Monkey See, Monkey Do

I love going to the Farmer’s market but today was especially fun for several reasons.  For one thing, the weather was beautiful and sunny.  Also - Bob was with me – a big treat because usually I have to shop alone.  But best of all, I was not at just any Farmer’s Market, I was at the CUESA San Francisco Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building, my favorite market of all.  The shops at the Ferry Building are really fun to explore, with all my favorite vendors (think: Sur la Table, Acme Bread, Cowgirl Creamery, and stores devoted only to mushrooms, olive oil or “tasty salted pig parts” as their sign proclaims).  And the people watching is great too - this market is full of diverse vendors and lots of interesting people, especially chef-people, from big name restaurants that even if you could get a reservation, you’d have to take a 2^nd mortgage on your house to pay for the meal. 

And that leads me to the topic of cardoons.  Before today, I had no clue what a cardoon was. The name sounds like some kind of ancient Asian sailing ship or a district in Hong Kong.  When we first arrived at the market, I saw a man carrying an armload of long-stemmed greens with silvery foliage.   Later in the day, I saw another guy buying a big cart load of them.  He had boxes of other assorted produce on his cart too, so I figured he was from one of the local restaurants.  I pointed to the foliage and asked him what they were.  “Cardoons,” he stated matter of factly.  “Oh,” I replied, “What do they taste like, and how do you cook them?”  “They taste like a mild artichoke. We like to blanch them first, then sauté them in garlic, butter, and olive oil.”  Yummmm!  I love artichokes. And of course anything in garlic and butter is going to taste good.  How odd that leaves would taste like artichokes, but now that I looked closer at them, the leaves did sort of look like the leaves of artichoke plants. Being the nosy, I mean curious, person that I am, I had to ask, “So what restaurant are you buying for?  I’d like to go there and try them – they sound delicious!”  The guy looked taken aback for a minute and then he said – “Saison”.  Saison!  Saison is only one of the hottest high end restaurants in the City, on par with Napa’s French Laundry, IMHO.  I made some lame joke about not being able to ever get a reservation, and then as soon as he left I immediately bought a bundle of cardoons.  You may be saying “Monkey see, Monkey do!”  but I figured If they are good enough for Saison, then they are good enough for me.

The leafy bundle with celery-like stems are the cardoons

When I got home, I opened my iPad and immediately googled cardoons.  That’s when I learned you eat the stems, not the leaves.  Hmm.  I wish I had known that before – the stems on my bundle were really anemic looking, skinny and limp.  I followed a link and learned that the stems are covered in spines and you should wear gloves while peeling them.  Gloves?  Yikes, this was starting to remind me of my unfortunate experience trying to juice prickly pear fruits, in which I ended up with thousands of miniscule spines in my hands, forearms and stomach (don’t ask). 

I found a pair of kitchen gloves and then set off peeling the stems as described in the article. The web author’s pictures looked lovely, with nicely pared, bright green, firm celery-like stems.  Mine looked like a piece of limp, dried out celery you’d find in the back of your crisper drawer, which you have decided to clean out because it was exuding a foul smell.  Worst of all, my $4.00 armload of cardoons was reduced to about ½ cup of laboriously peeled and chopped stems.  So far, this experiment was not going well.

 

Trying to keep a good attitude, I blanched the stems in salted, boiling water, and then removed them to an ice bath as soon as they were tender.  I tasted one small piece at this point, and I have to say, it was pretty good. They had a very mild, subtle artichoke taste, with a texture like the bottom of the heart, where it meets the stem.  Next, I took a little piece of black truffle butter that I just happened to have on hand (that story is for another blog), and a bit of olive oil, and sautéed the pieces. They cooked down to about 1/3 cup but they did taste really good.  Sorry Bob, I didn’t save you any.  But you wouldn’t have wanted them anyway, given that you don’t like the flavor of truffle and you don’t eat butter.  Final Score: 6/10 – mostly because they were a lot of work for so little reward.  But – I will definitely try them again, this time I'll look for a bundle with some stems that are a little meatier and fresher.  I encourage you to do the same – if you like artichokes, you will certainly like these, and it’s always nice to have another tasty vegetable dish to add your repertoire.