Italian style artichokes filled with garlic, parsley and breadcrumbs.

I love artichokes, yum!! Usually I like to cook them alla romana, with garlic and parsley

(you can find the recipe, which featured in Cuisine Magazine, by clicking here)

So here are my artichokes, cut and cleaned with water and lemon, then stuffed with chopped garlic, parsley, salt and olive oil, ready for the pot.

Then I remembered my friend Enza from Io da Grande who posted a Sicilian recipe on an Italian Food Forum...but I could not remember the name of the recipe, just that it was very similar but with the addition of (I think) breadcrumbs. And so I did.

I simmered the artichokes slowly, adding water little by little to the bottom of the pot, until the outer leaves were easy to pull off by hand. We ate them with gusto!

And as I had a few leftovers in the pot I scraped off the tender flesh form the outer leaves and mixed it with the soft artichokes hearts and their stock (the water from the artichokes makes a wonderful stock) and made a lovely sauce to dress pasta the day after.

The same sauce can be spread on crostini.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©