Leek and Sweet Potato Soup

This recipe was included in our first winter CSA newsletter. It is actually a great combination (I was happy not to be including any type of squash in this soup, to be honest). I made a couple of adjustments, just to bring down the calories a little bit - butter and cream are great and everything, but maybe not for a soup I wanted to enjoy several weeknights in a row! I love soups like this that get blended because prep is so easy - you don't have to worry about your knife skills, just chop everything up and throw it in the pot!

Ingredients:
2 Tbs olive oil (original recipe calls for butter)
2 leeks
1 medium onion
1 Tbs curry powder
2 medium sweet potatoes
1 can coconut milk (I used 'lite', use full strength if you prefer)
~2 cups chicken stock*
2 Tbs hot sauce (your choice, I used sriracha)
1/2 cup cilantro
heavy cream or milk
fresh lime juice

Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Wash leeks thoroughly and slice into thin rounds. Add the leeks and roughly diced onion to the pot and season with salt and pepper. While the leeks and onions are sweating, roughly dice your sweet potatoes. I didn't peel mine - you can if you really want, but you don't have to, since this will all be cooked down and then blended. Once the onions and leeks are translucent, add the sweet potatoes and curry powder and stir to combine. Then add your coconut milk and chicken stock. *The reason that I say about 2 cups above, is that you can just rinse out the coconut milk can with the chicken stock and add that to the pot. To make this veggie, just substitute vegetable stock, or water and vegetable stock cubes as called for in the original recipe. Stir to combine and bring to a simmer. Add chopped cilantro and hot sauce (I used the full 2 tablespoons, be sure to moderate this if you don't like things too spicy) and cook until the sweet potatoes are soft.

Using either an immersion blender or regular blender, blend until smooth. This is where the newsletter instructions got a little vague. It says to blend the soup base with equal quantities of fresh cream and water and that the final texture should be that of runny cream. It doesn't tell us how much water and cream should be used - I ended up using about 3/4 of a cup of milk. The reason I know that was fine is because it tasted GOOD, which should be one of your indications that you are doing something right.

To serve, squeeze fresh lime juice into the bottom of a bowl (I used a half a lime for one serving) and carefully pour soup over the juice. Do not stir. The lime juice is a kick in the pants and I thoroughly enjoyed it! It literally made my mouth water as I was eating it. I can see adding some shredded chicken to this upon serving to up your protein intake, or even topping with additional roasted vegetables or brown rice. Hope you use your in season produce to make this, it was very easy and unexpected!

What to do with an excess of CSA Vegetables? Pickles!

I hate to complain at all about the abundance of beautiful fresh vegetables we get in our CSA every week, but sometimes it's all you can do to keep up. Right when you think you're doing a great job of eating everything up, another box comes along and throws another 57 zucchinis into the mix. I was in DIRE straights a few weeks ago - 2 weeks worth of beets, green beans and yellow squash. I knew there was no way for me to eat all of those veggies before a) they went bad and b) I got a new stash of vegetables. What to do in this conundrum? Pickles!

I knew before the summer even started that at some point I wanted to pickle beets and green beans. I never thought of pickling squash, but a quick Internet search showed me that it's been done before! I thought the squash would turn out spongy or mushy, but it is quite crisp and delicious. The great thing about pickles is that you can use any flavors you like and adjust your recipe to suit your taste whether it is for sweeter or more sour pickles, to add spice or interesting flavors like curry or lavender.

*One note - I made these as refrigerator pickles although you could easily go through the canning process to make them shelf stable. If you are going to can them, it's important to remember to use really only the freshest fruits or vegetables - any blemishes or rotting on the food can spoil your whole batch once it's canned.

Pickled Green Beans

Ingredients:
2 lbs. fresh green beans, trimmed and cut to fit your jars
1 white onion, peeled and cut into thin slices
Lemon zest, 4 inch piece of peel for each jar
1 Tbs sugar
1/4 cup salt (kosher is fine)
2 cups boiling water
2 cups white vinegar
4 garlic cloves (or more!)
2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

Mix the green beans and onions together. Bring water, vinegar, sugar and salt to a boil, making sure the sugar and salt dissolve. In the meantime, assemble your jars - place a piece of lemon peel and a garlic clove in each jar and distribute the mustard seeds and red pepper flakes among the jars. You may want to use more than what is listed above - I did!

Pack the jars tightly with the green beans and onions and then carefully pour the hot water/vinegar mixture into each jar. If you are canning them, you will want to leave about an inch of head room. If you're just putting them in the refrigerator you can fill to the top. This recipe filled 6 8oz jars.


Pickled Beets
*I left my beets raw, although all recipes I saw called for cooking them first. I wanted them to have a crunch, but you do what you think you'd like best.

Ingredients
5 lb beets, cut into quarters or eighths, depending on the size of your beets.
7 peppercorns
2 cinnamon sticks
3 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1 1/2 cups sugar

Combine water, vinegar, sugar, peppercorns and cinnamon sticks in a pot and bring to a boil; stir occasionally to ensure the sugar is dissolved. Pour this mixture over your beets in a large bowl and let sit until they cool. I didn't put these in jars right away, instead once they cooled I just put them in a large plastic container and refrigerated for a week. Once they were pickled, I distributed into smaller containers, but again, unless you're going for shelf stable, any air tight container will do in the fridge.


Sweet and Hot Curried Squash Pickles
*From The Splendid Table

Ingredients
3 lbs. yellow squash or zucchini, sliced into thin rounds
2 onions, thinly sliced (recipe called for red, I had white)
3 to 4 hot chiles, whatever you have, thinly sliced into rounds
1/4 cup kosher salt
2 3/4 cup white vinegar
3/4 cup sherry
1 1/2 cup orange juice
2 cups sugar
2 Tbs curry powder
1 1/2 tsp cayenne
1 tsp ground allspice (recipe called for whole)
1 tsp ground cloves (recipe called for whole)
3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

In a large bowl, combine squash, onions, chiles and salt. Let them stand for 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Drain and rinse to remove the salt.

In a medium saucepan, bring all the remaining ingredients to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat and let simmer for 3 minutes - stir to make sure the sugar is fully dissolved. Pour the hot liquid over the squash and allow it to cool to room temperature. Once these were cool, I transferred to plastic containers to refrigerate. They are good within a few hours but develop a more intense flavor if you can leave them longer. I was highly skeptical that these would be good - but they are! Nice and crisp with a great flavor.

So now instead of drowning in fresh vegetables, I'm drowning in pickles! But I've been able to give a lot away as gifts and the stress of wasting my beautiful veggies was definitely minimized! (Thanks to Lainie for these muy romantica pickle pictures.)

squash and tomatillo soup with nacho garnish

This soup (from one of the many Moosewood cookbooks) is DYNOMITE*.  Rich, a little sweet and creamy from the squash, bright flavor from the tomatillos, and warmly spicy from chipotles.  I stole an idea from Nigella Lawson (from her corn chowder recipe) to top it with what are basically nachos, and my only regret was not having a ripe avocado in the house.

You can use any kind of winter squash (mine was one of those ufo squashes, but butternut would be great, sugar pumpkin, delicata, kabocha, hubbard, etc).

 I was lucky enough to get 2 pounds of home grown tomatillos for my very own from my friends Felicia and David.  They had so many tomatillos from their garden that when I went over to their house for dinner, they had enough for us to make a double batch of this soup, as well as a batch of enchiladas verdes, in addition to the 2 pounds they sent me home with.  Don't worry if you aren't so lucky - according to the original recipe, you can substitute canned tomatillos no problem, just drain a 26 oz. can and add it along with the canned tomatoes later on, skipping the roasting step.

Squash and Tomatillo Soup
slightly adapted from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics
serves 8

for the soup:
tomatillos (about 2 pounds)
onions (4-5 cups chopped, which usually means 4-5 onions)
garlic (8 cloves, smashed and chopped)
squash (6 cups, peeled, seeded and diced, about 3 pounds)
olive oil
salt and pepper
stock (6 cups, vegetable or chicken)
tomatoes (a 28 oz can of either whole plum tomatoes or diced tomatoes, with their juice)
chipotles in adobo (2 teaspoons minced, or more to taste)

for the nacho topping:
corn tortillas (12)
oil
salt
cheddar cheese (2 cups shredded)
pickled jalapenos (whole or chopped)

other awesome toppings you might like to have:
sour cream
chopped cilantro
sliced scallions
diced avocado
more chipotle in adobo
shredded cheese and crumbled tortilla chips (if you want to skip making the nachos)

to make the soup:

Turn your broiler on high. 

Remove the husks from the tomatillos, rinse them and slice them in half.  Throw them on a sheet pan or cookie sheet with a rim, drizzle with a little olive oil, and place under the broiler for about 5 minutes, or until they soften, their bright green color turns pale, and some get some black spots.  (Note: the original recipe says to roast them at 450 for 30 to 35 minutes... you should do it this way if your tomatillos are large, but the broiler method worked great for me because most of my tomatillos were apricot sized or smaller).

In a large heavy soup pot, heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil and add the onions.  Sprinkle on some salt, stir around and turn the heat to medium.  Stir often, till they soften and turn a bit golden.  Add the chopped garlic and fry till you can smell it.  Stir in the squash chunks, the stock and the can of tomatoes with their juice (if you're using canned tomatillos, add them now).  Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 or so minutes, until the squash is very soft.  Add the chipotles and the roasted tomatillos, and simmer it all together briefly.

In a blender** (or with a stick blender), puree the soup until smooth.  I tried my stick blender first, and it just didn't cut it, so I resorted to doing it in batches in my blender, which was totally up to the task.   This soup freezes and reheats great.  You can serve it right away, of course.

to make the nacho topping (enough for 8 servings):

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Have two sheet pans ready.  Using a pastry brush (or your fingers if you don't mind getting messy), lightly oil both sides of each tortilla, then stack them and cut them first in half, then each half in thirds.  Arrange the triangles on your cookie sheets, sprinkle on some salt, and bake them near the bottom of the oven (rotate your pans halfway through) for 20 minutes, until light golden and crisp.

Sprinkle cheese onto each nacho (I get ridiculously particular about this... you don't have to.  But I really like EACH. NACHO. to have enough cheese on it).  Sprinkle on finely chopped diced pickled jalapenos, if you like (or do like we did and just throw a whole pickled jalapeno in your bowl later).  Return to the oven for a few minutes to melt the cheese.

*if you are a soup lover, you will love this.  if you aren't, well, I'm sorry.

**Remember to be really careful when blendering hot soup - take the little clear plastic thingie out of the top of the blender and put a dishtowel folded into quarters over the hole, this lets the hot air out when you start the blender, instead of the whole thing exploding napalm-y soup all over you and your kitchen.

Corn Chowder and Country Style Ribs

One thing about CSA corn is that it is the most fabulous thing you’ve ever eaten on the day it is picked and deteriorates quickly after that. A hectic few weeks at work meant that I had had 5 ears of corn languishing in the fridge and I knew that eating them boiled on the cob wasn’t going to cut it. Enter the serendipitous finding of a corn chowder recipe in a sample edition of Cook’s Country that Elaine had given me. I adjusted for having one less ear of corn that the recipe called for, but of course mucked it up a little along the way because I wasn’t fully paying attention (oops!). I paired the chowder with some slow cooked, dry rubbed country style pork ribs, recipe also below.

Corn Chowder
Ingredients:
5 ears corn, kernels removed, cobs reserved
1 onion, chopped
1 can corn, drained
4 cups chicken stock
3 slices bacon, thinly sliced
1 lb red bliss potatoes, cut into ½ inch dice
1 cup heavy cream
2 leeks, cleaned and sliced thinly crossways
1 tbs flour
½ cup water

Cook bacon in a soup pot over medium heat until nice and crispy. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon and leave about 2 Tbs of bacon grease in your pot. Add the chopped onions, corn and s&p to taste and sautee until cooked, about 8 minutes. In the meantime, puree canned corn with chicken stock – this is where I went wrong. I didn’t reduce the liquid from the original recipe, but I only used 1 can of corn, instead of two.* This mixture acts as a thickener for the chowder, so I sort of, ahem, screwed myself. Not really, it was easily fixable, we’ll get to that later.

Once your veggies have cooked, add potatoes, corn/stock puree and corn cobs and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer until potatoes are cooked, about 15 minutes.  Throw away the coms and stir in the cream, leeks and reserved bacon.  At this point I realized my mistake above and knew the chowder wouldn't thicken the way it was supposed to.  To remedy this, I made a slurry from 1 tbs flour and half a cup of water and added that to the pot.  I cooked the soup an additional 10-15 minutes to allow the raw flour to cook.  Season with additional salt and pepper to taste.

*The original recipe (sorry, can't link to it since I don't subscribe to Cook's Country) calls for 6 ears of corn, 2 cans of corn and 5 cups of chicken stock.  Feel free to follow my instructions as my chowder was delicious and a great consistency.  But, if you want to do it the original way, puree 2 cans corn with 4 cups stock and add the last cup of stock when you add the potatoes.  Then you shouldn't have to use the flour/water slurry.


Country-Style Ribs
Country style pork ribs are cut from the rib end of the pork loin and are generally boneless, although mine did have a few small bones. Mine were quite long, probably about a foot each, so I did cut them in half before cooking them. They are their most delicious when you can cook them low and slow – you’ll have a super tender piece of meat that is literally falling apart. I did a combination of high heat to get a head start (useful to speed up a week night meal) and low heat.

Ingredients:
2 lb Country Style Pork Ribs
2 tbs paprika
2 tbs fresh ground black pepper
2 tbs dry mustard
2 tbs kosher salt
2 tbs Italian seasoning
1 tbs cumin
Canola oil

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Combine all spices above for your rub. Rub ribs with oil and then thoroughly coat them with your rub. Place ribs on a tin foil lined baking sheet and place in the oven for 20 minutes. At that point, turn the oven down to 250 degrees and let the ribs cook for another hour to hour and half. You want the ribs to reach an internal temperature of 145 degrees and for the to be falling apart tender.

Apples, Two Ways

I went apple picking last weekend, which always seems like an awesome idea at the time and then you get home and you have eleventy billion apples (not to mention the half dozen apple-cider donuts, really?? I really need those?) and you can't possibly EAT all these apples as snacks and what I am I supposed to do with all these? Here are two things I did with them: apple pancakes and upside-down caramel apple muffins.

First up, apple pancakes.

Elaine came over on Sunday for apple pancakes and I decided to use this recipe from smittenkitchen. They were really easy to put together and CHOCK FULL of apples. I wanted to snaz them up a little (and use up another apple) so I melted some maple sugar I had on hand and sauteed apple slices in the resulting syrup. I put one slice in each pancake before I flipped it.

Then, we melted butter in the leftover melted maple sugar, along with additional maple syrup to top the pancakes. Delicious.

The second thing I made were these Caramel Apple Muffins.

As you may have observed by now, I sometimes start cooking things without having all the ingredients. I THOUGHT I had enough butter. But I didn't. So I sliced up all the apples last Thursday, but didn't actually make these muffins until last night. They still turned out awesome.

A couple of notes...you'll sautee your apple slices in butter and brown sugar for the delicious caramel apple topping. I had a TON of the butter syrup left over, so I included a spoonful of it on top of the apples before adding the batter and also on top of the batter before putting the muffins in the oven. I did have a few accidents with the sugar spilling out of the muffin tins, but oh well. I also have a self cleaning oven. Second, I needed to add milk (actually buttermilk, since that what I had) to the batter...it was SO stiff that I could hardly combine it all together. I would say that I added probably a total of 1/2 cup possibly even 3/4 cup. I doubled the recipe so its possible I miscalculated something somewhere, let me know what happens for you.

Now I only have 9 billion apples left.

Jumping the Gun on Autumn

Yesterday was a gorgeous day here, unseasonably warm, as though we were getting one over on Mother Nature and squeezing a few more heavenly days out of summer. However, I had a fully fall meal planned - baked pasta with roasted veggies - and I went through with it despite the fact that it involved turning on the oven in an apartment with no AC.

I had roasted butternut squash left over from the salad I made a few days ago and an eggplant that needed to get eaten. I diced the eggplant, dressed it with olive oil and salt and pepper and roasted in a 425 degree oven for 20 minutes, stirring at the half way point.

Once you have your veggies roasted you need a pound of cooked pasta (I used penne, you should use any type of short pasta you like), a white sauce and some cheese (I used fontina and parmesan). Here's what I used for the white sauce (all already in my fridge!):

6 Tbs butter

4 Tbs flour

salt and pepper

nutmeg

heavy cream

milk

Melt the butter in a saucepan and then whisk in flour. Let this cook for a few minutes...you will be able to smell it when the flour is no longer raw. Add your heavy cream, I'm guessing I had about half a pint and your salt, pepper and nutmeg (s&p should be to taste, probably about a 1/2 tsp of nutmeg). I didn't expect this but the mixture at this stage got REALLY thick so I added milk...I'm not exactly sure how much, probably somewhere between 1/2 cup and a cup and it settled down nicely and became a creamy sauce. Check your seasonings at this point and adjust, mine was pretty bland so I added more salt.

Once you have everything done to this point, combine pasta, veggies, white sauce and 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese. Pour half of this mixture into an oiled baking dish and top with grated fontina cheese, then layer the second half of the past mixture, more fontina and more parmesan cheese. The crunchies you see around the edges of the pan are fried leeks - they were maybe a little TOO well done, but so delicious none the less...just the savory addition needed for this dish, since the butternut squash adds quite a bit of sweetness. I just thin sliced the white and light green parts of a leek and fried in quite a bit of olive oil until they were nice and crunchy.

Bake in a 425 degree oven for about 20 minutes, until bubbly.

Roasted Butternut Squash and Arugula Salad

Two cute baby butternut squash and a bunch of arugula walked into a bar...no, not really. But I did find myself with two small butternut squash from our parents' garden and a bunch of arugula from this week's CSA. The squash had been hanging around for a while and I wanted to use them up and the arugula DOES NOT KEEP so had to be used immediately. A quick internet search led me to an Ina Garten recipe with EXACTLY these two ingredients. Serendipity. Of course, I didn't have ALL the ingredients on hand but I improvised and results were still delicioso, although I do look forward to making this by the book next time. For example, I substituted apple cider with apple cider syrup diluted with water - the syrup is really tangy and intense so it was still flavorful, but I'd still like to do this with the apple cider. Anyway, here is what I had:

2 little butternut squash

1 Tbs real maple syrup

2 Tbs dried cherries (instead of cranberries)

1 bunch arugula

Apple cider syrup (diluted with water, instead of apple cider, total 3/4 cup liquid)

2 Tbs white wine vinegar (instead of cider vinegar)

2 Tbs chopped onion and garlic (instead of shallots)

2 tps Dijon mustard

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 cup toasted pecans (instead of walnuts)

Parmesan cheese

Peel and dice (3/4 inch) the butternut squash. Place on baking sheet with 2 tbs olive oil, maple syrup and s&p and roast at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Add the dried cherries with about 5 minutes left.

To make the dressing, I combined apple cider syrup and water (about half and half, but if you use cider or juice this won't be an issue), vinegar and onions/garlic and brought it to a boil. Let it simmer until its reduced to about 1/4 cup. Remove from heat and whisk in mustard, olive oil and s&p to taste.

Top your arugula with the warm butternut squash and a few tablespoons of dressing. Sprinkle with toasted nuts and parmesan cheese - I used a vegetable peeler to make ribbons but you can use grated as well.

You'll find that the flavors in this salad complement each other beautifully - the hint of maple syrup with the sweet squash and tart cherries, the nutty parmesan with the peppery arugula and pecans. And I have tons of the roasted squash leftover, so there will be a pasta recipe to follow soon!

Peach Shortcakes!

I was in Trader Joe's last week and they were selling local peachs in these adorable cardboard baskets that said "These are from here!" and so of course I bought them. They were so declicious and juicy, perfectly ripe and fresh. However, I soon realized buying these was dumb, because there were about 15 peaches in the basket and now I live alone and that is WAY TOO MANY PEACHES for one person to consume before they get all mushy and gross. Nothing to do but bake with them.

Our friend Jess is a pie baker extraordinaire, and she and Elaine made DELICIOUS peach pies several weeks ago. I can't get involved in pie making - the crust is crazy intimidating to me. Although last week I made this zucchini gallette from smittenkitchen and while it wasn't perfect, I'm going to try again so it CAN be perfect. But anyway, making a pie seemed like too much and crisps and crumbles seemed too fall/winter for these summer beauties. I found a recipe for peach shortcakes on the Cook's Illustrated website - I HEART SHORTCAKES, so this seemed perfect. Kind of strange I never thought of making them with anything other than strawberries. But now that its a possibility, I will make them all the time, with everything because these are easy and awesome.

(Cook's did a lot of fussy things with the peaches that I didn't do...maybe next time, but I doubt it.)

For the peaches you need:

2 lb peaches (about 4-5)

4 tbs sugar (reduced from 6)

For the biscuits you need:

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tbs sugar

3/4 tsp salt

2/3 cup buttermilk

1 egg

1 stick melted butter (unsalted), cooled slightly

For the peaches:

Slice peaches into 1/4 inch thick segments, sprinkle with sugar and let sit to get the juices flowing. Cook's suggests chopping 1/4 of the peaches up smaller and adding peach schnapps to the mix and microwaving it, but I think this was to ramp up the peach flavor when you don't have good peaches, which I did, so I didn't bother.

For the biscuits:

Combine dry ingredients. Whisk together buttermilk, egg and melted butter. Pour wet ingredients into dry until just combined, then stir vigorously with a wooden spoon for 30 seconds. Shocking, I know. Instead of a loose, wet biscuit dough like I expected, it held together quite well and was kind of smooth. Using a greased 1/3 cup measuring cup, scoop 6 biscuits onto a greased or parchment lined baking sheet. Sprinkle biscuits with 1 tbs sugar and bake at 475 degrees for about 15 minutes until golden brown on top. Let cool on a rack.

To assemble:

Split a biscuit, spoon some peaches on the bottom half, top with whipped cream and the top of the biscuit. Eat. Enjoy.

Such a simple dessert but so delicious because of the freshness of the peaches - a great example of how perfect simple dishes can be if you use ingredients that are in season.

Oh Fiddleheads.

First, dear readers, I apologize for committing the cardinal sin of blogging, which of course, is not blogging. I've missed you. I've been busy, but I'm back now, not to worry.

Onward and upward to fiddleheads! Fiddlehead ferns are the unfurled heads of young ferns and can be found largely in the springtime. They have a bitter taste and can be used anywhere you would normally use a green leafy vegetable. I looked up a ton of recipes, but in the end, I just punted and made a simple appetizer: sauteed fiddleheads on toast. Delicious.

Every recipe I read recommended boiling the fiddleheads first, which I did. This takes some of the bitterness out of the vegetable...similar to what you might do with broccoli rabe. So, I washed the fiddleheads twice and then boiled them in salted water for about 5 minutes. I sauteed some garlic in olive oil and threw the fiddleheads in for a few minutes, just until they got a chance to get to know each other. I served them on buttered toast - sort of a very large veggie bruschetta. It was delicious! And look how cute they are!

Roman-Style Braised Artichokes - Hooray for Spring!

Right now, Trader Joe's is selling 4 packs of modest sized artichokes for $3, which seemed like a pretty great deal to me. It's artichoke season - March through May! So it's the right time for them to be delicious.

Usually in our family we just steam or boil artichokes, doing a minimum of trimming, and eat them leaf by leaf, dipping them in either melted butter or mayonnaise (I know, mayonnaise sounds crazy. But it's good, trust me - as long as it's Hellmans/Best Foods), till we get to the utterly delicious heart. Mmm.

For our Mama's birthday dinner though, I thought I'd try something special with them. I used a recipe in a book on Italian country cooking by Anne Willan. It's such a great recipe, there are hardly any ingredients but the flavor is amazing, and it can be made ahead and served at room temperature. It's meant to be an appetizer, but it made a nice accompaniment to the prosciutto and mushroom ravioli we made for the main dish.

you need:
6-8 cloves of garlic
1 bunch flat leaf parsley
8-10 sprigs of mint
salt and pepper
2-3 lemons (I think she calls for 3 to supply garnish... i skipped that)
6-8 young globe artichokes
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Now it's time to trim the artichokes - the only tough part to this recipe (you can do it!). Have a big bowl of cold water ready, in which you have squeezed the juice of one lemon - leave the lemon pieces floating in the water. Now the artichoke: You first want to cut off all but 1 1/2 to 2 inches of stem, and if it looks really tough, peel the outside. Then you want to go around and peel back the leaves one by one, trying to leave the base of each leaf (the edible part) behind. Your first go round the artichoke you'll probably want to pull the whole leaf off - the outermost ones are totally tough. Keep going around and around, till you get past the dark green leaves and expose the inner, lighter green ones whose tips are all close together in a cone shape (I didn't go quite far enough in, afraid to waste them, but next time I'll be bolder, because we all ended up with a couple rows of leaves we had to discard for being too fibrous, and the goal here is to trim down till everything is edible).
Now once you're down to the inside cone of more tender leaves, you get a nice sharp knife, and cut that whole cone off, to expose the really short yellow-to-purple leaves with the sharp tips(depending on how old the artichoke is), and the hairy choke. Get a small spoon or a melon baller, and dig out all those sharp little leaves, and every little bit of the hairy choke, until there's a little cavity, all clean, surrounded by nice tender leaves. Rub it all over with one of the halves of lemon, to keep it from turning brown, and then throw it in the lemony water while you finish up the rest of the artichoke trimming.
Phew! I promise, the hard part is over. When that's all done, chop up your garlic, parsley and mint nice and small, and mix it all together in a little bowl.

Now get a nice wide saute pan that has a lid, one that can fit all your artichokes flat side down in one layer. One at a time, pull your artichokes out of the water bath, and fill the cavities with a couple spoonfuls of the garlic and herb mixture, and put them cut side down into the pan. If you have some of the herb mixture left over, sprinkle it on now, or better yet, save it for later. I had left my stems too long to fit under the lid, so Dad trimmed them off and threw them into the braising liquid, they were delicious little snack nuggets later.
Sprinkle plenty of salt and pepper over the artichokes, then pour over the 1/2 cup of olive oil (really! don't hesitate, it's not too much) and enough cold fresh water to come up the sides of the artichokes about halfway (I also threw in the squeezed out lemon halves from before). Put the lid on the pan, put the pan over medium high heat, and bring it to a boil. When it's boiling, lower the heat and let it simmer, 25 minutes if you have small artichokes like I had, or more, up to 45, if they're big, until they're tender and a knife point goes in easily.

Then (here's a step I forgot to do, and it was totally fine... but I think I would do it next time) move the artichokes out of the pan and onto a serving platter, and reduce the cooking liquid in the pan to about 1 cup. You can add in the remaining herb mixture now if you have any, and once the boiling down has been accomplished and you like lots of lemon, you could add some more fresh lemon juice, maybe 1/2 a lemon's worth. I might even throw in some freshly grated lemon zest next time, but only after the cooking is done.

Pour that beautiful sauce over the artichokes. This dish is ideal at room temperature, making it great for dinner parties, you can make it way ahead. And oh my heavens, the sauce is so good (even if you don't boil it down) - you'll definitely want some crusty bread around for sopping it up - a messy but worthwhile procedure. The leftover sauce (several days later) made a great afternoon snack with bread and a piece a cheese.