In Season: Cardoons
MAY 15, 2007 -- Ah, cardoons. The word sounds like it should refer to a Medieval undergarment, or a Highland Games event combining the rules of caber-tossing and darts. In fact, cardoons (known to botanists as Cynara cardunculus) are edible thistles and one of spring's earliest treats.
If you can find them, that is. I had never heard of them until our visit to the San Francisco markets a few weeks ago, where I saw a bed of silver-grey leaves, soft with a fine fuzz. I stood there petting them, wondering if I was admiring a compost pile of artichoke leaves. The growers - the legendary Knoll Farms, a biodynamic operation that recently dropped their organic certification to protest the industrialization of organic agriculture - soon let me know that the leaves themselves were the delicacy. Since then, I've seen cardoons at the Portland farmers' markets, and now my local seed catalogue. Are cardoons the next "it" vegetable?
If so, the last time they made a splash was the Middle Ages (though they remain moderately popular in their native Mediterranean terrain, from North Africa to Italy and Spain). Elizabeth Schneider's Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables described the cooked leaves as "soft and meaty" with "hints of artichoke heart, celery, and oyster plant." That said, the people from Knoll Farms warned that cardoons can be bitter if improperly prepared. They recommended blanching the chopped leaves in three changes of boiling, salted water.
I can't tell you a thing, myself. With nowhere to do any cooking while on the book tour, I had to give the cardoons a pass. I'll keep my fingers crossed for my local markets - cardoons, apparently, grow easily in a wide variety of climates and soil types. In fact, they come with a warning: in some parts of South America, California, and Australia, they're officially a weed. But a weed that tastes fantastic with butter, even better with cream.
Or so I hear.-JBM
If you can find them, that is. I had never heard of them until our visit to the San Francisco markets a few weeks ago, where I saw a bed of silver-grey leaves, soft with a fine fuzz. I stood there petting them, wondering if I was admiring a compost pile of artichoke leaves. The growers - the legendary Knoll Farms, a biodynamic operation that recently dropped their organic certification to protest the industrialization of organic agriculture - soon let me know that the leaves themselves were the delicacy. Since then, I've seen cardoons at the Portland farmers' markets, and now my local seed catalogue. Are cardoons the next "it" vegetable?
If so, the last time they made a splash was the Middle Ages (though they remain moderately popular in their native Mediterranean terrain, from North Africa to Italy and Spain). Elizabeth Schneider's Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables described the cooked leaves as "soft and meaty" with "hints of artichoke heart, celery, and oyster plant." That said, the people from Knoll Farms warned that cardoons can be bitter if improperly prepared. They recommended blanching the chopped leaves in three changes of boiling, salted water.
I can't tell you a thing, myself. With nowhere to do any cooking while on the book tour, I had to give the cardoons a pass. I'll keep my fingers crossed for my local markets - cardoons, apparently, grow easily in a wide variety of climates and soil types. In fact, they come with a warning: in some parts of South America, California, and Australia, they're officially a weed. But a weed that tastes fantastic with butter, even better with cream.
Or so I hear.-JBM
