Baby Artichokes

My favorite place in all of San Francisco is the farmers market at the Ferry Building (I think that officially makes me a food geek).  It offers up such a wide range of produce and many varieties of fruits and veggies that I have not even seen before.  Why buy a regular zucchini when you can buy some crazy multi-colored striped one?  I have decided that every week I am going to try to buy at least one item that is new to me or that I very rarely eat.  This week = baby artichokes.

Confession...I have never cooked artichokes before...no idea what to do with them.  I've only ever had the jarred variety on pizza or that creamy artichoke dip.  The big softball sized globe artichokes in the stores always were a bit intimidating to me, but I decided that I could probably handle the babies!

So, here are my 6 little artichokes.  Yes, only 6.  I wasn't sure how this experiment was going to turn out...

After much Google searching, not only did I find out that artichokes are a part of the thistle family, and are a good source of folate, magnesium and vitamin K too, did I realize that these babies are definitely the way to go when it come to prep.  You don't have to deal with removing the inedible fuzzy choke because it hasn't fully developed yet.

I can't give specific credit to anyone for this recipe.  I probably looked at 25 different recipes and how-to pages for cooking artichokes, then combined my favorite parts of all of them to come up with this one.

Sautéed Baby Artichokes

6 baby artichokes
1 lemon
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 tomato, chopped
1 tbsp. red wine vinegar
salt and pepper
parmesan cheese

Instructions:
The first step is to fill a bowl with cold water.  Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon.  Artichokes start to turn brown very quickly so you want to toss them in the acidified water as soon as you begin peeling them.

Wash the artichokes.  Start peeling back the outer dark leaves until you get to the smooth pale green leaves.  It feels like you are throwing away most of the artichoke, but you really just want to eat the tender inner leaves.

Then chop off the top 1/2 inch or so.

Trim off the stem, cut in half and toss into the lemon-water.  I didn't see a choke on most of the artichokes I was using.  I had one that was slightly larger, so I scooped out some very fine fuzzy hairs out of the center.  I'm thinking it probably didn't matter because they were so small.

 Heat 1 tbsp. of olive oil over medium-high heat.  Drain the artichokes, pat them dry on some paper towel and add them to the pan.  Sauté for 2 minutes before adding the garlic and then sauté for another 1-2 minutes.

Then I added in the chicken broth, chopped tomato, red wine vinegar and salt and pepper.  I reduced the heat to medium-low and let it simmer for about 10 minutes.  Then I squeezed in the juice from the remaining lemon half and let it cook for another couple of minutes.

I finished it off with some freshly grated parmesan.

This made the tiniest amount... but ok for just the two of us.  Great new side dish!  It didn't take as long to prepare as I thought it might, but I think it is well worth the time.  I'm still not sure if I'm ready to tackle the large artichokes yet, but I am going to go searching for more babies next week before the season is over.