We grew up in a weird time for food. I, personally, come of age eating a hell of a lot of canned vegetables. Questionable textures, often drowned in butter and saccharine sweet. One thing my mother really did right, though, was artichokes. I have nothing but fond memories for spaghetti dinners that began with artichokes and lemon butter, and equally as many (potentially false) myths about the edible thistle. Did you know the Greeks ate artichokes before every meal as a palette cleanser?

My go-to preparation is normally steamed until tender and served with caper butter, but we’ve also taken to serving them alongside an herbed aioli [see: half mayo + half sage brown butter]. The dip is from one of our diehard favorite cookbooks, Maximum Flavor. They recommend roasting halved filled with garlic, but after a few attempts to change my ways I’m still a 100% advocate for steaming.

After a full out artichoke drought in the grocery store the last few months, we were pleasantly surprised to find a super affordable box of baby artichokes this week. Pinterest told us to bake them. With some hesitation from our previous disappointments, we opted to steam the quartered baby ‘chokes first and then toss in olive oil, panko, and parmesean and broil in the oven until crispy.

The final result was really satisfying, but definitely some room for improvements.  The one thing I love about steaming is that it leaves the vegetable super tender and green. The added time for cooking in an oven tends to allow the artichoke to oxidize and dry out, and the outer leaves were a bit too tough to eat in their entirety. We had trouble deciding if it was the fault of drying out the leaves in broiling, or if the smaller of the bunch steamed more fully yielding a better texture.

Served with a bowl of lemon caper aioli, any minor setbacks in preparation are quickly eclipsed by the joy of eating a giant bowl of “vegetables” dipped in mayo while binge watching Seinfeld. 10/10