My son-in-law loves my artichoke dish called “Artichoke with Olive Oil”. The vegetable is a popular one in Turkey, and this vegetarian dish in many Turkish restaurants. 

I start the recipe with already cleaned and peeled artichokes as otherwise, this dish gets pretty messy and time consuming. For this recipe, we need the bottoms of the artichokes and not the hearts.  Cleaning the artichokes is not much fun, as you may already know.  If you still prefer to do this the hard way and clean them yourself, I suggest you review a web page on step by step instructions on how to clean them.  You can buy already cleaned bottoms of artichokes in a jar or frozen.  Once you have them ready for use (if frozen, slightly defrosted), select the ones that don’t have a good shape and dice them up as topping for the dish - see picture above-, along with carrots, potatoes, onions and garlic. As to how much of each ingredient you need, it is really up to you and up to how many artichoke bottoms you plan to have and serve.  Usually one big or two small pieces will serve nicely as an appetizer. Have a look at our picture above to guess the amount of topping you will need per artichoke. 

Saute all the vegetables going into the topping in olive oil, garlic and onions first and then adding the rest.  After a few minutes of cooking in oil, add some water to allow for cooking of carrots and potatoes. Once they start to become tender, add peas along with a generous portion of chopped dill as garnish and salt to taste into the mix in olive oil.  You can use frozen or canned peas but the cooking time with vary depending on which one you use. For simplicity, I suggest using canned peas. (Note that if you use frozen peas, they will need to be cooked ahead of time as they will need longer cooking time.) Put the topping mix aside to cool down soon after adding the peas and the garnish.

In a separate deeper pan, place the previously prepared and slightly defrosted artichokes along with a small glass of water (not to drown the artichokes) and some olive oil and lemon juice and start cooking them.  After 5-6 minutes, top each artichoke with vegetable toppings previously prepared.  See the picture again to see how much topping will be on each piece. You can then add and spread the rest of the remaining toppings but try not to cover the artichokes completely. Cook the dish in low heat and keep adding small amounts of water until the artichokes cook well.  You may need to keep testing from one piece you can sacrifice.  You may also need to add some lemon juice and salt according to your taste.

I serve this dish with some mayonnaise and a drizzle of olive oil on top when it is cool but not cold, and my son-in-law Adam always goes for seconds of this healthy appetizer!  I hope you do too. 

Gulenden

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