Pan Roasted Artichokes

The other morning I noticed a very long text message on my wife’s phone. 

“Is that a text or did she cut and paste the first chapter to Richard Ford latest novel?  You know we have that book.” It was a text.  Women do that. Write long messages using their finest prose, while expressing their innermost  feelings, even writing in complete sentences. 

Men don’t.  If the text requires more than five words we’re hitting the call button.  Why waste the time? When we do text it’s usually in a caveman dialect, “can’t find wallet” or “eat out 2nite”. 

Not my wife. She holds her phone and works her thumb back and forth the mini keyboard, like a peach colored cobra striking with deadly accuracy.  Why she doesn’t send an email I’ll never know, at least she’d have 9 more digits on payroll helping to get the message across.

How about those texting arguments? That’s a one way street.  Hey guys, ever get a text that makes you cock your head, squint your eyes and mutter, “did she really write that?” Somewhere around the fourth or fifth unanswered texts you’ll get the patented “So you’re not going to respond?”

Respond to what? It’s not a fair fight.  It’s like Russian cage match between a lion and a groundhog.  A bloodbath. We men just lie on the ropes, waiting for Georgette to punch herself out (that’s a boxing reference, girls. You tube Ali-Foreman, it’ll go along way explaining how men argue).

I do like texting pictures of food. 

I did that last week.  What do you call that?  Not that, that is pan roasted artichokes and I’ll get to that in a minute.  I mean texting food pics.  When Congressman Weiner was texting photos of his, well, surname (oh the irony) to his mistress, we called that sexting. We need a name.

In the meantime let me show how to cook artichoke hearts.

There's the line up.  Artichokes, lemon, and fresh thyme.  You'll also need a couple cloves of garlic and a little white wine.   First, prepare some lemon water. Cut one lemon in half and juice it into
water, like so. Slice another into thin slices and set aside.

This keeps the hearts from browning.  Let's back up a bit and get to the heart of the matter. Ha. Start by cutting off the stem.

And then the outer leaves.

Continue cutting

Lop off the top

Finally, this is what we are looking for

We still have one more thing to do.  See the fuzzy center there, we'll need to take that out. Cut the heart into quarter, then take your knife and scrap out that center fuzziness.

Once all your hearts are ready, remove them from the lemon water and pat dry.  Line a saute pan with olive oil and add the hearts.

(We're putting a lot of heart into this cooking blog) The corn meter is red lining. Now add the garlic and lemon slices

Add the thyme ( we're putting a lot of thyme into this.....) 

Let them get nice and brown

Splash some white wine in and scrap up all those tasty bits.  The artichoke hearts are ready when you insert a knife and it goes through without resistance.  You can add a little  water to help them about, but by no means have them simmering in water.  You want the flavor of these little gems to be concentrated.

Oh my. Artichoke hearts are like crack, addicting and expensive (that shit will make you broke). Every now and then you have to pony up and buy these.  Serve like that or with a nice piece of fish on top.  I like them with fresh white anchovies

Enjoy these while you try to come up with a name for texting food photos.

Salute.