Culinary cardoon question

Someone has emailed with a question:

Do you know the best time to harvest cardoon?  We've tried spring and fall, boiling the cardoon in salted water to extract the bitterness but it never seems to taste right!

I have to admit something: despite growing cardoons for the last two years, I haven't tried eating the stems. I love the dangerously spiky, painfully blue flowers held high above the silvery foliage, and the bumble bees they attract. But I just haven't felt the urge to bother with tying up the stems with cardboard or cloth to blanche the stems for eating. Given how much I like young globe artichokes with a vinaigrette, I really should try the edible stems of its cousin, the cardoon: perhaps that should be a resolution for 2005.

If you do want to try preparing the cardoon stems for eating, you probably still have time to blanche them before the first frosts: you'll need about four weeks of blanching before you harvest. This may help with the bitterness problem, although it may just be that they're an acquired taste!

I've just found this excellent piece in the Kentucky Courier-Journal, which has detailed instructions on the cultivation of the cardoon, or Cynara cardunculus. But I tend to agree with the writer, Diane Heilenman, when she says "my conclusion is that this is an awful lot of work and a terrible waste of garden ornament". Having said that, I have just found this cardoon and mango curry recipe: perhaps that might change my mind ...

Comments

[Philippe Chandless]

My family com from Grenoble in the French Alps where cardoon is a christmas delicacy. I don't know about growing them but they are prepared by stripping the fibres from the stems with a blunt knife and chopped into chunks before being cooked in a gratin with a white sauce made with cream. They are delicious and if you want a more detailed recipe I can get one by speaking to someone at home.
I'm already looking forward to them on Christmas eve/day.

[Jane Perrone]

That sounds fantastic Philippe! I'd love the recipe if you can get it...

[John]

Well, I think I just made a cardoon soup. It was a pain. Literally! Am I correct in my assumption that the super spiny artichoke-like thistle plants with purple flowers dotting the hills above my house (East Bay, SF Bay Area, CA) are cardoon? I sure hope so. And I hope that if that wasn't cardoon, it's not poisonous. Cuz I just ate some.

I had a cardoon soup at Chez Panisse a couple weeks ago. It was, of course, fantastic. But bitter. Definitely bitter. I made sort of an imitation of it today and it was even more bitter. But still pretty good.

I went up in the hills, put on some leather gloves and pulled out some small young thistles. I trimmed them down to the stocks with a pair of kitchen scissors, removing all the spines. That took forever. Then I washed the stocks - I'm guestimating about a dozen of them, all fairly small (betw 6-10 inches), which I chopped into 1-inch lengths and boiled for about 30 minutes. They smelled like artichoke. But they were insanely bitter! So I tossed in two large peeled russet potatoes and a small garnet yam too. I added in a bunch of chicken broth, some more water, and simmered again until the new tubers were done.

Meanwhile I sliced up three small leeks and sauteed them with a ton of unsalted butter and quite a bit of dried taragon. When everything was cooked, I combined them in the soup pot and liquefied them with an immersion blender. I added quite a bit of salt and stirred in some goat's milk.. just enough so I could slightly taste the goat.

Oh yeah, earlier I had made some sage-infused olive oil by heating a big gob of chopped fresh sage in a small pan with some nice Greek olive oil, let it sit for an hour, then reheated, then poured it through a sieve and let cool to room temp again.

I served the soup with some of the sage oil traced around on top, and some pugliese bread. It was pretty good! But bitter.

I hope I don't die.

At least everything was organic.