If I had to convince someone to try artichoke I’d just tell them the truth: eating it is a ritual where every mouthful is better than the last. Maybe I’d also say that the ritual is sensual and I’m not referring to it being an aphrodisiac, like Catalina de Medici believed when she introduced it to France in the 17th century, or that Traditional Chinese Medicine shares the same belief since artichoke protects the liver, the organ ‘responsible for vigor’. I’m talking about the way that we eat it, that each bite becomes more pleasurable and also slowly reveals what’s to come: a heart made from the same pulp as the leaves, but bigger, silkier, and more intense. That’s what I would say to persuade someone and I’d probably add some facts from the Encyclopedia of Neuroscience by Binder, Hirokawa, and Windhorst: the experience is pleasurable because two of its components, chloric acid and cynarin, strengthen our perception of sweet notes.
From the start, the strategy is to arrive at the nucleus by eating in circles. The leaves are pulled out and eaten slowly to scrape every miligram of pulp, and with each circle the leaves become softer and chunkier. I like to dip the leaves with a vinaigrette of olive oil, balsamic, and salt which collects in the concave leaves which after biting should be sucked. The closer you get to the heart the less effort it takes for the teeth to pull the paste from the leaf, each one fuller than the last. Each bite is more flavorful and you begin to eat faster. That fruit continues until you reach thin slivers that are so soft that you can eat them whole, squeezing various together and taking them all at once.
The excitement is interrupted by the first pause: Just before reaching the heart, thorns begin to appear and one must be careful to bite just right. It’s best to grab with your index fingers and thumb to guide the teeth and only chew the soft bits. The end of the first act and a second pause: it’s time to dig out the heart, remove the cone of thorns, and get rid of the hard exterior pieces. Take the heart and break it in four and dip each one into the vinaigrette. The heart is soft and filling and smacks the palate with a flavor that sits between umami, bitter, and sweet so intensely, that the experience of eating the leaves becomes insignificant.
Maybe it’s that it looks like a prehistoric vegetable that gives it an anti-marketing aesthetic, or maybe it’s another reason altogether, but artichoke consumption has fallen in Argentina. In the last 30 years the amount of land planted with artichokes has fallen from 4,000 to 1,5000 hectares; the annual harvest has dropped from 56,000 to 21,000 tons. Adriana Riccetti, agricultural engineer and founder of The Association of Platense Artichokes, which forms more than 100 farmers, has a few ideas. On the one hand, she says that “there is no time to cook'' while on the other that consumption stopped “as our grandmother’s disappeared from the kitchens (sic) they were the ones who knew these recipes.” The first reason is more pessimistic and it makes sense. Unlike a tomato that you buy, wash, and eat, the artichoke requires a process. The most common method is to boil it for an hour and let it cool, and so many people don’t bother buying. The other explanation is more optimistic because with a little education new generations (those who can make time) can be reintroduced to it.
The farmers of La Plata, the city that concentrates 70% of the country’s artichoke fields (the rest are planted in the Cuyo region—Mendoza and San Juan—with a little bit in the city of Rosario) have a strategy to rebuild consumption. During the first weekend of October, they organize the Artichoke Fair.
The way that they produce this perennial leafy green is admirable. The same plant bears fruit for three years, and the months in which it is not producing (November through May), the land is left untouched in anticipation for the following harvest. The contrast with other harvests that produce year around is obvious and presents another detail: Argentina doesn’t participate in the global artichoke market, the numbers don’t work for export, and so the three varieties (Romanesco, Ñato or Rosario Violet, and White Artichoke) are all consumed inside the country. At the Association of Platense Artichokes, everyone agrees: We have to stimulate consumption because the supplies are abundant, and so is the quality. La Plata obtained the seal of Geographic Identification, which measures freshness (it should be compact with the leaves closed), harvest period, and variation.
These parameters are also a good guide to make the right choice at the vegetable stand and surprise your neighbors: don’t waste your time with open leaves (they are more fibrous) or the big ones (they have a small heart with more thorns). You have to grab a medium-sized artichoke, which has the best hearts, with closed leaves that hold in the moisture.
I head to the Artichoke Fair determined to corroborate the hypothesis of Riccetti. I drive 56 kilometers southeast from Buenos Aires and arrive early to the city of diagonal streets and the farm belt where production is concentrated. The first thing I spot is Quique, a man in his 60s dressed in trackpants and a button-up, who is complaining in front of the producer’s gazebo. “There are hardly any artichokes for sale this year. There’s just one stand and it’s tiny.” Quique and his wife are faithful attendents of the fair, which this year turns 15. In other editions there were as many as seven farmer’s stands—before there were 10 farmers, now there are 3 doing all the organizing. Despite their fury, the couple buys a dozen violet artichokes for 1000 pesos (about 3.50 dollars). This varietal (called Romanesco or French) was the first to be brought over to La Plata by Italian immigrants in the 1950s and the one that continues to be grown. On the rest of the block (Avenue 51 between 5th and 6th street) there are seven more stands. Each one sells a plate with artichoke as the star ingredient, from paella to hamburgers all the way to baos and dumplings with mung beans, caramelized onions and scallions. Each plate costs $1000. If the idea was to hide the artichoke with dishes that already have their own followings, the shrimp and potato brochette got the job done. The two artichoke leaves stuffed onto the stick wouldn’t have been noticeable if it weren’t for having to chew them a thousand times (for every peso spent).
I walk around the fair thinking about the drop in sales and the reasons that Adriana hypothesized: lack of time and a new generation that lost the tradition. I run into people of all ages (although the majority are older than 40) and talk with two younger attendants: Maxi, 31, and Lucia, 33. It’s immediately apparent that they are fanatics with zero worries for time. Earlier in the week they made artichoke and onion empanadas, peeling leaf after leaf, and using the hearts of 10 artichokes. They aren’t novices either (Lucia has come to previous fairs with her grandmother and aunt), and they don’t need much. They like artichoke as the main dish and even eat it without preparing a vinaigrette, pulling the pulp straight from the leaf.
In the middle of the block, there are tables for about 60 diners. I sit down and whilst I eat chocolate adorned with artichoke leaves that have been dehydrated and caramelized with sugar, which is to say, whilst I eat chocolate, I meet a pair of couples. They are well into their 60s and came from the neighborhood of Hurlingham ‘to buy fresh produce’. They are food fair aficionados and don’t help much with drawing any conclusions: they are older and inheritors of the culinary tradition. Ana is a cook, and although her husband will eat three artichokes a day on their own, she has more elaborate recipes—like pulling back the leaves and filling the heads with a mix of ground beef, garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper, and boiling them into an covered pot with shallow water and more olive oil, salt, and balsamic. Another cheap vegetarian version is stuffing it with bread crumbs and olive oil; every leaf plucked from the artichoke comes with a little stuffing. These preparations were passed to her by her Italian mother, who upon return from a trip to Sicily brought back a secret: boil the hearts in a good balsamic.
Ana’s husband doesn’t want to be left out and tells his own secret: Don’t toss the water and “make use of the iron to water the plants”. I crunch the numbers, and it doesn’t really add up. If you boil 3 artichokes in 4 liters of water the amount of iron extracted would be less than 2 milligrams. It’s not that it is bad for his plants, they just don’t get much out of it.
What the plant does have is cynarin, the active element that hides the artichoke’s medicinal secret. Its most important function: it relieves overeating because of its choleretic and cholagogue properties, in layman’s terms, it helps produce bile and digest fats. It is also a liver protector: the extract of its leaves prevents the oxidation of liver cells. If, in addition to the latter, it is taken into account that it is used to make the Italian liquor called Cynar, it could be said that the artichoke serves not on both sides, but on two counters at the same time.
NOT A SUBSCRIBER BUT ENJOY READING MATAMBRE?
Nothing is really free. Your support pays editors, writers, illustrators, copy-editors, and translators.
BECOME A SUBSCRIBER OR SUPPORT WITH A SMALL DONATION
Most likely the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans did not throw parties or make elaborate dishes, but they did sense the presence of cynarin because they used it for therapeutic purposes. And it was the Greek myths that gave the plant its name: as usual, a god (Zeus) falls in love with a beautiful girl (Cynara) with gray hair and violet-green eyes, and takes her to live on Olympus. Things don't work out: Cynara misses her family and returns home, only for Zeus to angrily turn her into an artichoke. The usual: anger, revenge and extremely rare punishments.
I left La Plata with new recipes, the feeling that none of us present were the ones that needed convincing, plus four artichokes. The sales, at least, were good, according to Riccetti.
The Tuesday that followed the fair I leave work at 5pm. I cross the border of Chacarita to Villa Crespo and kill time before playing football at 7. The vegetable stands in Villa Crespo have more variety and are cheaper than the ones in Recoleta where I live. I chose 3 artichokes with the tricks I learned from the farmers: compact and medium-sized. As I bike up Avenida Corrientes with my legs exhausted from the game, I think about the city and the lack of time to perform rituals—with so many hours at work to keep up with the high cost of living, and so much recreation and bars and restaurants to distract us, it’s evident that there isn’t enough time in the day. I get home at 9pm and while I shower I put a pot of water to boil and some milanesas in the oven. I cook the artichokes for an hour and set them out to cool. It’s 11pm and I still have to prep the vinaigrette and 11pm is already too late. If I’d just made a salad with some tomate, lettuce and onion I’d be in bed by now. There is no solution, but there is a justification: I don’t have any time but I think about how each bite is better than the last, and at the same time, a slow reveal of what’s to come. I arrive at the heart and scream to myself, This is incredible.
-
Nicolás González. Chemist and journalist. He lives in Buenos Aires and can’t help but obsess over things, some of which he has written about in La Agenda: acá, aquí y acá.
La Delmas. Illustrator and NFT artist. She was born and raised in the outskirts of Buenos Aires. She is 100% inspired by her family origins and customs and a lover of homemade food and good meals. Find her on Instagram.
-
MATAMBRE is a reader-funded fanzine and journal dedicated to exploring the socio-economic and political impacts of our food systems from the perspective of Buenos Aires and Argentina. If you think work like this is valuable and would like to support local and independent journalism, please support with a monthly subscription beginning at just $2 a month.