spiritual birthday thus celebrated, he pronounced that his carnal festival was to be solemnized in not less than six of his preferred ostarie/trattorie/ristoranti. Fernando wanted to eat artichokes. More, he wanted an artichoke crawl-a critical journey up and down the vicoli (narrow streets), an earnest search for great, golden-green, crisped Roman roses-as many of them as he might vanquish in a day and its evening in a half dozen genuine houses-we were in search of the one perfect carciofo alla giudia. Ten years ago, I might have propelled him into the arms of the trattoria da Giggetto, when I was still convinced of the authenticity of its cooking. Sidled up as it is to the edge of the Portico d'Ottavia, perhaps it was only the taberna's majestic old neighbor that wooed me. Fernando had his own ideas. At midday, we made quick aperitivi e antipasti visits to Arancio d'Oro in Via Monte d'Oro and La Campana in Vicolo della Campana, taking only one or two artichokes and a glass of white wine. We would settle in at Agata e Romeo in Via Carlo Alberto for a proper lunch that would start with another of the little beauties. The evening's gallop would open at Tram Tram in Via dei Reti before a stint at Il Dito e la Luna in Via dei Sabelli, where we would crunch on more fried thistles. Our palates veneered in stainless steel, our bellies convulsing, plumped, we brushed sea salt and crisp freckles from our lips and our chests and stepped at last inside the dimmed sanctum of Piperno in Via Monte dei Cenci. Murmuring something to our waiter about not having much appetite, he assured us that he would carry to us only those plates that could titillate a dead man. He started us with a salad of puntarelle-a thick-bladed wild grass collected in the Alban hills- glossed in sauce of anchovies. Then came the misty comfort of stracciatella, chicken broth scribbled with a paste of egg and pecorino. Expert by now, able to whiff their very presence from twenty meters, we knew then the artichokes were only moments away. He set them down, clucking over their beauty, assuring us their salty vaporousness would coax our hunger. He was right. We continued with la coda alla vaccinara-oxtail stew-abbacchio-roast suckling lamb-a few crumbles of a hard, piquant pecorino pepato-peppered pecorino-a soft brown pear, and sealed it all with a great fluff of roasted chestnut mousse that we ate with small silver spoons.

Yield serves 4

Number Of Ingredients 5

• Ingredients