I’d never heard of this recipe until my husband mentioned eating artichokes baked with the aid of a brick in a restaurant in Rome (“Evangelista” in Via delle Zoccolette). Artichokes being ‘the’ vegetable of choice around the Easter period, I decided I would give the brick method a go. You really can’t wrong with artichokes, whichever way you cook them.
The first thing to do is turn the oven on at a high temperature, 250°C., and place two bricks inside — to get them all fired up. Then proceed to trim the artichokes.
Place the trimmed and cleaned artichokes in a saucepan and ‘oil’ them very well. Then add a little oil to the saucepan too.
Turn the heat on. Sauté the artichokes for a few minutes and then add about 1 cup of water. In the above photo, I have just added the water and you can see the steam.
Cover the artichokes and cook on a low heat for about 10 minutes until they are tender. Check every now and then that there is enough liquid in the pan. When the artichokes are cooked, remove from the pan and set aside and discard the cooking water.
Get out a roasting pan and cover with parchment paper.
Place the artichokes upside-down on the parchment paper and sprinkle plenty of salt over them.
Cover the artichokes with another sheet of parchment paper.
Place the bricks on top of the artichokes. You can’t tell from looking at the photograph but these bricks were very hot!
Place the artichokes weighed down with the bricks in the oven. Cook for 30 minutes.
Here they are just out of the oven.
The have been flattened by the weight of the bricks and the oven has rendered the artichoke leaves nice and crisp.
Looking very friendly, I must say …
And here are the artichokes on the table, served side by side with Pizza alla scarola.
I’m not sure this is exactly how carciofi al mattone are supposed to be cooked but they were nice enough to eat and so, as experiments go, I would give myself 10 out of 10 for effort.
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These look delicious! Did you drizzle a little olive oil over them when you served them?
Actually I didn’t because the artichokes sort of ‘fried’, cooked this way … but why not, yes of course one could drizzle a bit more oil!
Looks scrumptious! Do you cover them in lemon juice and oil to prevent oxidation, or does the olive oil do the trick?
Ooops … forgot to mention that the trimmed artichokes were left to bathe in plenty of cold water with a splash of lemon juice in it (i.e. the first photo) !