Waffles for Dinner: Artichokes and Memories

When I was born, my parents gave up their small apartment in San Francisco and moved to the suburbs, along with thousands of other young couples who were able to buy homes with loans from the GI Bill. We lived in Daly City, on Stoneyford Drive, a stone’s throw from the San Francisco city border.

We traveled into San Francisco on a regular basis, to visit our Aunt Rose, who owned an apartment building that smelled of dust and old carpeting; to dentist appointments in an office off Union Square, where we sometimes got to feed the pigeons (a disgusting pastime that the city eventually outlawed); to see Santa and the four-story high City of Paris Christmas tree in December; to Fisherman’s wharf for fresh crab that vendors plucked out of steamy vats on the sidewalk; and to Italian restaurants, such as San Remo's and Alioto's.

At lunch one day in Alioto's, my mother made me and my brother approach a table where Joe Di Maggio was sitting with some friends to ask him for his autograph. My brother remembers that Joe asked if we wanted our picture taken with him too, but we didn't have a camera. I remember Joe's kindly smile, but mostly I remember the crusty the sourdough bread on every table. We lost track of the autograph itself, although my brother thinks that my mother still has it somewhere. The incident occurred sometime between Joe's glory days and the early 70's when Joe morphed into being Mr. Coffee.

Behind our house were miles and miles of artichoke fields – this was California, land of lush valleys and thriving agriculture. Later, probably when I was around 10, we would watch the bulldozers come and turn the fields into the iconic ticky-tacky houses from the folk song that Malvina Reynolds wrote for Pete Seeger in the early sixties.

When you grow up eating artichokes, you think nothing of the work needed for cooking and eating them. They seem natural, don’t you know. I don’t remember what we had with artichokes, maybe crab. But today when I buy them in the late spring, I have pasta, or shrimp or risotto. My “Flavor Bible” cookbook says they go well with butter, cream, garlic, lemon, Parmesan cheese and parsley – all ingredients that go well with pasta and risotto too.

Like everything else, today’s artichokes seem bigger than the ones I remember eating – almost a meal in themselves. Nonetheless, Don and I each had our own at dinner last night. We have them with a mound of mayonnaise for dipping, because that’s how I at them as a child. I recommend this method.

I have since had whole, grilled baby artichokes that are utterly delicious and I would recommend that method as well.

Here are the artichokes from last night:

First, cut off the stem. And then, cut about 1 1/2 inches down from the top of the artichoke.

Next, pick off, by-hand, about two to three layers of the small leaves around the bottom of the artichoke and re-cut the stem close to the base. Needless to say, perfection is unnecessary.

Cut the tips off of each leaf with a pair of scissors so you don't prick yourself when pulling off the leaves to eat them.

Wash the artichoke and place upside down on a steamer basket in a large pot with a fitted lid. Steam for 45 to 50 minutes. Test an outer leaf for doneness by pulling it off and tasting. Some cookbooks suggest putting lemon juice in the water to reduce discoloration, but I don't bother with that.

When you get to the point where you can't eat anymore, begin the process of taking off the choke part of the artichoke so you can get to the heart. I think I ate a few more leaves at this point before starting to disassemble the artichoke.