How to stuff an artichoke the easy way — an ode to Grandmother and her Sicilian sisters-in-law

Artichokes are serious business in my family. Not just any artichokes. My grandmother's stuffed artichokes. This isn't fancy, froofy food. Rather, it is down-home, roll-up-your-sleeves and eat-with-your-fingers food. Even my mother, who ate potato chips with a spoon, cast aside her cutlery for these Sicilian delicacies.

Grandmother (as we called her) migrated from northern England to the U.S. with her family in 1910. She learned how to make the artichokes from her Sicilian-born sisters-in-law — my great-aunts — who also taught her how to make many of Grandfather's favorite foods from "back home," including fried peppers, eggplant Parmigiana and baked ziti.

But the artichokes were everyone's favorite, as was the family ritual of sitting at the kitchen table and slowly, slowly devouring them. Leaf by leaf, our lips and tongues gently took in the creamy-chewy stuffing; our teeth scraped out the soft inside of the bracts before biting off the bottom piece of each, which was like getting a teeny taste of the heart, before tossing the then-naked leaf into the discard pile. We would pull off the smaller, pointy and sharp interior leaves just above the hairy "choke," and bite off their tender bottoms before stopping to evaluate the choke for tenderness. (Many people discard these parts even before cooking the artichokes, but it is often very tender and the "hairs" are often supple and moist, with a