Artichauts en ragoût/Stew of Baby Artichokes with White Onions and Garlic

MONDAY, MARCH 15, 2010

Before the Lydie Project I would pick recipes to try based on their apparent appeal as I read them over – ingredients I liked or an interesting preparation. The thing about doing this project is that I am forced to make recipes that I would ordinarily overlook. Sometimes that results in a pleasant surprise. This is the case with my latest Lydie experiment. The baby artichoke dish looked kind of uninteresting. Just artichoke hearts braised with some onion and garlic, with herbs added. Boring. Au contraire. It’s quite the little gem of a dish. I saw some baby artichokes at the grocer’s and thought I'd give it a try. It turned out delicious. I also liked that the preparation was short. Braising takes just 30 minutes.

I was initially put off by the prospect of using only the hearts of the artichoke. It kills me to pull off all those succulent leaves and just throw them away. Another thing: the directions call for removing the choke, the hairy part at the base. I’m never sure what I’m doing or how to execute this maneuver. Well, I managed with a little paring knife that I stuck in and rotated at the base. It seems to have done the trick. They turned out just fine. (I only mourned the discarded leaves for a second.) This is a great little side dish that will go with many foods. The artichokes accompanied a pasta dish with almond sauce that I’d been wanting to try. (Not in the Lydie cookbook.) I’m sure I’ll make these little morsels again.

Croquettes de pommes de terre/Potato Puffs

SUNDAY, MARCH 7, 2010

We have a friend with a massive garden. Among the things he grows are something like 16 varieties of potatoes! Little ones, big ones, waxy ones, ones for baking, yellow, white, and some with a deep purple center with a white ring around the outside. Beautiful! I’ve used them for roasting and to make potato leek soup. Lydie has written a whole cookbook devoted soley to potatoes so I guess she knows her way around a potato. The cookbook of this project has only a few potato recipes. It’s the night of the Oscars and I thought it would be a good time to munch on croquettes de pommes de terre or potato puffs. I would be serving them along side a large salad. (My way of compensating for the fat consumed in the potatoes.)

I’m not one to seek out deep frying experiences. For one thing, I hate to use all that oil only once and then discard it. I also try to avoid the calories and health risks of deep frying. Yes, I know that if you get the oil to the right temperature and flash fry the item it doesn’t really absorb that much oil.

So, I have to admit I entered this project with a few misgivings and with some half-hearted preparation. I only poured a couple of inches of vegetable oil into the skillet, not the quart of oil the recipe called for. Secondly, I’ve never invested in a thermometer for deep frying seeing as how I never thought I’d be doing much of it. So, I didn’t really know if I got the oil hot enough.

Well, the result reflected my ambivalence. The potatoes were tasty, but, to my taste, a little greasy. The one thing that amazed me once again is the alchemy of mashed potatoes and flour. Incredibly, these two ingredients resulted in a dough one could quite easily roll out and cut with a cookie cutter into rounds to be deep fried.

In the hands of a deep frying aficionado perhaps this would be a nice recipe. Me, I think I will leave the deep frying to someone else.