What you need:

2 artichokes
6-8 whole garlic cloves
olive oil
1 lemon
salt and pepper

How to:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

2. Wash the artichokes. Cut the top 1/3 off and the stem. Spread the leaves apart. Using a knife and your hands, take out most of the purple leaves on the inside as well as the fuzzy little hairs that you find. Those don’t taste too good.

3. Drizzle enough olive oil over the artichokes so it drips down into the center. Thoroughly salt and pepper. Stick 3-4 whole garlic cloves inside the area that you scooped out in the center. Squeeze half of a lemon over both chokes.

4. Wrap both artichokes separately in aluminum foil tightly and place on a large baking sheet. Set in the oven and roast for 50-60 minutes, depending on how large they are and how tender you want them.

Dip in some butter and enjoy! Although with this recipe you don’t even need anything to dip it in. The flavor from the garlic seeps through the entire choke loading every bite with a meaty and delicious treat. You can even eat the garlic cloves! Eat this as a snack, or have it as a side dish for dinner. It can get messy and take a while to eat, so I prefer to eat it by itself as an appetizer. Once you finish all of the leaves, don’t forget about the heart. For that, just remove the rest of the fuzzy hairs and eat up. There are many other ways to make artichokes, so recipes for those will be coming soon!

Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke.

-Bette Davis