Artichoke Salad (Enginar Salatası)

Here is a light and tasty salad with one of the most work intensive vegetables. Artichokes taste wonderful, but cleaning out the outer, tough leaves to reach the edible part takes some time. This is one of the reasons why I choose not to cook with artichokes often. In addition, you buy two huge artichokes and end up with a little edible part. I do not purchase frozen or canned vegetables, so when I want to cook with artichokes I buy them fresh and go through the hassle of cleaning them and deciding which leaves are edible and which are not. Therefore, I have only cooked with artichokes only several times. Do you like cooking with fresh artichokes?


For Boiling Artichokes:

2 large artichokes
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp salt
For Salad Dressing:
Juice of ½ lemon
¼ tsp red pepper flakes
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp olive oil

Fill a large pot with water. Add juice of 1 lemon and 1 tsp salt in the water. In the mean time, wash and trim the artichokes. Remove the hard ends of the leaves and add the artichokes to the cold water so they do not take a brownish color.

Boil the artichokes for 30 minutes. Remove and cool. Remove the hard outer layers of the artichoke and select the softer parts of the leaves and the hearts. Place in a plate. Sprinkle with salt and red pepper flakes. Drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice. Enjoy with pasta.