The trick to artichoke hearts and spaghetti is three fold.
- you need brass extruded spaghetti. Not Teflon. If you hunt around you can find it for $3 instead of $8 a pound.
- you want grilled artichoke hearts. These cost more. But no other will due.
- this isn’t a marinara. You gotta do the whole toss in the pan with some of the pasta water to finish cooking it.
Bonus: red pepper flakes. If you don’t add them you messed up
Butter, spaghetti, red pepper flakes, artichoke hearts, parmesan, pasta water. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Well, that’s the whole thing if you properly salt your pasta water.
Make sure to add the parm both to the pan stage and a little for garnish.
It’s got flavor. It’s got texture.
If it’s in the budget add some lemon juice and Italian parsley.
Cost per person: $3.82
In San Diego my grandma had them growing growing in the backyard. It’s the perfect climate for thistle. Thistle likes to grow here in Lesser Carolina but we couldn’t get the artichokes to do more than get tall.
They do sound really tricky to grow to get the edible thistle-flowers. From what I’m seeing (among other things), they need a sustained, cool winter in order to produce the necessary vegetation and buds, something not usual for the SE, it seems.
They grew fine in San Diego and that is most definitely not a cool winter. I should pull up their old house and see which direction their back yard hill faced.
Google maps and 40 year old memories have confirmed what I expected. Their back yard hill is north facing. Just the right microclimate for getting cold in the winter there.
Nice forensics, or… whatever the right word is!
Other memory.
#dune