I've cooked my way through all 264 recipes
in The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook!

December 6, 2010

Artichoke Parmigiana (p. 292)

For those of you who have followed my failures with artichokes (Failure #1 and Failure #2) you'll know that every time I cook them they're tough and chewy. I flew out to Salt Lake City this past weekend to visit my mom who is an excellent cook and went to the Culinary Institute, and asked her to cook Artichoke Parmigiana with me to see where I was going wrong.

This recipe was kind of fun to make because it involves frying things, which always make them delicious. The artichokes are cleaned up, cut into pieces, and doused in a batter of flour, salt, water, and olive oil and then lightly fried in more olive oil. And the exciting part about cooking at my mom's house is that she actually owns a candy thermometer so that we could get the oil to the right temperature. I always just guess at home.


Once the artichoke pieces are golden place them on a piece of paper towel to dry.


The dish is assembled with layers of fried artichoke, mozzarella, tomato sauce, parmigiana, and a little pepper.


Cook for about a half an hour and then serve.


This looked and smelled beautiful, but can still be officially considered Failure #3 on the artichoke front. Mom decided that American artichokes just aren't up to the standards of their Mediterranean counterparts and aren't edible in the way that the cookbook has them prepared. As in, the leaves aren't even digestible. From now on I'll use frozen artichoke hearts in any recipe calling for whole artichokes. At least I know it's not my fault.

tomato sauce -- $2.11 (I only used about a quarter of the jar)
mozzarella -- $1.99 (about half left)
artichokes -- $8.97
Total Cost of Artichoke Parmigiana: $13.07
($2.18 per serving)

2 comments:

  1. Maybe you need those baby artichokes? Or pare them down to way closer to the heart? Although to be fair, I never want to eat artichokes any way other than boiled with salt and lemon, so I think all of the frying and baking recipes waste too much of the yummy leaves anyway. Mmmm artichokes...

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  2. Yeah, baby artichokes might work. I think the big ones are just way too tough for anything other than some boiling. And even then I don't heat the full leaf. Sigh.

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Thanks for dropping by! Love, Katrina.