Put a pan of water onto the heat. Wash the carrots and scrape them. Clean the zucchini and dry them. Remove the tougher outer leaves from the artichokes.

Cut them in half lengthwise and eliminate the "hay" to be found in the center. Julienne cut them and put to soak in water acidulated with lemon juice to avoid them turning black. Julienne cut the carrots and zucchini too.

Clean the squid removing the skin from the sac and separating the tentacles from the body, and then eliminate the entrails and the transparent inner cartilage “pen”. Remove the beak located in the center of the tentacles and also the eyes.

Then cut into very thin strips. When the water boils, salt and toss in the pasta. Five minutes from the end of cooking, add the vegetables to the water containing the pasta. Stir and cook for 3 minutes, then last of all, add the squid.

Check that the pasta is “al dente”, drain, and transfer everything to a steel tray to let it cool. Dress with oil, lemon, salt and white pepper.

Serve on a bed of fresh Swiss chard.

Food History

Artichokes are a typical plant of the Mediterranean coast and were already known and consumed by the ancient Egyptians. The ancient Greeks, however, believed they had a very interesting origin. Legend has it that Zeus, the father of all the gods, fell in love with an extremely beautiful woman by the name of Cynara due to her ash (cenere in Italian) blond hair. Zeus seduced the woman and brought her up to Mount Olympus. The young lady, however, quickly began to miss her mother and decided to return to the world of the mortals, without telling Zeus, to be with her. When the Greek god discovered that she had escaped, he went down to earth with fury and punished her by turning her into a spiny plant. The plant came to be known by the name Cynara, or carciofo (Italian for artichoke).

Did you know that...

The first “artichoke queen”, elected each year in Castroville, CA during the annual Artichoke Festival, was Marilyn Monroe? She was crowned queen in 1949.

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