Marry me?  Okay, I’m sorry.  Maybe I should take this a little slower.  I love you–wait, maybe slower.  Alright, so I read your column every week while eating my lunch, and drool over your creations.  Your ability to make something that looks so delicious from so little astounds me.  I love your little videos full of good tips and how you make every step look worth it. You drive me to farmer’s markets, even craving to cook fish in my apartment and suffocate my roommate and poor neighbors for the week with that the scent remains.  I love how your jokes are as bad as mine and that you obviously find yourself as funny as I do.  The most recent recipe that you have created that made my heart pitter patter was your braised artichokes.  Due to the nature of my blog, I had to lower the calories slightly, but I hope you know you have changed my life and I can never look at a steamed artichoke the same.

So, Mark, if I may call you Mark, if you come across my tiny little blog one day, scoff at my blurry pictures and giggle at my dry, self righteous humor and just know how I really feel. Oh, and that I’m a fantastic cuddler.

Love,

The Two Faced Chef

Braised Artichokes, Lightened Up

Recipe adapted from Mark Bittman’s NYTimes Article and Video

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon light butter (around 45 calories)
• 2 artichokes (I used one because, well, I wasn’t that hungry.)
• 1 to 1.5 cups chicken stock (I used light and low sodium.)
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• Salt and pepper to taste

Chop an artichoke in two, avoiding the giant spurs of death.

Chop off the sharp heads (Mark doesn’t do this, but I’m afraid of the points) and remove the tougher outer leaves.

Remove the choke–refer to Marky-Poos video for a good example on how.

Heat up some butter in a high-sided pan or dutch oven.  Brown the cut sides of artichoke for about 5 minutes.

Pour in chicken stock, it should go halfway up the chokes.  Let come to a boil, then cover.

Remove from the pot when you can insert a knife cleanly and easily into the base of the stem, for small chokes 10 minutes, for large ones, 2o.

Remove artichokes from pan; set aside.  Add the lemon juice, salt and pepper to the pan.  Cook down and serve with chokes as a dipping sauce or poured on top.

Each tender, flavorful choke is around 70-100 calories, at most.

They look so harmless.  They are like vegetable-style Hulks–with sharp, pointy things.

Ingredients:

• 3 artichokes
• Deep pot with 1 inch of water
• Sharp knife and sharp scissor

Cut about an inch of the top of each artichoke.  With scissors, cut the sharp tips off of each leaf.  This is pretty important, no one wants to eat a thorn.

Cut off base so they will sit flat in the pot.  Remove a few of the outer tough leaves.

Bring the water to a boil, and insert the artichokes in tips up.  Cover the pot and simmer on low heat for 25-45 minutes depending on the size of the choke.  Mine took about 25 minutes.

You will know when it’s done when it looks as above (second picture) and a knife pierces easily into base of stem.  The outer leaves should pull off pretty easily.

Pull out the chokes, and turn them upside down to drain for a minute or so.

Honestly, I was really afraid of making these, but it was so easy.  I know I’m afraid of a lot of things (clowns, people in costume at Disney, bananas) but these really are approachable compared to everything else.

Each artichoke was at most 50 calories.  Choose something low cal to dip them in (I went for just some balsamic vinegar.) and enjoy.

Oh, and this is how you get such a pretty picture.  Don’t try this at home.  You might end up with a very angry Little Mommies.  Especially when you post the “before” picture.