Artichokes

In early spring, when the kitchen garden is bare, the globe artichoke rises to the moment to fill the hungry gap

- SIMON RICKARD

Last spring, I wrote about the phenomenon gardeners call the "hungry gap"; that time in spring when the birds are singing, the sun is shining, but the vegetable garden is bare. Winter veggies have all finished, but summer crops have not yet come on. We are compensated for this hiccup in the harvest schedule by the brief appearance of a few special treats. One is the globe artichoke.

Not to be confused with its distant cousin the Jerusalem artichoke, which is a root vegetable, the globe artichoke resembles a small, fleshy cabbage. It is a member of the daisy family, related to lettuce, radicchio, and the Australian native yam daisy, which has been a staple of southern Australian Indigenous diets since time immemorial.

Artichokes grow wild on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Their buds are brutally thorny, and relatively small. The fat, unarmed artichokes we know today were probably developed in North Africa and Muslim Spain during medieval times.