Recipe: Globe artichokes are a prickly treasure

What is this ugly, prickly, bulbous thing? It’s a globe artichoke. (Not a Jerusalem artichoke, which is a root vegetable related to the sunflower). An artichoke is the unopened, immature flower bud of the thistle family. Left to mature, they open to a huge and distinctive purple flower. They really are a unique vegetable, native to the Mediterranean, and grown in the U.S. almost entirely on the West Coast. The ones we see in markets now are usually from perennial plants. We can grow a slightly different variety here from seed, but they will not winter over, and they don’t really like our climate.