Romans, Jews and tastebuds

What a Roman doesn’t do to an artichoke, isn’t worth doing.

That’s actually an adaptation of what I used to say about Alsatians. That’s ‘Alsatians’ not as German sheepdogs, but as people from Alsace, that glorious area of eastern France. It’s so far east within France as to be practically in Germany. So practically, in fact, that over a seventy-year period from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth, Germany made three forceful – violent, indeed – attempts to ensure that it was fully under its administration.

That means that my wife, Danielle, who is an Alsatian (yes, yes, bark worse than bite and all that), had a grandfather whose identity papers are marked ‘French by re-incorporation’, since when he was born, his province was German.

I always used to say that anything an Alsatian didn’t do with a pig, wasn’t worth doing. I appreciate that the saying is susceptible of an unfortunate misinterpretation. But, as you’ll probably have guessed, that was entirely intentional.

Anyway, it’s true that Alsatians really knew how to make full use of the unfortunate pig, in the other, more everyday sense, eating almost everything on it, usually prepared in some outstandingly delicious way, and using most of the rest to make things, such as items of clothing.

Artichokes are rather less big and seriously less versatile than pigs. So I suppose there are fewer things that Romans can do to them. In fact, there are just two things that spring to my mind, but they’re both entirely to my taste: carciofi alla romana and carciofi alla giudia. And, yes, ‘alla giudia’ does mean ‘in the Jewish style’. I’m sure I must have tried both during the thirteen years I spent in Rome following my birth there, but only became conscious of them again when I went back there, for work, around four years ago.

It was Fabio, a colleague but much more to the point, also a good friend, who met me and helped me rediscover the joys of my native city. He knows it well, despite being Milanese himself. It should also be said that he's a fine appreciator of good food. In fact, the only time I know for certain that I got up his nose was when I insisted that we had a rather inferior snack before a client meeting, when there wasn’t time for a proper meal. He didn’t say it in so many words, but his body language and above all his expression, told me with unambiguous clarity how much he resented being forced to eat so badly.

So there could hardly have been anyone better to organise me some fine dining in Rome. Except that for a while, whenever he said, “there’s a great restaurant I want you to try,” it always turned out to be the same restaurant. After this had happened three or four times, I tried to communicate to him tactfully that I was convinced there was more than one good restaurant in Rome.

“Oh, no,” he said, except that ‘no’ wasn’t the word he used, “do I keep taking you to the same place?”

Wryly, he accepted that there were indeed other good restaurants in Rome. He booked us tables in a few of the others on my later visits and, in one of them, we had carciofi alla giudia. It was an explosion of taste and an explosion of nostalgia. A truly memorable experience.

So I decided today that it was time, now that I’m retired, to try cooking these great dishes myself. I wanted to start with carciofi alla giudia. That wasn’t just because of my Jewish roots (yes, yes, I know I shouldn’t enjoy Alsatian pork dishes but, hey, to backslide is human). It was mainly because while deep frying is terrible for you, it also happens to produce some extraordinarily delicious results.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough oil and, this being a Sunday in suburban Spain under Covid restrictions, there was no way we could get any more. So it had to be carciofi alla romana instead. 

Trimmed and ready

I stripped the outer leaves. I cut, peeled and trimmed the stems. I carved out the ‘beard’ at the centre of the artichokes.

Steeping in water and lemon juice

Still steeping, but covered to stop them getting out

I left them all to steep in water flavoured with lemon juice. I prepared a stuffing of roughly chopped mint with finely chopped garlic. I seasoned the stuffing with salt and pepper.

Mint and garlic stuffing

I stuffed the artichokes and rolled them in some more salt and pepper. Then I cooked them in oil mixed with the water in which they’d steeped.

Ready to eat

It was a lot of fun. Exciting to be producing a prestigious Roman dish myself for once. But to be utterly honest, it wasn’t that brilliant. Good, but hardly special. Not really worth the effort. Either I screwed up or I chose the wrong recipe. Or it really isn’t that that wonderful a dish.

So, in the end, I enjoyed eating the things far less than I enjoyed preparing them. Or writing about them. Or wallowing in the nostalgia. Those things were all great, so the experience worked out fine, but not for the reasons I was hoping.

Oh, well. I’m just going to have to buy some more artichokes. And a lot more oil. 

The Jewish way gets my vote for next time.