Braised artichokes and pearl barley with summer veg

I am a huge fan of artichokes. They have a great meaty flavour, and are much more versatile than many people think. I have written before about my attempts to grow artichokes, and they are a vegetable that I love growing. When we moved into our new flat earlier this year, as soon as some space became available, I planted half a dozen plants. One of these fell foul to some aggressive sabotage from a seagull, but the others grew well. By July, several small artichokes had appeared.

Globe artichokes in the autumn

When I started this blog back in April of this year, my very first post was about my attempts to grow globe artichokes. I thought I would post a brief update about what the artichoke plants have been doing; not least as I have found it difficult to find much information about what the growing habits of globe artichokes are in the UK. I would be interested to hear from anyone else who grows globe artichokes to see if their experiences are similar to mine.

Stuffed artichokes

I recently wrote a blog about growing globe artichokes. Since then the artichokes carried on growing, and I harvested the first two a day or so ago. I prefer to pick them relatively small (about the size of a cricket ball). Picking them also encourages the plant to produce more artichokes.

Growing globe artichokes

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.