Stuffed Artichoke Recipe Photos with commentary

Anthony's Stuffed Artichoke Recipe Photos with Commentary
(Step by step photos of the cooking process for this recipe with commentary!)

Read the complete Stuffed Artichoke Recipe

I have placed some explanatory photos below that, hopefully, will help you along in your Italian culinary adventure. Sometimes a picture and a few tips really helps!... ;-) These are the details I feel are always missing in your average recipe book or recipe website.

Making Stuffed Artichokes like grandma! Step by step photos Part 1
Preparing the Artichokes.

Well, here we have two beautiful artichokes ready to work with. You have to search hard for good looking Artichokes! By good looking artichokes I mean artichokes that have the least amount of brown/black spots on them. You know..., they kind of look like maracas ;-)

...and these are the tools you will need to create your work of art. See that knife? It's a Anolon knife, best knife I've ever had! My Mom got me this for Christmas one year and I have been spoiled ever since! You can get one here! I can't begin to tell you how nice this knife is!

You will need to cut off the bottom of the artichoke as shown above including some of the lower leaves. You want to have a nice flat bottom so the Artichoke can sit upright.

... and here is sits, nice and level and ready to work with.

At this point, you will need to carefully pry open the leaves to loosen them up. Don't pull them too far or they will break. After you have loosened up the leaves you will then trim the top of each leaf.

When you are done with all the trimming, your artichoke should look like this here.

Ooh... nice top view! Looks like a flower!

After you are all done trimming, you will need to wash the artichoke again, this time pulling the leaves out as you do so.

Try to find a nice loaf of Italian bread with a crunchy crust like you see here. Cut about 8 slices and put them into a zip-lock and into the freezer.

Here is the bread after freezing ready to work with.

You are now going to grate the frozen bread slices into fresh bread crumbs. Use one slice at a time while leaving the extra slices in the freezer. They thaw out very fast.

Do this part quickly so the bread stays frozen while you are grating.

I use the second to smallest holes on the grater for desired consistency.

Making Stuffed Artichokes like grandma! Step by step photos Part 2
Making the Artichoke Stuffing.

As the bread starts to thaw you will need to squeeze it into a ball and keep grating.

Look, a ball of bread, how interesting ;-) Note: My wife saw this photo and statement and had this comment to make: "My husband is weird, you should hear the music he listens too" ;-)

When you're done you should have a nice little pile like this here.

Pour it into a large bowl...

Chop up some fresh parsley and add that to the bowl. Mix well. You can see the consistency on the right that you are shooting for.

Chop up some fresh garlic like so....

Then grab some extra virgin olive oil. I recommend having a very large container of this stuff lying around because it's oh so good!

Put both the olive oil and garlic into a frying pan and heat it up on low heat until you see little bubbles forming on the edges of the garlic as shown above. You do NOT want to overcook/burn the garlic, if you over cook the garlic get's brown and you have to throw away the oil and start over!

Then pout this into a measuring cup. Be sure to let all the garlic and tasty bits get into the measuring cup! You will want to pour all of this over the artichokes.

There is the garlic oil ready to use. You can see here that I cooked my oil and garlic with some basil. You can put fresh parsley in here as well.

Now add some Parmesan cheese to your bread crumbs.

Mix well. Now with the olive oil mixture and the bread crumb mixture all ready to go, you are ready to proceed with stuffing the artichokes.

Now take your artichoke and spread open the leaves again, this time stuffing it with your stuffing mixture, working your way around until every leaf is full of stuffing.

Making Stuffed Artichokes like grandma! Step by step photos Part 3
Stuffing the Artichokes.

OK, we are getting there! Here we have an artichoke all stuffed and ready to go. See how pretty this looks? It's perfect and ready for olive oil now :-)

Mix up your olive oil mixture so the garlic, basil and all the tasty bits are mixed well throughout so it comes out evenly when you pour it.

Slowly pour the olive oil onto the stuffing.

Carefully work your way around each leaf getting the oil mixture into the stuffing. Don't over pour. You don't want to soak the stuffing, you just want a little bit of olive oil mixture in each stuffed leaf.

There is the artichoke all trimmed, stuffed and dripping with olive oil. Now you are ready to steam them. Put them on a steamer as shown above. You want to make sure you have a short pan so the steam stays close to the Artichokes. Fill your pan with water from the bottom of the pan to the bottom of the strainer. Bring water to a boil and cover.

Here they are after being steamed for a few minutes.

...and here they are after 45 minutes of steaming. Notice the darkening of the leaves.

I like to use a shallow bowl for presentation as you see here. Be sure to have everything planned out so you can serve these hot.

There is an extra bowl here for the finished leaves. I recommend red wine with this dish. Now, there is a whole process to eating these things which my wife and I will demonstrate below.

When you pull off a leaf, it will look like this here. See how the stuffing totally covers the leaf? This is really delicious stuff. I'm getting hungry just looking at this! You can't see it, but there is a meaty part of the leaf at it's base that you scrape off with your teeth. Don't just scrape off the stuffing, bite down hard enough so you pull off the stuffing and the meaty part of the leave at it's base. You will figure this out after you have gone through this whole process once.

After you have taken a bite, i.e. scraped it all off with your teeth, (you don't really bite, you scrape) the leave will look like this here. See how there is a portion on the bottom leaf that is not as shiny as the upper part? That's because there was a nice chunk of leaf meat there that is very yummy. When you have finished your leaf you just throw it into the extra bowl and then grab another stuffed leaf and just continue to eat and have nice conversation and enjoy some wine with it. Really quite lovely! This is a great meal to have with someone you love to spend some time with. Take your time while eating and enjoy some great conversation. Try it, you'll see :-)

Mama Mia! that was some good stuff. You can see here we have worked our way down to the center of the Artichoke. The leaves get skinnier and skinner as you go. Eventually, they are too skinny to get any yummy leaf meat.

When you have gone as far as you can in regards to eating the leaves, you will end up with something like this here. Wow, what the heck is that? Looks like some body snatching alien pod of some sort.. Don't be scared, there is more delicious eating to go with this thing.

Making Stuffed Artichokes like grandma! Step by step photos Part 4
Making it to the Artichoke Heart! YUM!

OK, now your are going to work your way down to the Artichoke heart. Take off the leaves that you saw on the body-snatching-alien-pod-looking-thing in the previous photo and you end up with this here. Man! Just keeps getting weirder! What a very interesting vegetable this thing is!

Now, with a fork, carefully scrape off the tiny top leaves that lay just above the heart.

Scrape a little more. It's not quite clear in the photo, but at one point you will actually see something that looks like hair or fur. Scrape all that off.

...and walla! You have made it to the artichoke heart, congratulations! YUMMY!

Here it is! All that work gets you to this in the end, a nice artichoke heart! Savor this moment, enjoy each bite, take small bites of this so you can enjoy every bit of it. This ends the stuffed artichoke experience. :-) Peace!~

OK, that was just lovely! Now take me back to the main recipe.