[Italian Recipe!] Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve was wonderful for Josh and I.

We spent a quiet day at home with our dogs, before ringing in midnight at a friend's house party.

Being Italian, for dinner, I prepared two courses of a usually 1000-course-long traditional Italian dinner :-)

One of the important Italian dished mandatory for December 31st is lentils. They represent prosperity for the following year. Specifically, monetary prosperity. Lentils represent coins. I prepared a very simple, peasant style lentil concoction as the main course, accompanied by artichokes "Roman Style".

For the two of us, this was plenty of food! And it was delicious!

Here is the recipe, if you are interested in trying the artichokes.

Carciofi Alla Romana (Artichokes, Roman Style):

1- Clean off the artichokes. Leave the stems to be as long as possible, they are the most delicious part of the plant! Clean everything off by eliminating the outer leaves (the hard ones) and by scooping out all of the inner "hairs" which are just above the heart and are not edible. Take your time cleaning them... you only want the most tender parts of the plant, it may look like you are "wasting" lots of it, but you're really not. :-)


2- Prepare parsley, garlic and red chili flakes. Chop them up together so as to come up with a nice mixture of the three ingredients. For two artichokes, I used 3 cloves of garlic, about a teaspoon of chili flakes and about a cup of fresh parsley (a chopped cup).


3- With your hands (don't be afraid to get dirty!) spread that chopped up mixture all over the cleaned artichokes. Spread the "leaves" out and distribute the mixture throughout, evenly.


4- In a medium sized deep pot, pour about 2 cups of extra virgin olive oil and one cup of white wine. Put the two artichokes head down, stem up, in this liquid and simmer on medium heat, covered, for about 30 minutes, or until the stem/heart area of the artichokes are soft. 


5- That's it! The longest part of the whole process is the cleaning of the artichokes. The cooking happens on its own and rather quickly! These are SO good! Lift the artichokes out of the liquid with tongs and let them drain a little while holding them. Place them on a plate and eat eat eat!