I've never

eaten artichoke before. Nor have I ever cook one, ever! So I dare myself to buy 2 on Friday and try it out on Sunday.... Since I have no idea how to cook them (or eat them), I looked up for some recipes over the Internet (GOD BLESS THE PERSON WHO MADE WWW HAPPENED!!) and prepare it accordingly.

1st off I have rinse it, cut away the stem, remove some bottom leaves and then give it a "haircut" - there are some really unpleasant small "thorns" on the leaves, which makes it HELL to eat afterwards! LOL! And then I steamed them in my rice cooker (got to thank the Japs for rice cooker!) for about 45 mins.

Pretty when opened up aren't they?

I wanted to bake them at first but decided to go ahead with steaming them 1st before popping it into the oven stuffed with Parmesan+breadcrumb+olive oil+fresh herb mixture. To stuff, 1st I have to "open" up the leaves like a flower but gently as to leave the leaves in fact, then removed some leaves and the fuzzy part in the middle. I baked them for about 15 mins over 190°C pre-heated oven. Sorry, there's no picture of the finish product as I was in a hurry to dig in! LOL!

I like this coz its really full of veg and white meat! YUMMY!

I like broccoli!

But I did took some pictures of my Baked Chicken and Quick Fruit Tartlets, made from this Irish cook mag I mentioned on my last post here. Its called "Easy Food - taking the "but" out of cooking" mag. I twigged the the Baked Chicken recipe - sub the chicken with turkey as that's what I got on hand -, and I would really reduce the amount of mayo and mushroom soup used in this recipe. Plus would rather not add in curry powder as I think it tastes funny.

My "quicky" fruit tratlets.... :p

As for the tartlets, that turned out alright. I won't be using raspberries the next time as they turn out S-O-U-R!!!! Same with Kiwi. The base I use puff pastry - store bought!! Making puff pastry from scratch is really scary!!! Made them when I was attached with the pastry department during my kitchen internship some years back..... I actually don't mind making them IF (and only IF) I have a proper working surface - AKA bigger kitchen! LOL!