“Essence of artichoke”<\/strong><\/p>\nMind-numbing, that a food, and eating it, could be distilled to a goal, made single. The globe artichoke’s essence is a paradox, because …<\/p>\n
I’m faced with a daunting problem, because no one, certainly not me, wants a lesson in plant metaphor. The first way around this is to imagine a film, black-and-white, in the style of a WWII instruction documentary, in which we watch a male or female, in white shirt or blouse, begin and end the process of negotiating, dismantling and eating a solitary choke. No smile, no telling eye-crinkle, nothing but step-by-step on a plate and side plate for the tooth-scraped leaves or petals.<\/p>\n
No sense from his or her robotic expression that the scraping reminds anyone who has been seriously hungry that every shred of food is crucial. I’ve always found animal comfort, and more, when looking at the tracks of my teeth on these hunger manuscripts.<\/p>\n
Then a uniformed hand removes the pile, and we stare at a dull, mottled navel, the part they call the heart. That’s supposed to be the target, but let’s think about this in another way. I know someone, a kind and intelligent fellow, who will not eat the good pieces of a lobster. He waits for his companions to strip and swallow the claw meat and tails and then grabs the carcasses off our plates and begins his “scraping of the teeth.” Each wet tendril, green seed-egg and pearlescent clot is coddled and sucked to moans of enjoyment. Ten, 20, even 30 minutes pass. He knows that the life of the lobster deserves full appreciation.<\/p>\n
We are supposed to scrape, with a spoon, the choke from the heart. My avid friend would leave the heart and eat the choke, which has a sandy flavor that’s overwhelmed by its feathery, lung-clotting texture, something that ravenous raccoons spit out. The remnant we are said to seek is left centered on the plate.<\/p>\n
So we lift our knifes and think to cut it. Thumbsize? Shall we eat the solid gray cipher without salt, emollient? Yes, because the heart’s the goal.<\/p>\n
Our instructor looks at the camera with serious eyes.<\/p>\n
“This is the part your children will like the most.”<\/p>\n
Projector clicks to flicker, then off. I have no children, and even in my imagination the little ones would be more invested in the piecemeal taking-apart of the universe in front of them, studying, playing, not caring one whit for an adult full stop at the end.<\/p>\n
X\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0X\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0X<\/p>\n
This is dedicated to the work and memory of my dear friend and constant reader, Robin Holland.<\/p>\n
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Some vegetables are complicated <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[505,503,501,502,504,506],"class_list":{"0":"post-16039","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"tag-505","8":"tag-all-about-eve","9":"tag-artichoke","10":"tag-bette-davis","11":"tag-new-year","12":"tag-vegetables","13":"entry","14":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16039"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16109,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16039\/revisions\/16109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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