Contemplating Cardoons
Apr 10th, 2009 | By | Category: Italian, The Garden | Comments | 11 Comments |
It is a good thing that growing cardoons is a low-maintenance endeavor. For months I have watched them sprouting like fountains in my garden, and with only fleeting thoughts I’ve pondered how to eat them.
You see, cardoons require some work to prepare: You need to trim the spines, peel the fibers and boil them for 30 minutes in water with the juice of a lemon before doing anything else to them. You need to be in the mood for cardoons.
For those of you who are thinking, “What the hell is a cardoon?”, know that it is a relative of the artichoke; it’s a giant thistle. (As I am of Scottish descent, I have a thing for thistles.) At some point in the ancient world, gardeners gathered and domesticated the wild cardoons that grow all over the Mediterranean. Botanists believe those gardeners began their work on the artichoke, as the ancients really wanted larger, less thistly flower buds to eat with olive oil and garum.
As for the cardoon, well, it is the stalk you eat. And wild cardoon stalks were only marginally tougher and spinier than domestic ones — or so the botanists reckon. Then around the Dark Ages someone decided they wanted to improve those stalks, which have the texture of celery but a flavor something like an echo of artichoke hearts. So they bred the wild plant to be less spiny and to grow wider stalks. Thus the modern cardoon.
If you are an Italian or Spaniard you of course know the cardoni; it is common in these countries. And cardoons, being ridiculously easy to grow, are becoming more common in this country — common enough that this post will not become one of those endless “Oh my Gawd! I discovered the cardoon!” posts you can find all over the internet.
Part of the reason for so many such postings by my food blogging brethren is that cardoons do only come around infrequently; they are only rarely seen in farmer’s markets, although I have seen them at my local Raley’s supermarket a few times. In my garden, I get two crops a year, and I have seven plants. That makes 14 meals of cardoon, tops. So when you get them for the first time and ask the inevitable “What the hell do I do with this thing?” You will find what I call the Canon of Cardoons:
- Cardoons Gratin, in which they are baked with olive oil and cheese. Delicious and well worth making if you only plan to eat cardoons once in a great while; this recipe is Holly’s favorite.
- Cardoons in a bechamel sauce. Not being a fan of bechamel, I don’t make this preparation.
- Cardoons with the garlicky-anchovy sauce bagna cauda. Excellent as a canape.
- Cardoon salad, tossed in a vinaigrette. Simple and good.
- Fried cardoons. Another excellent if simple dish. An unusual appetizer, especially when you coat the cardoons in chickpea flour and fry with olive oil.
All of these dishes (except the bechamel. I heap hate on bechamel.) are excellent. But as my co-worker would say in her best Parisian voice, “I am bored with your simple dishes.” Classics are classics for a reason, but there must be something more, yes?
A start is my fellow About.com writer Kyle Phillips, who runs the Italian site for that company. He has probably the best cardoon recipe list on the internet. Kyle lives in Italy, so gets to see a lot of cardoni.
As for me, I decided to use the bible: I wrote recently about an unusual book called The Flavor Bible, which offers long lists of flavors and ingredients that have been proven to go well together; I have begun developing recipes using these lists.
What I came up with was honeyed cardoons with pine nuts and thyme.
Damn good. Real damn good. Can’t-stop-eating-it good. Sweet, savory, meaty from the pine nuts, slightly crunchy with just a hint of saline bitterness from the cardoons and the dry Spanish sherry I used. Very happy with this recipe, which is written in full here if you are interested.
Since Holly was away for the night, I had enough cardoons to make another dish, so I went traditional, sorta: Fried cardoons, but coated in chickpea flour and served with a Portuguese-Mozambican piri-piri sauce.
Making them is easy, once you have trimmed and boiled the cardoons for a bit. Simply roll them in chickpea flour and fry for 2 minutes in hot oil, about 360 degrees. This is an earthy and bold appetizer. I use the bean flour because it browns well and gives a less refined, yet somehow warmer flavor than wheat flour. The piri piri sauce brightens things up.
All of this is to say that cardoons are worth it. They do take some time to pre-prepare, but many things in life are worth a little work and some patience. There is really nothing quite like the flavor of this odd vegetable, and it happens to be very high (for a plant) in calcium, potassium, iron — and, as befitting the stalk of a thistle — fiber.
Wondering when the Cardoon Council will come out with the slogan, “Cardoons: Worth the Work, and Keeps Your Bones Strong and Your Bowels Regular!” Guess that might not fit on a bumper sticker…
hello! where did you get your plants? how many for 2 people? i love cardoon. italian family…what can i say?
Ours are about 1 inch high – maybe we’ll actually eat them this year instead of just watching them grow with awe.
PS Easily grown from seed.
I do blanch my cardoons in the garden for about 30 days. So I don’t have to boil them for 30 minutes..Just peeled, trimmed and straight into heavy cream. Cover with bread crumbs. Bake. (see… no bechamel!)
I have learn to harvest them before frost (and they truly don’t like frost), so September & October are cardoon eating months in the Northern Piedmont. For the few of us who grow them.
This year, I will see if I can overwinter them in the polytunnel. They did not survive last winter (admittedly very cold)
Thanks for the other suggestions. Will resurrect them in September…
Loch sloy! from a fellow Scot. Thanks for teaching me about cardoons. I have been curious about them and this is a great primer.
It was fun to see the story about “our Hank” in the Bee.
[...] I also have to say I like this blogger’s simple idea for rolling the trimmed cardoons in chickpea flour before frying. And if you have a fondue pot left over from that 1970s food craze, you can [...]
I’ve only been growing my cardoon for 3 years after getting a cutting from a friend ,this year it has grown to over 6′ in height and has 9 thisle heads its amazing and is a great conversational piece when anyone comes to visit I have never tried to eat it but this year I may try
I need a little Cardoon help… I cut about a dozen leaves last week and carefully trimmed them, pulled the strings, soaked them in acidulated water, and boiled them for 30 minuted in salted water. I made the honeyed cardoons with pine nuts and thyme — and it was awful! Tough, bitter and… uhm… gave my husband some intestinal distress.
The plants are young and the leaves I picked were about 1 to 2 feet long. Did I pick them too early without blanching the plants? Should I not have picked leaves and instead harvested the entire plant and only used interior leaves?
Help! I’m crushed by a cardoon.
Brenda: Dunno exactly what happened, although the first thing that springs to mind is that you are eating cardoons in the summer, when they are at their toughest and most bitter.
In California, I cut my cardoons down after they flower in summer and then water the hell out of them so they come up again by Thanksgiving. I eat them in winter, then cut them again, and I get a second crop in March-April. Unless you are in a very cool area, summer cardoons would indeed be really bitter. Where are you located?
Thanks for the speedy response. I’m zone 6b and don’t have the luxury of cutting my cardoons back. Last year I was so enamored with them I never got around to eating them before a freeze came and knocked ‘em down. They didn’t come back either. So I planted 6 new plants and they are just as lovely. But I was not aware one should not eat them in the summer.
I have a long line of Italian friends who are drooling over the prospect of cardoni and I thought I would get a jump on things and start trying out recipes now. I plan(ned) on having them all over for a cardoni buffet — if I can convince my poor husband to ever eat it again.
Should I plan on wrapping my plants in the early fall to blanch them ?
Hmmmm…. I’ m thinking about cardoons with chestnuts… wonder how that might taste?
I’m thinking of this dish for Christmas! Wanted to tell you that most pine nuts are from China these days and are flavorless (not to mention, they are from China . . . .) I found those hard to find Italian pine nuts on nutsonline.com – they are wonderful. My holiday dinner this year: roasted goose, ravioli w/marinara, your cardoon recipe. Can’t wait! Thank you!
Hi, here is how Persians cook cardoon. This is a recipe from a cook book called “New food of Life” by Najmieh Batmangelij.
Cardoon Khoresh
Makes 6 servings
Preparation time: 35 minutes
Cooking time: 2 hours
Khoresh-e kangar
1 pound fresh cardoon stalks
1 teaspoon vinegar
2 large onions, peeled and thinly
sliced
1 pound stew meat, (lamb, veal, or
beef), cut into 1-inch cubes, or 2
pounds veal shank, or 2 pounds
chicken legs, cut up
1/3 cup oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground
black pepper
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
3 cups chopped fresh parsley
1/2 cup chopped fresh mint
4 tablespoons fresh lime juice or 1/2
cup sour grape juice (ab ghureh)
1/4 teaspoon ground saffron, dissolved
in 1 tablespoon hot water
1. Carefully remove and discard prickly parts of cardoon stalks after removing
leafy heads. Be sure to remove strings by lifting them with the tip of a knife and
peeling them off. Cut into pieces 2 inches long. To prevent them from discoloring
and to keep them tender, soak peeled cardoon pieces in a bowl of water with a
splash of vinegar until ready to use.
2. In a Dutch oven, brown onions and meat or chicken in 3 tablespoons oil. Add
salt, pepper, and turmeric. Pour in water-2 cups for meat, 11/2 cups for chicken.
Cover and simmer over low heat for about 55 minutes for meat or 30 minutes for
chicken, stirring occasionally.
3. Drain the cardoon. In a skillet, saute the cardoon pieces in the remaining oil. Add parsley and mint and fry for 10 minutes longer.
4. When the meat is done, add lime juice, saffron water, and the cardoon. Cover
and simmer for 1 hour over low heat.
5. Check to see if the cardoons are tender. Taste the khoresh and
adjust seasoning.
6. Serve hot with chelow, saffron-steamed rice.
I make a different version of this dish by replacing the parsley and mint with sun-dried tomatoes; keeping everything else the same. Both recipes are delicious!