Elizabeth David has a recipe called Carciofi alla Veneziana in her brilliant book Italian Food that had immediately captured my attention. I had just bought the book and I was flipping through the vegetables section – as I often do with most of my recipe books – looking for nothing in particular but rather some kind of cooking inspiration, and stopped at the sight of the word 'Venetian'. The recipe is short and simple, yet it sounded unfamiliar to me, a Venetian. I was intrigued.
The unfamiliarity might derive from the fact that in my Venetian family artichokes were somewhat disregarded. I believe my mum didn't particularly like them, or just didn't know how to prepare them, or maybe couldn't be bothered to clean them. Most likely it was a combination of the three, which made the appearance of artichokes spare and rare on our table. Admittedly, as a child I didn't love them either, possibly because of the way they were always, unmistakably presented to me: steamed, cut in half, with a bowl of oil and salt for dipping. Their colour, a shade between dark green, kaki and grey, was very unappealing.
At any rate, I ate them, I had to. So I watched my parents tackling them, trying to copy their technique – detaching one leaf at the time, starting from the outer layers, dipping each in the seasoning bowl, then scraping the pulp with the front teeth, and throwing the fibrous remaining on the plate. Repeating these same movements and gestures mechanically, almost ritually, again and again, until they reached the most inner, tender leaves, which could be eaten whole. Finally, the heart, pale green and creamy, sweet in a strange way. By the end of the meal, the plate was covered in grey-ish leafy ruins, the seasoning bowl emptied and slightly oily and messy. It seemed like so much effort for so little food.
No other ways of making artichokes made their way to our kitchen: neither raw, nor stewed, braised, in risotto, in pasta or frittata, and certainly not pickled or fried. I had no knowledge of the existing different varieties of this thistle, and certainly not of the regional differences, or the traditional, local way of eating them. Throughout the years, I ate them a handful of times, always at restaurants, always away from home, usually while travelling, often in Rome. The memory of my first fried artichoke alla Giudia (or Giudea), eaten at Nonna Betta in the Roman Jewish ghetto, is ingrained in my memory – the sight of it arriving to the table, the more-ish crisp outer leaves shielding a sweet, melting core. The flavour, the texture – what an epiphany. It came on a plate of its own, elegant in its sad, decadent beauty. It was a flower after all. Prepared this way, with its 'petals' wide open, you could really tell. This was the moment I fell in love with artichokes. I then ate them raw in salad with oil, lemon and Parmesan, and I ate them in Vignarola. Roman dishes, never Venetian, and most remarkably, never home-made.
