Try not to choke

I cooked artichokes for the first time on Wednesday night. It was quite a spectacle - Julia provides detailed instructions not only on how to cook artichokes but how to eat them. Consequently Le Gourmand and I sat at the dinner table, MTAOFC propped up in front of us, trying to maximise our enjoyment of the artichokes. This involves using your teeth to remove the "meat" inside each leaf until you get to the "meatier" choke. Fingers are a must although you must be prepared to get you fingers dirty with your chosen sauce.

Menu
Artichauts Au Naturel
Sauce Bâtarde
Escalopes de Veau a l'Estragon

Once the base of the artichoke is trimmed, it is fairly straightforward to sit it in water, cover with cheesecloth and cook for 30-40 minutes. Draining the water out of the artichoke is a bit more of a challenge.

The book suggests Hollandaise to accompany the artichokes but, as I am trying to avoid raw egg, I substituted Sauce Batarde or mock hollandaise, which involves using a white roux to thicken up some white stock and then slowly adding to egg yolk and cream before briefly heating the sauce again (and hopefully cooking the egg). Le Gourmand was impressed.

More sauce followed - the veal scallops were lightly cooked but the real star was the tarragon sauce, which involved deglazing the pan with dried tarragon and white wine before adding two cups of jus lie (recycling from the week before) and cooking down the results. I am still a little dubious about the amount of arrowroot that was in the jus lie, as I prefer things a little less thick, but the sauce was extremely tasty with the veal scallops.

Bruce decided to assert himself for the next few nights - his habit of lying on my right side has landed me at the physio with all kinds of restrictions and it seems that being pregnant really does make you tired. Who would have thought it?