Artichoke hearts

My lovely husband brought home 15 artichoke hearts from his trip to Turkey. We can hardly find them in London and they are far difficult to prepare I usually end up with a very big bag of leaves and six of the littlest artichoke harts. Here is a good video showing how to clean them.

In Turkey artichoke hearts are sold all cleaned and in clear bags full of lemon juice and water which makes it much easier to cook and they are huge when compared to the ones you can get here. So 10 of the hearts went into the freezer, I just froze them in the lemon-water bag they came in, and cooked 5 of them. Here is the recipe;

5 artichoke hearts, cleaned and waiting in the water with lemon juice

2 carrots diced

100 gr peas

8 pearl onions left whole or quartered or a medium onion chopped finely

50ml olive oil

100ml water

Juice of 2 lemons

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon plain flour

Bunch of dill tied up with one of the stems

2 small or 1 medium potato diced

Place the artichoke hearts in a pan and put the onions, peas, carrots and the tied up bunch of dill to the pan. Add the olive oil, water, lemon juice, sugar and salt and bring it to simmer.

Simmer for 30 minutes on low heat.

Add the potatoes and simmer for an other 10 minutes or until the potatoes are cooked.

Turn off the heat and in a small bowl mix the flour in 2 tablespoons of water and add this to the pan.

Leave it to cool completely, it is much better when it is cold or in room temperature. I usually refrigirate it and take it out of the fridge 30 minutes before serving.

Sprinkle with chopped dill and enjoy.