Pig wisdom

Do you become instantly wary the moment a food is called ‘sophisticated’? To me, ‘sophisticated’ in this context, sounds like ‘disgusting’. There aren’t too many regular foods I don’t eat but the artichoke is way up the list. Who wants to eat a thistle?

Artichokes are one of the oldest foods we know and there are 50 varieties grown worldwide. Zeus was said to have turned a scorned lover into an artichoke (see, he didn’t like them either).

If, for some weird reason, you ever decide to cook one, make sure you wear rubber gloves and don’t cook it in an aluminum pot - it will turn the pot grey.

Americans remove all but five to 10 millimetres of the stem, and cut away about a quarter of each leaf (scale) with scissors to remove the thorns, then boil or steam the artichoke. They often eat the leaves dipped in sauces and then eat the remaining heart after removing the inedible ‘choke’ (and it can choke you).

In Italy, artichoke hearts in oil are the usual vegetable for spring in a four seasons pizza (with olives for summer, mushrooms for autumn and prosciutto for winter).

The Spanish use more tender, younger and smaller artichokes sprinkled with olive oil and left in hot barbecue ashes, sautéed in olive oil with garlic, with rice as a paella or combined with eggs in a tortilla (frittata).

I accidentally ate an artichoke in 1999 at Colours Café when it arrived on a plate of tempura vegetables (and I still shudder at the experience). I wouldn’t recommend eating any kind of artichoke concoction, even if these vegies (technically flowers) are meant to help digestion, liver function, gall bladder function - and lower your cholesterol. Artichokes are also aphrodisiacs – but then so are champagne and chocolate and I know what I’d prefer to comsume.

Apparently, you can drink artichokes – you can make tea from them and Cynar is an Italian artichoke-flavoured aperitif.

In 1947 at the Artichoke Festival in Castroville, California, a young woman was crowned Miss California Artichoke Queen. This artichoke crown kickstarted the career of Miss Norma Jean Baker who would, of course, become Marilyn Monroe.

What’s the opposite of a testimonial? Here are three:

• In one short Three Stooges film, Curly calls an artichoke a smarty-choke, a party-smoke, an okey-doke, a feathered pineapple and a barbed-wire pickle. Guess he didn’t think much of them.

• In 77AD the Roman naturalist Pliny called the choke one of earth's monstrosities.

• Miss Piggy said: ‘These things are just plain annoying. After all the trouble you go to, you get about as much actual "food" out of eating an artichoke as you would from licking 30 or 40 postage stamps. Have the shrimp cocktail instead.’