So... What is a cardoon?
I'd never heard of a cardoon. My bet is most folks have never heard of a cardoon either. But we've had one at our house a few years, just lurking next to our driveway - surprise! We are the only cardoon house on the block. The wife has a soft spot in her heart for those misfit botanical specimens, those plants with unrecognized uses and of dubious origins that come with questionable utility. When one of the local plant nurseries offered a special on some such small, wilting, unsold potted plant; she of course asked what is this? The knowledgeable sales woman said "I don't really know, it may be a French artichoke." Sounded like enough of a misfit that the wife paid good money for it and she came home and put it the earth.
Last year, she harvested the tiny, tight thistle heads and steamed them and painfully (they are definitely in the sharp & pokey thistle family) and laboriously treated them as one would best think a French artichoke should be treated. We ate the tiny little steamed thistle heads (once we removed the thorny covering) and I said, "Umm - that was 'interesting' dear. Thanks". This winter, while reading in her Culinary of Spain book, she encountered the description of the exotic cardoon tucked away on some obscure page and it sounded suspiciously like what was sitting behind our house. Did we really have a French artichoke in our garden? Or, maybe it was something else. Ah Ha! It's cover has been blown, it has been revealed to be from Espana not France. She called her brother, a professor of Botany at Midwestern University in Wichita Falls and had him do his research on cardoons and when he came for a visit in April, he confirmed our suspicions, "You're definitely growing a cardoon".
What do you do with a cardoon, now that you have a healthy cardoon growing next to the Globe artichoke? I have a plan for this very nice first Saturday in the merry month of May.
I will go and enjoy touring the Cottonwood Art Festival and get artistically inspired by the booths of painters, potters, jewelers, fabricators and assorted artisans, then I will come home and make a nice grilled dinner to complement the cardoons. That evening, after the harvest, we dined on fresh steamed cardoon stalks (eating only that part below the spiky thistle heads) drenched in garlic butter and pared with an effervescent French white wine from the Loire Valley.
So, what is a cardoon? It is a delectable misbegotten vegetable that tastes like an artichoke that makes for a fine finish to a perfect day of wandering art displays and grilling steaks with fire and smoke and sharing a good bottle with the girl who loves to plant unknown, unloved, spiny little plants and put them on my dinner table.
I'm wondering - did Paul Simon on his Graceland album, record the lyrics to a song on that album that goes; "I don't want to end up a cardoon in a cardoon graveyard"? Maybe Paul knows about cardoons. If you play the Graceland album backwards you can hear a secret message; "Paul is dead wrong about French artichokes".
 |
| What's a cardoon? |
I'd never heard of a cardoon. My bet is most folks have never heard of a cardoon either. But we've had one at our house a few years, just lurking next to our driveway - surprise! We are the only cardoon house on the block. The wife has a soft spot in her heart for those misfit botanical specimens, those plants with unrecognized uses and of dubious origins that come with questionable utility. When one of the local plant nurseries offered a special on some such small, wilting, unsold potted plant; she of course asked what is this? The knowledgeable sales woman said "I don't really know, it may be a French artichoke." Sounded like enough of a misfit that the wife paid good money for it and she came home and put it the earth.
Last year, she harvested the tiny, tight thistle heads and steamed them and painfully (they are definitely in the sharp & pokey thistle family) and laboriously treated them as one would best think a French artichoke should be treated. We ate the tiny little steamed thistle heads (once we removed the thorny covering) and I said, "Umm - that was 'interesting' dear. Thanks". This winter, while reading in her Culinary of Spain book, she encountered the description of the exotic cardoon tucked away on some obscure page and it sounded suspiciously like what was sitting behind our house. Did we really have a French artichoke in our garden? Or, maybe it was something else. Ah Ha! It's cover has been blown, it has been revealed to be from Espana not France. She called her brother, a professor of Botany at Midwestern University in Wichita Falls and had him do his research on cardoons and when he came for a visit in April, he confirmed our suspicions, "You're definitely growing a cardoon".
What do you do with a cardoon, now that you have a healthy cardoon growing next to the Globe artichoke? I have a plan for this very nice first Saturday in the merry month of May.
I will go and enjoy touring the Cottonwood Art Festival and get artistically inspired by the booths of painters, potters, jewelers, fabricators and assorted artisans, then I will come home and make a nice grilled dinner to complement the cardoons. That evening, after the harvest, we dined on fresh steamed cardoon stalks (eating only that part below the spiky thistle heads) drenched in garlic butter and pared with an effervescent French white wine from the Loire Valley.
So, what is a cardoon? It is a delectable misbegotten vegetable that tastes like an artichoke that makes for a fine finish to a perfect day of wandering art displays and grilling steaks with fire and smoke and sharing a good bottle with the girl who loves to plant unknown, unloved, spiny little plants and put them on my dinner table.
I'm wondering - did Paul Simon on his Graceland album, record the lyrics to a song on that album that goes; "I don't want to end up a cardoon in a cardoon graveyard"? Maybe Paul knows about cardoons. If you play the Graceland album backwards you can hear a secret message; "Paul is dead wrong about French artichokes".
No comments:
Post a Comment