Artichokes and Dip

This recipe was taken from a Facebook page I belong to called 'What's Cooking'. I saw it and thought, why not? I've never cooked fresh artichokes before - in fact, I've only ever tasted canned artichokes!

It was an interesting experience... At first I wasn't really sure how to eat them, but I'd seen people on TV do it so I just went with that. To eat an artichoke leaf, you don't actually put the whole leaf in your mouth. You just kind of scrape the leave along your teeth to get the "meat" off, and then discard the leaf. It makes for a need finger food!

Anyway... The recipe!

Ingredients

4 fresh artichokes

1 lemon

2-3 tsp garlic powder.

Directions

1. Wash the artichokes thoroughly before use. Snap off the stems and the leaves closest to the stem. Then, using scissors, snip off the spiky bits at the top of each leaf.
2. Rub each artichoke with lemon juice and sprinkle with pepper and garlic powder.
3. In a sauce pan, put about 2-3 inches of water in the bottom and set the artichokes in.
4. Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce heat, and simmer for about 40-50 minutes. They're ready when you can pull a leaf off without issue.
5. Drain artichokes and cool. Then, lightly separate inner leaves and scoop out "the choke". (Sidenote: I have no idea what this is. I guess I need to brush up on my artichoke anatomy. I left the "chokes" in. )
6. Serve with garlic dip (recipe to follow!).

Garlic Dip

This recipe was paired with the artichoke recipe and makes a yummy semi-homemade dip.

Ingredients

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

2 tbsp water

2 tbsp sugar

2 cloves of garlic, minced

3 tbsp of onion, minced

1 cup Ranch dressing

Directions

1. In a small sauce pan, add vinegar, water, sugar, garlic and onions and stir well.
2. Simmer for 6 minutes and pour into a bowl.
3. Refrigerate for 15-20 minutes to cool.
4. Stir in ranch dressing.

This was a very simple recipe for a yummy dip! It keeps in the fridge for about a week.

Notes

Well... Not much to say here. My first artichoke experience was pretty interesting... I still have to figure out what the "choke" is, but whatever... Everything else tasted good!

Spicy Thai Chicken Wings

For a BBQ my friends hosted last week, I decided to bring chicken wings... But I didn't want to bring the classic BBQ flavoured wings, so I set out on a Google mission to find some interesting twists on the classic.

I came across this one from This Food, That Wine. It's a recipe for some Spicy Thai wings that included (mostly) things that I had around the house, so I didn't have to go out to buy anything.

Ingredients

20 fresh chicken wings

1 tsp cracked black pepper

2 tsp ginger, freshly grated (tip: keep your ginger root in the freezer! It keeps well and makes it so easy to grate!)

1 tbsp garlic, freshly minced (about 2 cloves)

1 tbsp palm sugar (I didn't have this, so I used brown sugar instead)

1 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp veggie oil

2 tbsp lime juice

1-2 tbsp chili garlic sauce (to taste!)

Directions

1. Rinse chicken wings well and pat dry. Put in a large bowl.
2. In another bowl or measuring cup, mix the rest of the ingredients until well-combined.
3. Pour over wings and toss to coat.
4. Cover bowl and put in the fridge to marinate for at least two hours.
5. Spread chicken wings on a baking sheet lined with tin foil (for easy clean-up).
6. Bake in a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes, turning once.

Notes

• These wings don't turn out to be very saucy. I know I said I wanted to get away from the classic wing recipes... but I was talking about in flavour! I love saucy chicken wings! So I think next time I might add some ketchup to the mix and see what that does for the sauciness factor.
• After the wings had cooked for 20 min, I found that they weren't crispy enough so I broiled them for a few minutes on each side.
• The taste was pretty good... Not sure what I would change about it next time, but I think I would still play around with the flavours.