“After all the trouble you go to, you get about as much actual food out of eating an artichoke as you would from licking 30 or 40 postage stamps.” Miss Piggy
Artichokes are rich in magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, iron, calcium and have antioxidant properties. All these wouldn’t be of interest though, if they weren’t yummy.
If we don’t give a fig about calories, we can replace cottage cheese with feta.
For 2-3 servings (we need 3-4 rather large artichokes for each person)
- 8-10 artichokes
- 300 gr. Cottage cheese
- 1 big potato, boiled and mashed
- 1 cup grated parmesan
- 10 sun dried tomatoes
- 2 onions chopped
- 1 garlic clove, chopped
- 2-3 tbsp. olive oil
- 3 tbsp wholemeal breadcrumbs
- ½ cup chopped basil (dry is okay too)
- 1-2 tbsp butter
Cut the artichoke stalks so that the artichoke can stand on its back, cut the top leaves, pull the outside leaves off until you find the tender ones. With a spoon remove the inside of the artichoke. Put them in a bowl with water and lemon juice for about 15-20 minutes. This prevents them from going brown.
Leave them to dry and then put them in a pan with boiling water with some lemon juice in it and a tbs of butter and some salt.
We want them to be tender but not too tender. They must be strong enough to hold the stuffing. When they are done we let them dry.
Melt the cheese in a bowl and stir in the mashed potato. If this is too thick, add one or two tbsps of milk.
Heat the oil and add onion and garlic. Sautee for a while and then pour this into the bowl with the cheeses. Blend everything together.
Grease an ovenproof dish with some butter and arrange the artichokes neatly in. Sprinkle them with some oil. Stuff them with the cheese-onions mixture and sprinkle with the parmesan and then breadcrumbs.
If there is any cheese left, pour it among the artichokes.
Bake in moderate oven for 15 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and they look golden.
Serve with a sun dried tomato on each artichoke and chopped basil.
These are really yummy and very easy to make. If you want to tease kids into eating soya try them, preferably with some rice or if you are really bold, some chips on the side.
There are three secrets you have to know:
-Don’t over boil them because then, they won’t be able to absorb all the nice spices you are going to season them with.
-They do need lots of spices and you may experiment with them. You can try cumin or curry (but not at the same time) and serve them with basmati rice or oregano and garlic like I did.
-Don’t tell anyone these are substitutes for meat. They might look like meat but they taste nothing like it.
For the kebabs
- 1 bag of soya kebabs (about 250 gr/8 oz)
- 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
- half cup of oil
- 1 tablespoon grated ginger
- 1 tablespoon coriander
- at least 3 glasses of vegetable broth (if you use ready made don’t add salt)
- salt-pepper
- skewers for the kebabs
- 2 big red peppers deseeded and cut in squares (well not real squares!)
- 2 big yellow peppers as above
- 500-600 gr. button mushrooms or any other kind you like
Mix together:
- 2 cups olive oil
- juice of two lemons
- 2 garlic cloves finely chopped
- 2 tablespoons oregano
- 1 tablespoon mustard
In another pan heat some oil and add peppers and mushrooms. Stir fry them until they become tender. Now we thread the kebabs, peppers and mushrooms on to wooden skewers (or metal ones). That’s the difficult part, so ask for help at this point. It is not really difficult, it’s just that it takes a lot of time to thread all of these kebabs.
To make the marinade, we mix together oil, lemon juice, garlic, oregano, mustard, and spoon the marinade over the kebabs.
I served these with some spinach salad with guacamole and they were great. And you can eat hundreds of them because they are much lighter than meat kebabs.
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