Globe artichokes are one of my favourite vegetables. Often in the UK we can only buy them when they are old and large. We tend to boil these whole, and then tear of the leafy sepals and eat them with hollandaise or (as my mum does) with melted butter sauce. I do enjoy eating them this way, but what I really like is cooking them when they are much smaller as an ingredient in a stew, or preserving them under oil, which makes a delicious accompaniment to cold meats. In the last few years smaller artichokes have appeared on the British market, but they are often expensive, and seldom look as good as those one sees for sale in Italian and French markets.
