How To Clean Artichokes-Roman Jewish Style - water

Method

• Have a large bowl at hand, containing cold water and the juice of two lemons with the four halves of the rind.
• Keep the artichokes in another bowl of cold water while you are working on them.
• Take one artichoke at a time, drain it, and pull off and discard the smallest outer leaves.
• Holding the artichoke with its bottom toward the little finger of your hand, tilt the top away from you, and holding a small sharp knife tightly with your right hand, insert its tip, one leaf deep, into the tender, lighter part of the leaves.
• Keeping your right hand steady, slowly rotate the artichoke with your left hand so the bottom moves in a clockwise direction, and cut upward in a spiral.
• The tough part of each leaf will fall off, while the tender edible part remains attached.
• Peel the green layer off the bottom and stem, and then drop the trimmed artichoke into the lemon juice until you are ready to cook.
• This operation requires some practice; you will know if you have mastered this technique when the artichoke thus cleaned looks more or less like the one you started with, only smaller and whiter.
• If you are not ready to use the artichokes immediately after you have cleaned them, try to keep them completely submerged in lemon water.
• This is not easy.
• Artichokes are very buoyant and float to the surface making it difficult to keep them covered.
• An inverted plate, just a bit smaller in diameter than the bowl, place over the artichokes, will keep them below the surface.
• Another way is to crowd them inside a glass jar and cover them with the lemon water.
• If you plan to leave them at this stage for more than a hour or so, you must refrigerate them, but it is not advisable to keep artichokes this way for more than a few hours.
• Lemon is used to prevent discoloration; on the other hand, the lemon will cause the artichokes to spoil very quickly.