“Holly, honey, come help me out.” That’s my mother, calling from the kitchen.
I remember poking my head from my dad’s home office, where I was doing whatever homework 13-year-olds do on Sundays: “What?”
In a rare departure from the Sunday routine, we were having dinner at home. Normally, we’d gather en masse at my grandmother’s for a loud, relative-laden, multi-course extravaganza. When I think back on it now, I have no idea why we weren’t heading a mile down the road to Grandma’s. Was it the week Grandma and Grandpa went on their cruise to Bermuda? Was someone sick? Those answers are lost to time.
“Do the artichokes, please.”
It’s important to point out here, that while I’d been keeping company with cooking my whole life – up to this point, aside from rolling meatballs, spreading sauce on my grandfather’s special Saturday night pizza and baking chocolate chip cookies, my culinary prowess was more microwavable Hot Pockets than haute cuisine or even home cooking. It’s also noteworthy that artichokes were a standard spring staple on our Sunday table.
Even as I write this, I can feel my teeth pulling the meaty pulp from the leaves, taste the salt and wine, and savor that plump and perfect heart, buried inside, the final treasure after eating all the leaves.
Artichokes were important.
“Huh?” I asked.
“The artichokes,” she repeated, nodding her head to a pot on the counter near the sink. “Please.”
My mother is not Italian, not even close. Family legend holds that her family has been in New England since right before or right after the Revolution; and my mother is of that grit and flintiness of what she’d call “swamp Yankee” stock. However, she did marry an Italian – my dad – and by extension, inherited not only a husband, but also a whole family. For nearly ever after, they referred to her as “the Americana.”
“Do them how?” I peered into the pot, where the artichokes waited patiently for someone to coax those flavors from them. Artichokes can be sassy. They have curves. They have pointy tips. They look like a large, simple extension of the thistle family from which they come, but they are deep and interesting creatures, urging you to get to know them – leaf by leaf, layer upon layer.
“Just throw some water in the pot and a little wine and chicken broth, maybe a little salt; and put the artichokes in ‘til they boil,” Mom said, busy rolling the meatballs.
This was my grandmother’s preparation of this dish, and I have no doubt that this is exactly the way she relayed it to my mother. My Italian relatives don’t measure.
To this day, if I want to make my Aunt Sylvia’s famed Jell-O cake for my dad at Christmas, it’s a little like chasing the wind to get an exact how-to. “Holly, my sweetie,” she’ll say. “I tell you what you do. First, you make a white cake. You know, from a box, and you add just a little more sugar in it. Bake it, and then you cut it all apart …” and on it goes.
It’s worth pointing out here that for their nearly 14 years of marriage (at this point in time) – my mother had been following Grandma’s recipe almost to the letter (water, wine, broth, salt, boil), but never capturing the precise flavor Grandma could coax from those green cones. (My mother always suspected that Gram was holding something back).
So, how hard could it be? Water. How much? Hmmmm … when you boil anything, you want water to cover what you’re making. But there’ll be broth and wine, too. OK, maybe that looks right. Broth. Check. Wine. What does a 13-year-old know about wine? That much? This much? Doesn’t seem like enough. Maybe a little more? There. Salt. Well, we’re not supposed to have a lot of salt. It’s bad for Dad’s blood pressure. So … there. Right? No, there. That’s it.
I think.
I put the pot on the stove and turn the gas flame on high.
“Now what?” I look to Mom for guidance.
She slides the round, somewhat misshapen meatballs into the gravy.
“Wait ‘til they boil, then take them out,” she says. “And please set the table.” (I positively hated setting the table, but that’s another story.)
The artichokes boil. In that pot, I imagine them calling to the broth, the wine and the salt and rolling water: “Come on, guys. We’ll play hide and seek. You can burrow into all the crannies of my leaves, and we’ll let those diners find you. It’ll be fun.”
It really doesn’t take long to make artichokes. You pop them in a pan, toss in some water, some broth, a little wine and salt, and you let them boil. Maybe 10, 15 minutes … as long it takes that serene water to come to a roiling boil.
“Hey, Mom; they’re boiling. Now what?”
My mother has moved on to the salad, now that the gravy and meatballs are capable of handling themselves and the macaroni is holding its own.
“Oh, here.” She puts a giant, metal colander – the one with the little feet on the bottom – in the sink. “Go ahead and drain them.”
All that lovely water and wine and salt trickles through the little colander holes, leaving the bright green cones, softened and plump. It’s a complete transformation, like that silly cliché of how a child blossoms from a girl to a woman, unfurling hidden charms.
The artichokes, super hot to the touch, steam rising, beckoning almost, wafting up to fog my glasses, go onto a dish.
My father and brother are summoned and Sunday dinner has commenced.
“Carol,” my dad says suddenly, “what did you do?”
“What?” My mother says, confused.
“The artichokes. They’re just like Ma’s. What’d you do differently this time?”
My mother glares at me across the table.
“What did you do?” she demands.
“Nothing!” I look from her to my father in confusion and dismay. “I did what you said. The water and the wine and the broth and some salt and boil.” I pull a leaf off the artichoke on Dad’s plate and eat it.
It tastes…exactly like my grandmother’s.
“I swear.”
“Did you call your grandmother?”
“Carol!” My dad laughs at my mother’s paranoia.
“No!”
“Well,” Mom eats a leaf. “They are really good.”
Dad tosses a limp leaf into a communal dish in the center of the table, picks up his fork and points it at me.
“From now on, you’re in charge of artichokes,” he decrees.
I didn’t call my grandmother about the artichokes, honestly. Not that day or any other. I’m not even sure we ever told her that story. If we had though, she would have loved it. It would’ve been proof positive that her granddaughter, the daughter of “the Americana,” knew how to cook. No fancy recipes, no set times or amounts. It would’ve been validation of that skill handed down through osmosis, from generation to generation. Not that she’d have ever thought of it in such lofty terms.
“My granddaughter?” she’d ask. “Of course she can cook.”
I haven’t made artichokes in more than 10 years. But today, I pick a plump one, bigger than I can hold in one hand. I grab a pot and splash in the water and then the broth, the wine, the salt. I turn the stove to high and wait, watching the collation come to a boil, the artichoke asking the water and broth and wine and salt to come play hide and seek. I drain it.
I peel off one leaf, sliding the meat across my top teeth. An almost nuclear explosion of earthy richness erupts, laced with hints of salt and wine – and home.
I turn from my kitchen sink and reach out to touch my grandmother’s arm, to tell her, finally, the story of the artichoke and her granddaughter.
However, Grandma Beretto is dead, and my kitchen is empty. I reach for the phone and call my mother.