Aginares me Koukia-a taste of late Spring

My introduction to the humble broad bean came when living in the Barossa Valley. Prior to this I hadn’t really eaten them before and looked upon them suspiciously as a vegetable that made itself very difficult to eat. I mean they have to be podded, cooked and then in most cases podded again. Often they are relegated to play a supporting role but I find them more versatile and lend themselves to leading-man status every once and a while.

Naturally they have much in common with the globe artichoke as this vegetable also sits in the ‘makes itself dammed hard to eat’ category, I’ll go one step further and say that whomever actually discovered that a plant from the Thistle family could be rendered palatable must have been mighty hungry. Again I owe it to South Australia to have initiated me to the glories of cooking and eating globe artichokes. However, it was not the globe artichoke that was my first taste but the more thornier and prickly Wild artichoke that grows in the Adelaide Hills.

Adeladians have long been exposed to the sight of people foraging in the parks, beaches and foothills for gleaned foods way before it became fashionable. In fact for many migrants it was the only way they could collect ingredients that might approximate flavours from the old country as our mostly Anglo diet didn’t reflect the range of foods available today. Thankfully, some traditions still survive and whilst working in a small café in Adelaide my boss’s old man spent his weekends foraging for olives, wild artichokes and ‘Horta’ or edible greens. He would return every Monday during the season, his hands red with scores of cuts and abrasions and often remarked that I had the easiest of jobs because all I had to do was simply cook them.
In the times since I’ve cooked globe artichokes in all manner of forms from confit, to cooked long and slow in olive oil through to the traditional French way in an acidulated Blanquette.
However on of the most enjoyable ways I reckon is to combine them with broad beans in a dish the Greeks call: Aginares me koukia. This method partners the shelled but unpeeled broadies with the ‘choke’ or inner core of the artichoke removed and cooked in a pot with lemon , olive oil, garlic, dill and mint seasoned heavily with salt and pepper. It can be eaten warm or at room temp as a salad. At the café though, I cook the artichokes and broadies separately as I like to keep the colour as green as possible whereas the original recipe tend to make the dish a bit grey looking.

My own peculiar quirk is to leave the stalks, if they’re not woody, attached to the artichoke cause I like the shape. Finally I like to add a bit of ‘taramasalata’ spirit to the dish by daubing it with a few salty blobs of Sea-urchin roe mayonnaise and serve it with some crusty bread, it’s a great taste of late spring.

The finished dish