These are a family favorite, especially on Thanksgiving. My brother and I were the designated artichoke fillers in the Consola family Thanksgiving. Originally, my grandmother would fill the artichokes, filling some with “anchovy-less” bread crumbs and marking them with toothpicks for finicky eaters. Now we just pretend the breadcrumbs are all plain…
Ingredients
- 4 cups unseasoned bread crumbs, (1 hard loaf of Italian bread, grated)
- 2 hands full grated cheese, Romano or parmesan
- 3 anchovy fillets
- 2 -3 big cloves garlic, minced
- a few sprigs of fresh parsley, trimmed and chopped (about 3 tablespoons)
- Medium to large firm artichokes, cleaned and trimmed – as many as you need.
Instructions
Coat a large frying pan with olive oil. When hot, add garlic and anchovies. Move them around in the pan until the anchovies have melted. Pour in bread crumbs, constantly stirring until all the bread crumbs are browned. Shut off heat. Add cheese and parsley, stirring until cheese melts into crumbs.
Prepare the artichokes by cutting the top off and clipping the points off of the leaves. Cut the stem off so the artichoke will sit upright. Wash them well in cold water, loosening them up and banging them top down on the counter – especially homegrown ones that often have pincher bugs living in the leaves. If you are doing a lot of artichokes, place clean artichokes in a pot of cold water and the juice of half of a lemon. This will keep the tops of the leaves from turning brown. Dry each artichoke well by banging out the water onto a paper towel before filling.
Fill the artichokes by carefully holding each leaf open and filling with a tiny spoonful (demitasse spoon) of bread crumb mixture. Stuff the mixture down as far as you can on each leaf. Fill leaves circularly from the outer leaves toward the inner leaves until you reach the center.
In a dutch oven or electric frying pan, place artichokes in about 1/2 inch water. Add 1 teaspoon of olive oil and 1 clove of garlic to the water. Steam about 20 minutes on a low boil. Check often to make sure there is enough water, adding more as needed. Put a fork through the middle of the artichoke to see if it is done. Fork should slide through the heart easily.
